sedentary majority, are constipated to some degree from the stomach right through to the anus. But few would care to admit it. Such an observation can be accurately made from the performances and comments of students who come to classes and our cleansing retreats. Some even say they go a "few times a week" and don't see anything wrong with that. These people are always the most tense and unwell students.
   As mentioned before, 3 - 4 times a day the bowels are sent peristaltic waves to trigger excretion. If there is waste matter waiting in the colon, it should be moved out at that time. If there is not, no urge to defecate will come. That urge may come some meals later, after there is enough waste for colon pressure to have built up. This impulse shows that the maximum number of times the bowel could empty during normal health is 3 - 4 times a day. But many people eat refined, processed foods; get little decent exercise; and are paranoid about getting fat, so are therefore not processing either proper quantity or quality of food. This leads to under-excretion or constipation.  Although few people would like to agree and admit to it, defecation less than 2 times a day is under-functioning and partially blocked up. If you were to get to the fullest capacity of eating and working energy flow through, your digestive system would naturally work in the following way:

· You would wake up with an automatic need to go to the toilet. After 6 - 8 hours of sleep, the digestive system should have digested and assimilated most of the previous day's food (if it was light and of good quality), and so long as dinner was not a late or heavy meal. This first movement of the day is really the most important one to flush out the accumulation of toxins which have not been eliminated by the inactivity of sleep. This can be helped along with a glass or two of warm water and some stretches first thing in the morning.
·   Sometime after breakfast and before lunch another urge will come as the activities of your day move material from further back in the bowels and as peristaltic waves get ready for lunch. Lunch should be the biggest and most complete meal of the day, eaten at the time of highest daily body temperature.
· Between lunch and dinner another urge should come (if lunch has been the largest meal of the day), since the body will want to make space for the lunch to move on down and to lighten itself for the slower activities of the evening and night.
· Sometime again before bedtime, a fourth urge may come.

   Now that may all seem like an incredible amount of toilet activity! You may think that this is an obsession with bowel movement, but according to the best and fullest energy cycles of the body, that's called normal. And it won't be any matter of sitting on the loo with a magazine for 5 - 30 minutes waiting, hoping, for some action! It will be a readiness to go, a full and immediate need to release as soon as the urge comes and as soon as you sit down.  Some reasons which have contributed to this lack of bowel spontaneity are:
· Many people only feel comfortable going to the toilet in the privacy of their own bathroom. They may be at someone else's house and not be bold enough to ask. Children are often like this because of the secrecy of toileting around their own home and the fear of messing up someone else's bathroom.

· They may be driving out on the highway and not want to stop at a roadside garage because of lost travelling time.
· They may be out in a park and not care to use unclean, dilapidated public conveniences.
· They may be out at a social engagement, and it may be considered rude to leave the room.
· Some modern fashion gives good reason not to go to the "trouble of half undressing. It can take quite sometime to get all the buttons undone and done up in some gear! Such a chore may also spoil the neatness of one's dress.
   For all these reasons, many people wait or "hold on" until they get home.  But later on, the urge isn't there, and then they will have to wait until the next one comes. By then the body has dehydrated and become blocked up.  Over time, the bowels become in a permanent "hold on and wait" state.
   And here is another common problem. Many people just can't open the anal sphincter by will or on call, when those biological urges come. This may simply be due to physical tension in that area at the time, or it may come from a particular mental attitude, or it may be due to years of bad diet which has caused chronic constipation and lack of voluntary anal muscle control. Technically this is called "anally retentive" and can be meant in both the physical and psychological context. Such people are often dependent on laxatives and / or coffee to move the bowels. Over time, the body has completely become dependent on these substances. If you take them away, the person becomes really sick and blocked up. For such people, the technique of laghoo Shankapraksha-lana is highly recommended.