THE AYURVEDIC TECHNIQUE OF NASAL CLEANSING

Are you worried about how to protect yourself, your nose- the gateway to your lungs from increasing pollution? In this article, I have discussed the techniques of nasal cleansing through nasal irrigation and thread cleansing, a Yogic + Ayurvedic principle to clean your nose and beat air pollution, to keep your eyes healthy and also to improve your mental health!

Are we taking proper care of our nose?

Today, we are in crisis by not having control over air pollution and it is a matter of international discussion as the pollution enters our body each second from air into the stomach and lungs from where it mixes into blood and intoxicates the whole body.

·       How are you dealing with this growing air pollution?

·       Are you trusting your steamer to help you fight with pollution?

Let me tell you that you are wrong if you are taking regular steams to get your nose and nasal tract clean, and fight the pollution!

The increasing particulate matter concentration is also increasing sinus, allergies

and respiratory problems in the population.

But what if I tell you that using Nasal Irrigation and thread cleansing, you can wash your tract and sinuses inside your nose by water and further you can force your sinuses to squeeze out the dirty mucus inside them? Surely, you will be having the same enthusiasm as I was having before I got to know this technique. This nasal cleansing method by irrigation and use of thread is a yogic technique and is a part of hath yoga to clean our body. I am having an experience of 3 years practising this technique. This amazing technique is called as Neti Kriya in ancient Vedic texts (Nasal Irrigation in English).

What are Jal Neti and Sutra Neti?

Neti Kriya or Nasal Cleansing Process is bifurcated on the basis of medium of practising it:

•       Jal Neti Kriya/Nasal Irrigation: In this technique, we clean our nose using lukewarm salty water and salt. We have a special kind of pot similar to the pot (or bucket whatever you say) we use to flower the plants. It can be performed in both standing or sitting position, but it is preferred to perform it in sitting position. I’ll tell you how to practise it and how does it work!

•       Sutra Neti Kriya/Cleansing by thread: In this technique, we clean our nose using a long thread or rubber of diameter nearly 3 mm. The thread is slowly inserted in to the nose and is allowed to move through the nasal tract and come out from the hole above the larynx, where the nasal tract meets oesophagus and from there it is pulled out from mouth by the other hand. Then the thread is pulled periodically between the two hands through the nasal passage and in this process, the thread pushes the walls of the tract, rubs the openings of sinuses (which were closed due to swollen capillaries due to polluted mucus) and forces the tear glands to wet our eyes.

But before you learn how to practise them, firstly you should know how to do these technique help you in eliminating the polluted mucus from your nose. And before you know how to do these techniques work, let’s look at the necessity of eliminating the dirty mucus from our nose.

First of all what are Sinuses in our nose?

Sinus is a small muscular cavity(or bag) containing water and air. Its function is to keep the tract lining moist and providing more water to the tract when more dust enters the nose. We have 4 pairs of Sinuses, all having openings in the nasal cavity. Due to exposure of intense pollution encountered by the sinuses, they are unable to provide enough moisture to the linings due to which we often sneeze and the liquid from the sinuses is forced out into the nasal cavity to provide enough liquid to dissolve the dust and make the alien particles easily out of the nose.

Figure 3: Position and Condition of Sinuses when they are healthy and infected

But sometimes, the dust accumulates inside the sinuses and makes the mucus denser and microbes get a healthy ground for multiplying. Finally, the microbes infect the sinuses and decrease the size of their opening making the flow of more denser mucus difficult and this causes inflammation in sinuses. Such a condition is called Sinusitis. The accumulated mucus creates uneasiness in us. It deteriorates our breath odour, causes dryness in eyes and headache also and you experience all the symptoms of a cold to which you finally reach. Let me be very clear that the cold we experience due to exposure of allergic substances is different from this condition and there the inflammation is due to hormone histamine which makes the capillaries swollen but the remedy for both the cases is Neti Kriya. In such a difficult situation of sinuses, I am presenting away in front of you to wash your nose from inside and clean the sinuses also.

Neti Kriya is a yogic technique to clean your nose and nasal tract and is an essential task is to achieve a toxic-free body. Sinuses work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, and the mucus they produce dissolves the dust entering our nose. The mucus then is either swallowed or spat out by us.  Here, the 2 techniques one after the other play a major role in cleaning the dirt out of the nose.

Now let’s discuss the necessity of the hour,

Jal Neti’s Working: What you have to do-

Figure 4: Baba Ramdev ji practising Nasal Irrigation in one of his events

You need to prepare lukewarm salty  (should contain enough salt such that it should not taste bitter, but salty only) water in quantity 2 to 3 times the capacity of your Neti pot. After that, fill the pot with water and go to a place like bathroom, where you can easily let the waste come out of your nose. There, you need to sit down, bend your neck towards either left or right as per your wish and put the pipe of the pot into the opposite nostril which is at a greater height from the ground such that with the help of gravity, the water flows through the nasal tract and come out of the other nostril with the lower height from ground. Since your head is tilted, therefore, water, while flowing through the tract enters the sinuses attached to the tract of the low lying nostril. The warm water dilutes the dense mucus and salt with warmth relaxes the swollen capillaries helping the sinuses to make their holes bigger and allow the flow of mucus out of the sinuses. But what about the sinuses of the other nostril? When the water of the pot in the previous step finishes, fill the pot again with the same water, take heavy breathes through your nose to ensure that the water and mucus in the tract are out and the track is not having water. Now bend your head in the opposite direction and repeat the process for the other nostril with the pot of water.
This technique can be practised daily or in the gap of 1 day depending on the severity of the sinus problem you are having. It takes hardly 15 minutes to practise this. And I am practising this technique from 3 years, and that’s why I am able to explain it in depth. I am lucky that I got to know this technique 3 years ago, as now I am in a better position and my sinuses don’t swell up before spring season (because I have allergy from pollens).

Sutra Neti’s Working: What you have to do-

Figure 5: Baba Ramdev ji practicing Sutra Neti in his event

For this technique, you need a rubber tube or cotton thread that you can easily get from online stores. For practising this technique, your nostrils should be open from inside and they should be that much open as they are when you’re doing the workout. Now look above yourself and start inserting the tube into one nostril, and you will start to feel the internal structure of the nose. If the tube is struck somewhere, you just pull it back a little and try to re-insert it. Maybe you won’t be able to insert it on your first attempt but the consecutive attempts will bring the tube out from the hole inside your mouth above the larynx and now, pull out the tube with another hand such that each hand is holding one end of the tube. Now gently start pulling the tube forward and backwards with the help of your hands. Practise this for 10 minutes including both the nostrils. Afterwards, you will be able to breathe easily. The tube, when it is being pulled periodically forwards and backward, rubs the walls of your nasal tract, leaving an effective impact on the walls and openings of sinuses which presses the swollen/filled sinuses and this forces the mucus to come out of the sinus into the tract. Now, you need to take strong and heavy breaths to force this dirty mucus to come out of your nose.

I prefer to practice Sutra Neti more often than Jal Neti as The impact of Jal Neti decreases with time. If you are a beginner, then Jal Neti will prove to be really beneficial for you, but with time, you will realize that it is not helping you

eliminate the leftover sticky mucus inside the sinuses as it was successful in making the mucous less dense, but was not able to force the mucus out of the sinus. On the other hand, Sutra Neti’s main work is to produce stress over the walls of sinuses to squeeze the mucus out of the sinus.

My recommendation to you is that you should start practising Nasal Cleansing or Neti Kriya with Jal Neti/ Nasal Irrigation, and when you are used to it, you start practising Sutra Neti(using Rubber Tube as using thread is really difficult task) also. But all those, who practise both techniques should prefer to practise them in the morning and practise Jal Neti first, followed by Sutra Neti to get rid of the problem creating mucus to the above mentioned.


This technique is helping many people around the world of all age groups in eliminating the pollution from the nasal tract and clean your nose, the gateway to lungs and stomach.

When are you starting to practice this technique? well, why don't you take the action immediately?

-Dhairya Varshney