Part 3 Nourishing Mindbody and Spirit

By Susan Ni Rahilly

Nature loves balance. Your body always strives to be in balance, no matter what you do to it. If you work with it using some pretty simple natural techniques for care of your skin-body, you can improve skin health, help boost your circulation, rid your body of waste products and imbalance-forming toxins; and you might be surprised what you find out about your own body in the process.

Just to refresh on Parts 2 and 3 of this series: we know now that Skin-elimination and Hydration are two techniques which are vital to any healthy skin-care plan and are important in the care and good health of our skin-body, restoring balance to our Mindbody. They go hand in hand, one assists the other.

To understand healthy skin, we need some body awareness. It is vital to keep your skin healthy and clean and clear, by washing, cleansing, exfoliation and nourishing in order that it can do its job successfully and constantly rid you of waste so that toxins do not build up.

Incredibly important to us as human beings though, is the holism in our holistic wellbeing routines: we’re making our Mindbodies a more comfortable place for our Spirits to dwell. The nourishing we give ourselves in deep self-care is as much nourishing of our Spiritual bodies, our Souls, as it is care of the physical Mindbody.

Nourishing and nurturing follow elimination and hydration. But sometimes, where our body and our self-care are concerned, more is not always more.

Less is often more. For example, with skin-elimination using Dry Skin Brushing: 10 minutes a day is not ‘better’ than five minutes every other day, your body just gets used to it and the method stops working as well. This is where homeostasis comes in.

Homeostasis

Your body’s hormone levels and how they are released is controlled by feedback loops, called homeostatic mechanisms, between your glands (this is the principle on which Bio-feedback therapy works.)

So to explain homeostasis, the pituitary which is your master gland situated right in the centre of your head, releases thyroid-stimulating hormone which stimulates the thyroid gland, which is situated in your neck, to produce thyroxine – which speeds up the rate of metabolism. When your thyroid levels are high enough, so there is enough of this hormone circulating in your body, then this in turn tells the pituitary gland to stop producing thyroid-stimulating hormone, which slows down the rate of metabolism. Homeostasis tries to keep your body in balance, or to keep it in the same state, by regulating your metabolism which is the rate at which your body uses energy. And this is why thyroid problems cause weight problems. And this is also why if you keep feeding your body less and less, your body will go into starvation mode, and slow your metabolism down so it uses less of the energy which is in less supply.

Your pituitary gland also produces ADH, anti-diuretic hormone, which helps regulate water balance in the body by helping the kidneys to retain body fluid, if it gets the message that there are not enough fluids coming into your body. This is an important thing to note about hydration of your skin I wrote about in Part 2 of this series.

Back to homeostasis: the way in which your body uses what goes into it changes – it can be speeded up or it can get slowed down. Your metabolism can be fast and efficient or it can be slow and sluggish.

As you’ve just read, our bodies tend towards a state called homeostasis – staying the same, or no change. The mechanism for feedback is our hormones. Basically your body does not ever want to be moved out of a position that it is comfortable with and can deal with, a state that it knows and likes. So if you always do the same thing, your body will always stay the same. It is basic programming.

The way we trick our bodies into health is with awareness and variety – change everything around and your body will respond more effectively This is easy in skin-body care: one week practice part of your routine every other day; the next week chop and change, for example, Dry Skin-brush on 2 alternate days, Salt and Oil scrub on a third or fourth day; week 3 move it all around again. Your skin will respond with glowing good health.

So, as we know now, massage and skin-elimination are two techniques which are vital to your plan for healthy skin and also to restoring and maintaining Mindbody balance. They go hand in hand, one assists the other.

Regular massage boosts circulation, carrying the blood supply to the skin to help with any healing work. Elasticity and skin tone, and also muscle tone do noticeably improve with massage.

Massage

While I was waiting for nature and supplements to do their repair jobs on my skin when my skin elasticity had suffered badly after a sinus infection, I massaged regularly, and this is the simple self-massage technique I used:

A self-massage movement needs to be a gentle circular motion with the fingers, never dragging or stretching the skin (especially for facial massage, in the delicate areas of the neck and eye areas). Gentle rubbing, always working towards the heart, is enough for the massage oils to be absorbed by the skin, and to stimulate circulation. For legs you would start working from the ankles up to the knees and then from the knees up the thighs towards the buttocks. You can then use a ‘pinching and rolling’ technique on your thighs – pick up skin between your thumb and forefinger and kind of roll it like dough (I’m warning you, if you have sluggish drainage or a lot of Cellulite, this will hurt – keep at it gently and you will break it down eventually). Use circular motions around your buttocks and hips.

If your system is still sluggish and you haven’t cleansed out a lot of old waste rubbish from your colon, then you might find circular movements on your stomach too much. In this case use long upward strokes from your pubic bone up to the waist.

The home-made skin and muscle toning oil I’ve used to great effect is a mixture of cardamom and sweet fennel essential oils in a carrier base oil, made up from equal parts of grapeseed and coconut oil. (Aromatherapy books and websites usually have a guide to quantities and mixing techniques – a few drops go a long way). Cardamom is a diuretic and has a warming action for circulation boosting, it also helps with mental fatigue and nervous strain. Sweet Fennel is an oil which is used to improve dull, oily and mature skins.

Professional massage is an absolute must, if you can afford it – I would use any spare money I had on any type of massage. When a trained masseuse works on your body, they get to places you never could – and it is one of the most therapeutic and pleasurable experiences you can give your body.

Manual Lymphatic Drainage massage is a very effective way of getting rid of blockages you’re holding in your body. It is a very light, rhythmic massage and it works to improve the lymphatic system, working just below the skin. It is a very, very gentle massage, which helps to drain the lymph, and get it moving to relieve puffiness, carrying wastes and toxins away.

The benefits of massage for healthy skin are that it is circulation boosting, moves toxins, helps mobilize fat, it is also positively mood enhancing and wonderfully relaxing. Massage is an incredibly positive way of showing yourself that you care about you, your skin and your Mindbody and Spirit.

And finally, it’s not so well known in the West, but absolute importance was placed on the skin and cleanliness in India, so much so that it was ritualised in the weekly Spiritual practice within the home and the family as key to the “Bliss Bath”. The Ayurvedic “Bliss Bath”

The “Bliss Bath” is a weekly Spiritual ritual. Inspired by the centuries old rituals in India which care very gently and regularly for the Mindbody . . . and which also prepare our bodyminds for Meditation and our Union with the Divine in practice.  Deep self-care for the Self brings the Sacred into making the Mindbody a more comfortable place for the Spirit to dwell. This is a ritualised grounding, practised thro skin-body care, to prepare us for our Union with Consciousness and absorbing Bliss Essence..

Perhaps the best way to write about this ritualisation of self-care is to give you inspiration with this precis from Indian Philosopher Krishnamurti’s biography: “ . . . as Brahmins  . . . Ritual bathing preceded by an oil bath was a discipline closely followed.”  The young K’s mother  had a puja room for the gods in the house (where K was actually born, very rare in India), the rituals for devotional practice were observed . . . at a time in India when the South Indian man, woman and child, rich or poor, sat and slept on a mat on the floor, and when the joint family provided warmth and a sense of family rare in the West . . . ** ” the happiest memories of my childhood centre around my dear mother who gave us all the loving care for which Indian mothers are well known.”

Skin, it’s cleanliness and care, were ritualised for an essential reason. Skin grounds you in your Mindbody. Skin is your connection with your Soul and the Divine. It is an integrally important part of your Yogic routine – uniting Mindbody Soul, your Divine Nature and Consciousness.

“The essence of the Self is universal. 

It is autonomy, bliss and consciousness.

Absorption in this essence is the ritual bath.” 

Meditation 152 from the Nirvana Tao, the Contemplative Techniques of Cha’an (Zen)

Learn more about Skin Care – A Natural Way to Glowing Health Part 1 Elimination

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Susan’s Note: Self-care is the self-healing part of self-effort. Practice deep self-care to nourish the face we put on for the outside world: so often in our daily lives, our face is a mask we wear. There are a couple of natural, home-made face mask tips on our website which will feed your facial skin as you take time out for your Mindbody Spirit.

**  Krishnamurti: A Biography Pupul Jayakar Susan Ni Rahilly is the Founder of www.suZenYoga.com: spirituality, understanding, Zen, energy and nutrition thro dedication to Yoga practice.