“Eight things I learned from touching 50 naked people”

Amazing and insightful look at the human body by a massage therapist. Click here for the original article.

1. Your body doesn’t lie. You might say, “I’m relaxed!” or, “That pressure is great, you can work deeper,” but your body may tell a very different story. What goes on in your muscles, with your breathing, with your pulse is the truest you: the you that even you might not know yet. It’s a good thing to get in touch with. You’d feel much better if you listened and let your words match up to what your body was saying.

2. When you stretch, you open up space.  This is physically true, and emotionally true. When you physically stretch (or allow yourself to be stretched) you create space and allow for greater movement, greater vulnerability and more growth. It’s the same when you stretch yourself emotionally, too. Your physical and emotional selves aren’t separate––stretch one, and you usually stretch the other, too. It isn’t always comfortable at first, but it’s a wonderful thing. Surrender to it. You won’t regret it.

3. That thing you’re embarrassed about? That you don’t want anyone to see? That you tense up and hold your breath over? The part of you that you wish were different? It’s ok. Let go. Enjoy it. It’s part of what makes you so beautiful.

4. Everyone has body hair in various places and amounts. There’s no one right amount. It’s all good. Same goes for moles. Even models don’t look like they do in the pictures. Smooth and hairless is a Fifth Avenue invention designed to create discontent (and sell grooming products).

5. Everything you’ve experienced is stored in your body at a cellular level. Each cell is a record of all of it. I’ve felt it in your skin. Being born. Being held. The time you fell off your bike and weren’t that hurt but very scared. That brutal sunburn on your shoulders at 14. The time you fell out of a tree and broke your collarbone. The first time you felt deeply loved. The person who hurt you so badly you thought you were broken for good. Your muscles remember it. They remember it like it happened 10 minutes ago.

Your successes hold your shoulders high. Your losses pull your chest inward. You hold your sadness in your throat, your anger in your jaw and your fear in your belly. Your happiness rises and falls in your chest. Love rolls in and out on the tides of your breath. It’s all there, all the time. {You can release the parts that hurt, if you want to. Yoga and massage are the best ways I’ve seen.}

6.   Your weight is the least interesting thing about you. I promise.

7.   Your skin, however, is fascinating. Every line, every freckle, every scar tells the amazing stories of your life. Please don’t Botox, bleach or sand it all away. They’re all beautiful.

8.   Your body is a f*cking wonderland. You are amazing just as you are, right now.

Green Tea Combats Skin Cancer

ktpetitephysique:

      Polyphenols, a type of antioxidant found in green tea, protects skin from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation and also helps prevent skin tumors from forming.

 Best: Drink five to six cups of green tea a day- the fresher, the better. Fresh green tea leaves have a yellow or green color. A brownish hue indicates that the tea has undergone oxidation, which destroys the antioxidants. Tea bags and loose leaves are better than instant or bottled teas.

xxK

Nice to meet you girls! Thanks for the follow. Looks like you have a great blog too, I look forward to learning and sharing healthy tips with you guys :)

Apple Cider Vinegar for Health

sunshel:

ACV

If I could suggest any product to have in your home, it would definitely be Apple Cider Vinegar!

Natural Apple Cider Vinegar is made by crushing fresh, organically grown apples and allowing them to mature in wooden barrels.

Benefits

  • Increase metabolism which promotes weight loss
  • Increase stamina
  • Cure skin conditions such as acne
  • Fights allergies
  • Reduce sinus infections, sore throats
  • Strengthen the immune system
  • Balance high cholesterol
  • Prevent muscle fatigue after exercise
  • Improve digestion and cure constipation
  • Diabetes: controls blood sugar levels

Uses

Weight-Loss: Increases metabolism, curbs appetite. Add 2 tsp ACV to 16 oz water and drink throughout the day.

Detox/Cellulite: Add 2 Tbsp ACV to 8 oz water. Cleanses your body and kidneys. (If this is too strong, drink ACV with juice. I juice carrots, cucumber & spinach.. hides taste well)

Hair: Use after shampooing to add healthy body and shine. Combine 1/2 Tbsp of ACV with 1 cups water, pour through hair. Check out my post on this

Face: Helps regulate pH of your skin, prevents/treats acne. Dilute ACV with 2 parts water and apply to face as a toner at night and in morning. (Also lightens age spots/scars.. Apply directly and leave on overnight)

Teeth*: Removes stains and whitens teeth. Rub teeth directly with ACV and rinse

Heartburn: Add 1 Tbsp ACV to warm cup of water and sip slowly

Congestion/Cough: Drink 2 tsp of ACV and 2 tsp honey in a cup of warm water, 3 times daily.

I drink 1-2 Tbsp of Apple Cider Vinegar daily, use it in my hair, and use it on my face multiple times a day/night and I LOVE it. It gives your face a nice glow and makes you feel great. As always, I would go with Organic Apple Cider Vinegar (I use the brand  Bragg).

*Drinking vinegars, acids or lemon juices on a regular basis can lead to a deterioration of dental enamel. To prevent this, vinegar should always be diluted with water or a pinch of baking soda.

Source

Orthorexia Nervosa - Taking Healthy Eating to the Extreme

Lately I’ve been really inspired by Tracy from The Love Vitamin. She believes really strongly that emotional turmoil can have a lot to do with your skin. She also believes in a multi-faceted approach to holistic healing, meaning a well-rounded combination of healthy diet, exercise, emotional wellbeing, along with sunshine, sleep and, lastly, skincare (she believes that less is more… she washes her face with water, and sometimes honey and aloe).

She just released a free ebook called Roadmap to Clear Skin where she gives 7 steps to help you get on the clear skin bandwagon. Her last section, diet, really struck a chord with me—especially when she wrote about how, while eating healthy food is important, some people take it to the extreme and restrict their diet to the extent that they almost have a phobia of what they deem “bad foods.” 

She points out, it’s kind of like an eating disorder, right? Well, not just kind of… it is an eating disorder called Orthorexia Nervosa. It’s pretty crazy because I can see myself heading in that direction. I decided that eating healthy to clear my skin meant no dairy, no sugar, no white flour. And to top it off, I was a vegetarian for a few years before my skin started freaking out so since I eliminated dairy, I decided, hey, might as well become a full vegan. I’m actually not fully vegan right now, I call myself a vegan flirt (a Kind Diet term) because I still eat fish and some eggs.

The more research I did, the more I discovered that different sources said different things and I started adding and subtracting whole food groups. I read that grains could be bad so I decided to eliminate all grains to see what happens. Now, that is a nearly impossible feat for a vegan so it didn’t last long (luckily). I’m a naturally thin girl and I never really worry about my weight, but in the past few months I’ve been getting so many comments that I look too thin and it looks like I’ve lost weight. When I weighed myself, I was shocked to see that I lost more than 10 pounds. I know I need to figure out how to get enough plant-based fats into my diet, but I don’t actually know enough about the nutritional content of food to plan out my meals accordingly—at the moment, I just eat what I’m in the mood for when I’m hungry.

I don’t think that I have an eating disorder, but I do think that it’s important that I realize that I have to stop taking this healthy eating thing to the extreme before it could get to the point of being a serious issue. I will continue to avoid white flour and refined sugar at home because I have access to amazing, delicious alternatives like buckwheat flour, brown rice flour, agave nectar, maple syrup and honey. BUT I do realize  need to loosen up a little, especially when I go out with friends. I have to stop feeling guilty if I decide to treat my self once in a while. One little piece of this or that won’t cause my to break out all over my face. So, maybe it will cause one pimple, but probably not.

I went out for my mom’s birthday last night and she ordered this amazing chocolate molten lava cake… it’s actually heavenly. Obviously this is not a healthy food. It has white sugar and white flour… and lots of it. But I decided to have two bites of it and not feel guilty. It was totally worth it. You may think “two bites, wow that’s nothing, why would she even care about two bites,” but I think having some self control is a good thing. Also, was a tiny little cake to share between four people so everyone had only two bites anyway. I I don’t worry about eating too much food (I always eat until I’m totally full), I just worry (sometimes too much) about eating excessively bad food. And anyway, those two bites were enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. I’m salivating just thinking about it. 

I’ll admit, sometimes I don’t even want to go out to a restaurant with friends because I don’t like the idea of eating somewhere where I can’t control what I’m putting in my mouth… who knows what this or that is made of. I realize now that this thought process causes me stress, and therefore more harm than good. I’m realizing the importance of keeping my stress and emotions in check. Emotions and acne have a stronger link than I ever thought. But more on that in my next post. 

Dairy Strongly Tied to Acne

I’m so glad to see some scientific reasoning behind the skin/diet debate so that I have something to reply when my dermatologist (or any other doctor) tells me my diet has nothing to do with my skin. I have been told that by so many different doctors, too many times to count. I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies will be less then thrilled with this article. I strongly disagree that they have nothing to do with one another (although I don’t believe diet is typically the sole cause).

Drinking a glass of milk can spike insulin levels 300 percent. Not only does that cause pimples, but it also may contribute to prediabetes. This is true despite studies funded by the dairy council showing that milk helps with weight loss. The question is compared to WHAT diet—a diet of bagels and Coke, or a healthy phytonutrient, antioxidant-rich, plant-based diet with lean animal protein?

That being said, I wouldn’t say that “dairy causes acne.” It could be a trigger and aggravate the situation, but it’s extremely complex and there are many factors that contribute to acne, such as predisposition to acne due to genetics and hormones. I might be deficient in certain nutrients, and you might be deficient in something completely different. Also, different people have different food triggers (if any at all). I would say that dairy and sugar are two big ones (from all the reading I’ve done of personal experiences), but everyone is different. My trigger food might not be your’s and vice versa. 

So I got my first facial…

…and the lady was pretty nice. She asked me a lot of questions about my skin first (for about a half hour), which definitely made me feel better. The only thing was that there was a bit of a language barrier and I’m so terrible at understanding people with accents. It was supposed to be a half hour facial but then she just decided to give me an hour instead… and that ended up being an hour and a half by the end so it was a serious procedure. Before she started slathering on creams and steaming open my pores and zapping my face with a high-frquency device thingy, she pointed towards this bulky machine on the right wall. It ended up being a skin scanner (sometimes also called Wood’s Lamp). Here’s a picture:

Skin Scanner

So I put my head under that black material and there was a blacklight and a small mirror. In the mirror, I could see that every single one of my pores were like tiny orange specks. I soon realized that this is not a good thing. Apparently I have really oily skin. Thinking back, I’ve always used so many drying products that I never really saw my “true” skin type. Now that I’ve been going more natural, it’s funny that I really don’t have dry skin at all (I know now that all the products I used just dehydrated my skin, which is very different from having “dry skin” as your skin type).

This is an example of what skin looks like under a blacklight. This girl has a lot of dark purple, which means she has sun damage (the 18-year-old used sunbeds). Check out the article that accompanies this photo.

You can find out your own skin type by using a blacklight. Here’s a link I stumbled upon that tells you what skin type you have based on what you see under a black light.

I just realized, I almost posted this without writing about my original point! So… the facial seemed ok but it made all the gunk under my skin come to the surface, which is fine, I expected that, but it still wasn’t pleasant. The problem was that I ran out of Lerosett, the organic, 100% chemical-free clay mask I’ve been using. I wrote about it in a previous blog post. I actually contacted the company and told them that I was nearing the end of my free trial and I wasn’t satisfied with the results. I spoke to a super sweet girl named Lacey who said she would send me another free tube of clay (third free tube) because they had some with dents that they couldn’t sell. I then remembered that on their website they wrote that if you wanted to participate in their clinical trial, they would provide you with all free products. I asked Lacey about that and she immediately said, “Sure, send me some pictures and I’ll asses your skin and come up with a regimen and send you all free products to try out.” She told me to then send pictures again after I completed all the products so she could asses my improvement. I know that if I have good results, my horrible before pictures will probably be posted on the website, but honestly, if I get good results, I decided that I don’t mind promoting a good product in exchange for a little embarrassment.

Oh my gosh, I haven’t even gotten to my point yet. Ok, here it is. So it’s been 2 weeks and I still haven’t received my free products yet. I called and they told me that there was a snow storm and the shipping was delayed. Also, the clay separates in extreme cold so that was probably factored in. So I got my facial. All the gunk came to the surface. AND NO CLAY. I literally had nothing to help my breakout. This was bad. So I did what I do best… search for an alternative solution on the internet. I somehow came across a review on Acne.org for calamine lotion. This seemed too weird, but the reviews were beyond incredible. Based on 168 reviews, calamine lotion scored 4.5/5, and is recommended by 96% of reviewers. See for yourself. I love checking out reviews before I buy anything. Another amazing site is Makeupalley.com, which is great for both makeup and skincare reviews.

So I’ve been slathering calamine lotion on before bed for the past couple of night (I’m telling you, it’s a sight to see) and this morning, my skin actually looks much, much better. All the breakouts have dried up (yay), but this also means I need to be extra diligent with moisturizing. I know my Lerosett is coming in the next few days but I may just have to pair it with the calamine lotion if the results continue this way.

Alright, I’m done, I swear. If you got this far, you deserve a gold star.