Jal neti is normally not harmful. But if you are feeling headache, it is an indicative something wrongly or excessively done. Lets understand that what it may be by the following checklist:
- Hygiene: You have not used unhygienic water. Neti pot should also be thoroughly washed and there should not be remnant soap inside it. Hygiene is the key, because shatkarmas which includes Neti is itself a package of six cleansing actions and if we do not follow hygiene, shatkarmas will not serve our purpose.
- Proper Technique: During jal neti, always ensure that your mouth is opened to allow breathing through mouth only. If the nostrils are used for breathing during jal neti, it will cause discomfort and may also cause headache. Just keep the mouth opened, and allow the water to freely flow from one nostril out of the second nostril.
- Temperature: You have not used very hot water (the water should be lukewarm only. There is a litmus test to check the temperature of water suitable for jala neti. Just put very little quantity of water on the back of your palm and see if it is comfortably warm. Then you can use it.
- Salinity: You have not used excessive salt in the jal neti water. Again there is a litmus test to check the magnitude of salinity. You can use sendha namak. You can taste few drops of that water. If it appears suitable to your tongue, go ahead.
- Internal Drycleaning: One of the most important point that we usually ignore is not blowing out the remaining water out of the nostrils, after the neti is completed from both the nostrils. Have you done kapalbhati after the neti so as to eliminate the water out of the nostrils? Again there is litmus test to check if the water is completely eliminated. Blow out from the nostrils over the back of your palm, if there is sensation of much humidity, try to more kapalbhati until it appears less humid on the palm. Accumulation of water becomes the cause of headache sometimes.
- Thermoregulation: After the jal neti is completed, we should remain in the normal temperature. There should not be any sudden change in temperature. Like going to air conditioned chilled room. For some people, this does not affect. Similarly, there should not be change in temperature after going towards outside in hot weather. Usually, this affects much because we have already erased out the mucous layer of our nostrils which helps in thermoregulation of our breath. Sudden change in temperature disturbs the homoeostasis of our body and may cause headache. You can note this thing as a precaution also.
- Pollution: Last but not the least, after the jal neti is completed, never expose yourself to the polluted atmosphere. Mucous layer is again protective in filtering the pollutant particles, etc. After a while, we should go outside, as a part of the precaution.
Just check if you had followed the above precautions. If the headache still persists, even after the above precautions, please consult with your physician to root out the cause. You can also write here alongwith to study further.
Recommendations:
Neti Pot - Generally, Copper Neti Pots are recommended. But now-a-days, good quality copper pots for neti are not available in the market, even at Amazon online market place - we could not find in the Amazon search for Copper Neti Pot. We tried with steel made neti pot too, and got disappointed with feedbacks thereof. The neti pots are better available at any of your local Yoga Institute like Morarji Desai Institution of Yoga at New Delhi, etc. The one we found that at amazon is cheap , can be easy to keep during travelling is small plastic neti pot at amazon. That works fine.
If you want to use to quality ceramic neti pot, that is available by Himalayan Institute at amazon, but yes it is expensive, even beyond the copper neti pot, but it is very customized to the nostrils and handling while doing neti. We have good experience of it as we have been using it for a long time. But again do not forget that it is ceramic one, it has to be handled with care and can be broken.
