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viewsNeti Pot -- A Love Story
By Laura Henneforth, Wednesday, January 6, 2010, 3 comments
My name is Laura and I’m in love with a Neti Pot. There. No more denial. But I cannot, I will not, live without it. And here is my testimonial…
For those of you who don’t know what a Neti Pot is, don’t worry, I missed that segment on Oprah also. Briefly, it is an ancient nasal irrigation technique using a saline solution. While some yoga enthusiasts are compelled to use concoctions far more intense than saline I haven’t gone there yet and don’t really want to.
I have lived in Southern California all my life and in those years my resistance to pollutants and particles had broken down. I became an allergy suffer. During a particularly bad ranting, a friend suggested I try the Neti Pot.
I dawdled. Pouring liquid willingly into my nose brought on a nightmarish PowerPoint show. Old documentary footage of snake charmers lacing live snakes through their nasal cavities. Childhood swim lessons going horribly wrong. Water-board interrogation…
I have issues inserting things up my nose. I don’t like it.
The sky blue box of Claritin found its way into my cart on more than one grocery excursion but I wasn’t ready for that. Nor did I want to add grape seed oil to my already crammed repertoire of natural remedies. It was June and the Santa Ana winds that scoured the LA basin were coming along with pounding headaches and impacted sinuses.
I gathered some courage and $16 to buy the Neti Pot.
Our relationship began tenuously. There is no voodoo magic to using a Neti Pot and I was warned to practice the pour and expect failure at first. Too many times I choked and got water in my ears. But each time I got a little better and soon started to feel a little better.
Pain may be a great motivator, but stubbornness can be a greater asset.
That perfect suction between the slender spout and my nose was finally achieved along with the correct head tilt. (By the way, the placement of my hips plays an important role getting the water in and out smoothly. I don’t know how, it just does.) I was hardly a yogi in motion but I did get the hang of it. Kinda like riding a bike, or dare I say, swimming?
(Caution: the next paragraph contains T.M.I)
I soon looked forward to my time with Neti, to the point where I liked watching the process. It’s a good day when I see pearly bubbles pouring out with the sluggish stream from my nose. A Kleenex finishes the job where I can inspect the bounty of gunk that Neti has freed me of.
And I feel great. Better than ever. No more headaches. No more morning sore throats.
Now I am never without Neti. She travels with me swathed in silken cloth so nothing will harm her. She even made a friend with my buddy’s Neti Pot in Flagstaff, a sleek little vessel that looks like Aladdin’s lamp. Neti has even healed a bruised relationship between me and my cousin who was stricken with a bout of allergies. I lauded the joys of Neti and my skeptical cousin became a believer too.
But it was the Station Brush Fire last fall that truly tested my relationship with Neti. While my suffering was nothing compared to the animals and people who died in the conflagration, my headaches took on a ferocity I never knew under the pyrocumulus cloud looming over the San Gabriel Mountains. Every night Neti made me feel a little better. When the fires subsided a few weeks later I got caught in a windstorm below the foothills, chocking and coughing on the remains of the worst fire in So Cal history.
Neti to the rescue.
Fine bits of ash and dirt purged forth. I proudly displayed my Kleenex for my grumbling boyfriend who didn’t want to hear about the Station Fire coming out of my nose.
That’s okay. He’s just jealous of what Neti and I share…
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3 Comments
I know that fire- it was
I know that fire- it was bad! I commute from Camarillo (home) to Cal Poly Pomona (work) and it was ugly! A true challenge for the Neti. I have to say that the Neti helped my kid win 3rd place in the district wide speech contest- for real! He had horrible allergies and was very sleepy (lack of oxygen) but my aunt visited that morning and ordered us to CVS to buy a Neti pot. We irrigated the kid's nose and he did Martin Luther King Jr's 5 minute "I Have a Dream Speech" and got 3rd! Thank you, blue plastic CVS Neti!
Ah, so nice to find another
a little scared
I haven't yet built the relationship with Neti, though I have been told to several time. It seems like a lot of work. Possibility of chocking and the extreme pain of incorrectly inhaled water has kept me away.
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