One of the clear messages in all of my beauty workshops is – the intention to practice a skin care regime is hugely beneficial to our personal well-being. All self-care regimes are beneficial and one that pays attention to the skin on your face can offer insight and well-being on lots of levels, here’s why…

Healthy skin awareness

The health of our skin can often tell us a lot about how we are treating ourselves and our bodies. Whether that’s having dull and dry skin due to a lack of exfoliation, or a flare-up that arises out of stressful situations, we can find out a lot by paying close attention to our skin on a daily basis.

Our skin changes and adapts depending on what we put on our body, what we put inside it and also on our emotional state so it is important to be conscious of this.

By increasing your skin awareness you can directly see how your body likes to be treated and how it doesn’t by the reaction of your skin. By checking in with it regularly, you’re more likely to see the changes.

Having an intentional daily skin care regime, even if it’s just a quick face cleanse while looking in the mirror allows you to notice changes on your face which can often give you a greater insight into your overall well-being.

Once you’ve got this sussed you can change your skincare products, diet and emotional state to make sure that your skin is always glowing!

Tell your body you love it!

While all the products that we make in my Natural Beauty Workshop have a practical function such as cleansing or moisturising our skin, the intention to apply a skin care regime sends a message to our skin that we love it and are grateful for all the good work it does for us.

In a world of constant body shaming, I think many of us have to fight against an internal voice that picks faults with our skin and features. I’ve certainly fallen fault to this in the past, bashing myself with comments like “Another spot!”, “Damn bags under my eyes”, “My skin looks so awful today!”

These comments are very counterproductive to our self-esteem. I believe that true beauty comes from a sense of self-love and by practising self-care in a loving way we can nourish our body and provide the right environment for it to work at its best.

Mindful self-care means happy face muscles

For me, awareness and intention are mindful practices that keep us present in the activity we’re doing. Whether that’s a skin care regime or even a simple activity like walking in nature, practising anything mindfully contributes to an improved sense of well-being for our mental health.

It can also improve the way our face looks by relaxing our face muscles as we are less likely to hold tension in our face if we are mindful of it. Like many of us, I can get lost in future or past thoughts and playing out circumstances that haven’t even happened.

Not only can this be exhausting but it can actually cause us to hold a frown or a certain expression when we’re attached to that thought. If we’re not aware of this and do it on a regular basis then we’re actually strengthening these frowning facial muscles, which means that we can hold a frowning face even when we’re resting!

If you find yourself tensing up in your face, try and see if you can catch yourself doing this and intentionally relax these muscles on a regular basis, meaning more relaxed and happy faces!

A Skincare regime can be as simple as a daily cleanse, tone and moisturise or having a weekly facial. I like to stick to natural and organic products which you can get on the island from Ecological Cosmetics and Viveco.

If you would like to discover more about the foundations of naturally beautiful skin, join me and Functional Nutritionist and Natural Health consultant Maya Flynn from Glow for our upcoming series of naturally beautiful skin workshops:

9th of October: The Foundations of Naturally Beautiful Skin

23rd of October: Eat your way to Naturally Youthful Skin

6th of November: Eat your way to Naturally Clear Skin – Pimples and Ache Solution

 

Written by Shereen Soliman

About the author Shereen has an MSc in Environmental and Energy Studies (specialising in natural materials), a BA (Hons) in Business Studies, is a qualified Beauty Therapist and a has a passion for all things spa and wellbeing related. At 14 she witnessed her Auntie fight breast cancer using only natural remedies, something which was unheard of at the time and directly challenged her family’s beliefs; her parents being a Doctor and Nurse who specialised in cancer. The question of what we put in to our bodies & how this affects us & our environment is something which continued to crop up in Shereen’s life, especially when she found herself working in marketing around companies that regularly mislead customers about what was actually in their products. Having a Masters of Science & the experience of working in marketing, Shereen know’s how to tell the green wash from the reality and is on a mission to share this knowledge with the world while providing accessible natural alternatives. In 2017 she published her first book: The Backpackers Natural Beauty Book, and started running Natural Beauty Workshops. She now runs a variety of educational and pampering workshops under the brand Abanico Spa.