Quality Touch for Beautiful Skin

Close your eyes for a moment and remember the last time someone reached out to simply hold you – maybe with a little half-smile and a hint of sensuality, to support and encourage you and maybe just because it felt really nice… no agenda.  (* NB if you can’t remember or have never had this, it’s time to start changing the people you hang out with!).  Feel that lovely moment of surrender and enjoyment again.  Now, Recall #2.  Try to remember the last time someone rudely grabbed your arm or shook your shoulder roughly to get your attention.  Or jabbed you hard in the ribs.  Or maybe they just shouted at you.  Feel the difference in the way your whole being responds between the first interaction and the second.  The first interaction makes you almost want to draw the person in through the pores of your skin to bring them closer, whereas in the second interaction you bristle so fast that you energetically repel them and probably snap back.

 

Now I want you to honestly consider how you approach your skin. Do you slap products on to your skin determinedly and forcefully to try to make it conform to an ideal of beauty?  Do you bully it?  A hurried 5 mins given begrudgingly cos you need results fast?  Mutter at your zits, wrinkles or stray hairs crossly in the mirror?  Or do you quietly give your skin a gentle and grateful touch when you use your products and clean your body?

Or maybe you’re a massage or spa therapist.  Do you give mindful and generous touch when you massage, or are you busy thinking about sen lines, thumb pressure, the overdue phone bill or, Goddess forbid, what’s for lunch.  Be honest.

Every cell in your body is alive and responds to energy, to touch.  The way you touch skin changes the way it receives not only the healing touch but also the product you apply.

Now imagine you have an innocent 11 month old baby hungrily awaiting her dinner in her high chair.  Gurgling and banging the spoon in that oh-so-cute way.  Imagine yourself feeding her some wholesome food prepared with love, ever-so-mild and nutritious.  Delicious but gentle.  Baby gurgles, dribbles, smiles, receives and digests your lovingly prepared meal.  Everybody happy.  Or take #2.  You smile and coo and then gently spoon into baby’s mouth some strong flavoured, ultra spicy food that burns her mouth and makes her cry, or some tuna that’s really for cats but it was cheap and seems OK and the cat doesn’t have a problem with it so why should baby?  You wouldn’t do that, would you? 

The relationship between the quality of the touch skin receives and the products we choose to use IS really important. 

It doesn’t matter how delightful or natural the body or face care product is, if it is slapped on hurriedly, begrudged or resented.  If the touch is rough, uncomfortable and perfunctory, the cells of the body literally recoil.  It doesn’t matter how expensive the massage oil or how many lovely essential oils it contains, if it is applied without mindfulness, generosity or care.  Conversely, the best technical massage in the world is flawed if you’re using products known to cause skin irritations, which contain harmful petrochemicals or which contain artificial fragrances which are publicly documented to be seriously harmful to long-term health but allowed under lax labeling laws.

Good natural skin health – for ourselves, our clients and our customers – requires us to consider this complex relationship between the quality of the touch and the nature of the product. 

So now take yourself back to where we started – to that gentle, supportive embrace that is so wonderful to receive.  Remember it again and savor it for a moment.  When next you think skin care for yourself, for clients or for massage, think natural and try to recreate that feeling.  Do no harm with your skin care and massage products - to the environment or to the body which will receive it.  And learn to give yourself over completely to the experience of quality touch, whether it’s 5 mins in the privacy of your bathroom or during that slightly-rushed-pre-lunch massage that you need to deliver. 

Enjoy the vibrant health and glowing skin that mindful touch combined with simple, effective and natural products brings.

 

http://arunthainatural.com

Anti-Aging or Radiant Natural Health?

I can’t help it – the very phrase “anti-aging” makes me cringe inwardly.  As if someone is trying to run away from life and its consequences. I immediately think of people agonizing in front of mirrors, being unhappy, having painful surgeries, botox, chemical peels… you name it… to look, err, tight. Forced, even, like a rose pushed through a commercial hothouse but disappointingly lacking in fragrance.  I then think of young and beautiful friends who have passed away tragically and who would probably have given anything to be able to worry about sunspots, wrinkles and crowsfeet. 

This anti-aging cringe thing I have is a professional liability, since I make and sell natural things for people’s bodies and skin, and the very phrase “anti-aging” makes a whole lot of people reach for their purses and credit cards without even thinking.  So why don’t I simply push my scruples out of the way and settle into entrepreneurial anti-aging bliss?

 

Well, you see, most “anti-aging” products contain things that should make you worry.  Things with poly-syllabic chemical names that are unpronounceable and which, if I were to buy them at the wholesale chemical place here in Thailand, would come with safety and hazard warnings.  Chemicals that are well documented to not only irritate and dry skin and cause all manner of physical problems from depression to asthma, but which also accumulate in your blood and vital organs and impede your immune system.  In short, over time and with repeated usage, they make you sick.  Do they make you glow with health and vitality and make your gorgeous?  Almost never.

Conversely, if you focus on your natural and radiant health, the outcome is almost always (often by accident, as an unexpected by-product!) that you start to glow with that special something that people love.  If you forget about the way you look and just go for a run, take a yoga class, laugh in the kitchen with your lover or maybe sleep in the moonlight…. *something* happens.  You stop worrying and stressing.  You discover that instead of the $60 pot of chemical-cocktail-night-cream that the $8 bottle of natural oil actually works better.  You decide to spend the other $52 on a new skirt and it makes you feel great.  It makes you smile.  You find your yoga class is fun and you decide you’re worth the time to do it, and in that new freedom you smile more and that simply helps people to engage with you.  You start thinking more about what you eat, you sleep better and all of that makes you look 10 years younger.  You talk to the lady who falls over all the time at the yoga class and hear her story about her long term illness and her struggle to walk well, and suddenly you don’t care about the smile lines around your eyes so much – in fact, you start to feel rather proud of them.  The more you focus on your natural, radiant health, the younger and more beautiful you look and feel to the people around you.  You ooze energy and creativity.  People smile when they see you.

   

Next time you see someone plugging expensive “anti-aging” products, stop and think and read the product label.  Ask about the ingredients. Then spend an hour on Google and be prepared to be shocked.  Ask yourself if you really want to bombard your body with dangerous, toxic chemicals for the transitory dream of looking younger (if indeed it even works).   Look at the massive monetary and physical costs involved in these “anti-aging” products and ask yourself if simple, natural health might not be a better path to choose.

Ironically, a healthier, happier you will look more gorgeous and probably even a bit younger, but you’ll possibly be too engrossed in new things and the great people around you to care.

 

In loving memory of Steph, who shared Ward 3B with me many years ago and helped me make it positively rock with laughter until even the nurses frowned and fussed over drips and pain management implements.  Beautiful Steph died at the age of 17, only 3 weeks after being diagnosed with a melanoma on her back.

Essential Oils Can Make Me More Beautiful?

Essential oils are about smell, aren’t they? Natural healing aromas from Mother Earth.  Sure they can help you relax, sleep better, feel less nauseous, boost your mood.  But that’s not “beauty” – I want to LOOK good as well as feel good and be well.  That’s mostly how the masses think about essential oils – a fragrant add-on to the way we feel and experience health, but not relevant to beauty or looks.  Actually, that thinking is quite wrong.

Did you know essential oils work and have therapeutic benefit even when you can’t smell them? A 2009 study on rose oil deprived subjects of their sense of smell and applied the essential oil directly to the skin only.  Even without all the gorgeous memories and associations with the divine smell of blooming summer roses, the measured relaxation effect on the test group (as opposed to the clinical control group) was significant. (1) 

So, essential oils are not really about smell per se at all, and effective even when we’re not blissing out on their magnificent natural aromas.  What are those benefits and how do they contribute to beauty and the way I look? 

Essential oils trigger parts of the brain and limbic system that contribute to relaxation, better sleep, improved mood, better blood circulation, improved immune response and optimal hormonal function.  Better sleep equals less sags and bags and optimal production of human growth hormone for cell repair and healthy new skin.  Improved mood means less frown lines and sags around the mouth, and more smile lines (which are gorgeous!).  Better blood flow means better waste removal, better detox and improved oxygenation of the tissue cells and skin, which helps to give that hard-to-define “radiant glow” that truly beautiful people have.  Reduced stress and improved relaxation leads to an overall letting go in the body, face, jaw and shoulders, which leads to softer muscles and better movement of blood.  Improved hormonal function directly leads to less blemishes, better mood, more smiles and yes, even more love-making (and that makes everyone look and feel more beautiful too!).  And improved immune response keeps us well – we all know that looking and feeling sick does NOT make us beautiful.

Think for a moment of the most aggressive, stressed out, sleep deprived person you know: all frown lines, pursed lips, locked jaw and tight.  Not beautiful.  When the myriad of tiny muscles of the face are contracted through stress, worry or anger, the skin pulls differently and blood flow is constricted, which in turn impedes natural skin detox and leads to blemishes, pallor and a loss of skin elasticity.  Consider that prolonged stress makes it harder to sleep and, in time, will make us sick.

 

Using essential oils as part of your daily health and body care routine contributes to the way you feel, look and to your natural beauty.  You don’t have to sit hovering next to an oil vaporizer to achieve this – I mean, who has time for that?  You can use natural body oils blended with essential oils as part of your daily after-shower or before-bed routine – gorgeous silky smooth skin as well as an essential oil health treatment.  You can spritz on essential oils in natural sprays during the day or just whenever you need a “boost”.  You can plan for a hot herbal ball treatment after a great massage – as the hot herbs release their healing benefits to your muscles through the essential oils they release, your whole being will respond.  You could even simply add a few drops of essential oil to a handkerchief and put in your clothes drawer or cupboard – that way even hurrying to dress for work is taking care of yourself.

 

Be aware that products containing essential oils must contain ONLY essential oils and not additional synthetic substances or fragrances – these synthetic additives are incredibly harmful to your health (read Essential Oil + Fragrance = Something Stinks! to understand this issue better).

 

Celebrate the magnificent essential oils Mother Earth has blessed us with and indulge yourself daily for not only better health, but for a soft, radiant, natural beauty that shines like nothing you can ever buy in a bottle.

 

¹Hongratanaworakit, T. Relaxing effect of rose oil on humans. Natural Product Communications, 4(2), 291-6.