This month has been all about detoxing - starting the new year with reinvigorated energy and a clean palate. But it seemed that while everyone else was going on cleanses and cleaning out closets, I was being fat and lazy on the beach. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED my vacation but my bad habits from the trip really hit me hard when I returned to New York.

I was off to a late start on the January detox and I hate playing catch-up. So, I needed a bit of a boost. For this, I looked for unconventional ways to kickstart my January detox with the remaining time in January.

To kick off, I visited the Russian and Turkish Baths. Sauna and steam rooms are a regular part of many cultures, and the reason seemed clear after I educated myself on their benefits. Not only do sauna visits relieve stress and soothe aches and pains in muscles and joints, saunas flush toxins and cleanse the skin. The contrast between the hot room and cold baths also increases lymph drainage and blood flow in the veins - this help’s the body’s natural detox process. The visit to the sauna also helped me find some much-needed sleep after my serious jetlag after my vacation. I particularly loved the wet saunas and the steam rooms - both helped me get rid of the touch of a cough that I had developed on my flight home.



For my diet, I added a new morning drink to my routine. Now, I try to begin each day with a lemon ginger water. I first came across this simple drink on my vacation where the windy coastal drives made me seriously carsick, and one juice-stand we visited served a variation of this drink under the name “Road Cure”. Ginger is a powerful anti-inflammatory antioxidant, and the preparation following this Lemon Ginger recipe I found is very simple.

More than anything, I wanted to start the new year - and another semester of grad school - with a fresh mind. Between school and working on Just-in-Time, I consume so much information each day that I just need some time to myself to sit in silence and reset my mind. I had been searching the Interwebs for a mental detox solution but wasn’t entirely satisfied with any of the suggestions (make a to-do list, keep track of small successes, have less screen time, etc) until I came across PAUSE, a relaxation app. The elegant and simple mindfulness app removes the noise and distraction of modern-day but asking you to concentrate on one thing - calming down. To this healthy skeptic’s surprise, it’s been very useful and a perfect solution for when I need to sneak in a quick break from the consuming demands of every day.

All images from the good folks at Death to Stock Photo.