I have just tried “oil pulling” for the first time and want to share my experience.

What in the world is oil pulling, you may ask? At about this time yesterday morning, I didn’t know either. Someone on a Charlotte Mason list I am on posted yesterday about battling a sinus infection and asked the group at large if anyone had any experiences to share regarding “oil pulling” as a possible therapeutic for sinus infection. Oil pulling?

I was intrigued by her question and immediately Googled it. I first went to Oil Pulling - a Wonderful Therapy and read up. The technique immediately sounded to me like something Ayurvedic in origin which does, in fact, turn out to be the case. My opinion about techniques and perspectives that are Ayurvedic in origin is this - people these days may debate the details and/or they may exaggerate about the results but nevertheless a technique or approach that is Ayurvedic in origin is going to be sound health practice. Ayurveda is the oldest form of medicine and it thus conforms to my two principles of discerning between health practices.

I continued reading and very quickly discovered that lots of people know about oil pulling and that many of them predictably debate about the finer points of the technique. Here is the oil pulling page at Earth Clinic and a brief page with directions and impressions at Colon Cleansing Zone and a confident article entitled How to do “Oil Pulling” on Guide for Self Healing. It was this latter article I pulled up this morning to refresh my mind with the details of how to proceed.

Oil pulling, which is to say, swishing oil around in your mouth for 15 minutes or so first thing in the morning, apparently pulls toxins of all kinds out of your mouth. This is said to have a positive affect on the health of the entire body just as the toxins in our mouths have profoundly negative effects on our entire bodies (oral bacteria found in the heart and so on). Also the tongue is apparently similar to the bottom of the feet in that points on it relate to areas all over the body. You affect the tongue, you affect the entire body just as in reflexology you affect the entire body through the feet.

We don’t go out grocery shopping all that often but yesterday we did happen to go so I picked up a bottle of unrefined, cold pressed sesame oil. This morning I pulled up the How to do “Oil Pulling” page and charged ahead. My reaction was so surprising to me that I came immediately here to share it.

When I first put the oil in my mouth, I found I enjoyed the flavor and I found the whole exercise of swishing it around very soothing. After some minutes, the flavor disappeared and the viscosity of the oil changed. You are supposed to swish the oil and mix it with your saliva until the oil turns white. Turning white indicates that the oil has picked up a full load of toxins, I guess. OK, I did all of this with no problem. Then you spit the oil out into the toilet so that you don’t clog up your sink. Rinse your mouth out with warm salt water and then brush your teeth (with something other than any kind of toothpaste). That’s it. Wisdom says that you start out doing this every morning and then, if you have intractable health problems of various sorts, you work up to doing it two or three times a day. It helps to clean and normalize the system.

Upon completing the entire procedure, I was immediately filled with a expansive sense of well being. I noticed that my teeth and mouth felt squeaky clean (people often to report that their teeth get whiter from oil pulling) in a way that felt very pleasant. And then within a minute or two, I felt positively ebullient! Ebullient like Tigger is ebullient - full of energy and bounce and good spirits. Pretty good for 5:30am!

This unexpected discovery is interesting to me so I will keep it up. I will do the oil pulling every morning and perhaps increase it to twice a day as an experiment. I will report back with developments the way I have been about going without an electric dryer or the way Steve Pavlino did during January about eating an all raw diet. Meanwhile, I feel great!

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

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