The Yogic Practice of Drinking and Bringing Water Back Up
In some yoga traditions, practitioners perform a cleansing exercise known as vamana dhauti or kunjal kriya: they drink water and then deliberately trigger vomiting to bring it back up. The practice is intended as a ritual or bodily cleansing, not simply as an ordinary response to illness.
What Happens in the Body
The water temporarily fills and stretches the stomach. That can activate the vomiting reflex, which contracts the stomach and abdominal muscles and pushes the water back through the esophagus and mouth. The process may also bring up some stomach contents, but it does not wash the entire digestive tract or remove toxins from the body. The stomach continues its normal work of moving food and liquid onward and protecting itself with mucus and digestive secretions.
A Tradition, Not a Risk-Free Cleanse
Within yoga, the exercise is understood as a form of shatkarma—a set of traditional cleansing practices—and its meaning is tied to disciplined preparation and purification. That traditional purpose is different from a medically established benefit: inducing vomiting is not a general-purpose way to improve digestion or detoxify the body.
Repeated or forceful vomiting can irritate the throat and damage tooth enamel; in some cases, vomit can enter the airway. The practical consequence is that a ritual described as cleansing can also place stress on the body, especially when attempted without appropriate guidance or by someone with a health condition.
