I have entered the Land of the Neti Pot, & I may never return.

A week ago (last Saturday), I got sick. It started with the aching and what I like to call “woozy-headed-ness,” and soon turned into a full fledged cold/flu thing. And man, has it been a pain in the ass. If someone you know tells you that they’ve got that flu bug that’s been floating around, spray yourself with hand sanitizer and run, even if they tell you over the phone–you don’t want near this thing.

Friday, knowing that I was approaching my one-week anniversary with the flu, I became desperate to relieve the ever-present sinus pressure and began asking people for advice. Brynn, like I knew she would, suggested that I buy a Neti pot. Since we were IM’ing when she mentioned it, I responded with something like, “Great! Thanks! Will do!” and then laid my forehead on the desk in agony. I was and have been afraid of Neti pots.

About ten or eleven years ago I took my first yoga class in the back store of a New Age bookstore on Main Street near UB’s South campus. It was my 9th-grade boyfriend’s idea and, adorably, we signed up together. Our teacher, whose name I think was Jim, held court at the front of the room under a Sanskrit-worded banner and table lit with candles. We chanted Om.

One day at the end of class, Jim asked us to wait for a minute and pulled some things out of his bag. In his hands he held a small, ceramic pitcher, which I immediately associated with the Genie lamp from the Disney movie Aladdin (I was a year out of middle school, give me a break). He poured some water into the pitcher and then placed the rounded spout into one of his nostrils. He tilted his head to the side and as he lifted the pitcher, water poured out from his open nostril and into a bowl on the floor. My boyfriend, David, and I looked at each other, checking to make sure that we were both thinking the same thing: Eeeeeww, grooosssssssssss.

Ladies and gentlemen, my introduction and last impressing of the Neti Pot. Perhaps if I had not been a teenager and therefore incredibly self-conscious when I first learned of them, I wouldn’t have associated Neti pots with weirdness and disgust for so long. It’s sort of strange that I’ve maintained my revulsion for them considering my embrace of almost all other natural body and healing products (google “the keeper”)

So strong was my desperation though that on Friday after work, I went to the Lexington Co-op and bought myself a Neti Pot and non-iodized salt. At home I took the pot out of its box and slowly read through the instructions. In the bathroom with my warm (not hot!) saltwater-filled pot, I took a deep breath and tilted my head to the side. Though not as graceful as my yoga teacher Jim, water poured through one nostril and out the other. I crossed over.