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

By Susan Ni Rahilly

November is Healthy Skin Awareness Month, read this three part series on ways to help you have beautiful, healthy skin.

Healthy skin starts with elimination. To understand this we need some body awareness. And to teach this Yoga teachers often use skin awareness as a way of teaching body awareness and mindfulness. Focusing on a softness in the skin of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet in Yoga Nidra or Savasana brings a gentle relaxation to the Mindbody.

This is how healthy skin awareness started for me . . . 22 years ago I thought I had Cellulite. I started one of the most amazing mindbody plans involving detoxing, self-care and transformation – it was in a little paperback book which I’ve since lost, and the plan was practically free as I did it at home on my own. 4 years later I was having a massage following varicose vein surgery and asked the therapist why I still had Cellulite after all my self-care. She told me I didn’t have Cellulite. I said “ … what’s that then?” pointing to what I thought were little rogue fat cells on my inner thigh above the knee. She said “ …. that’s uneven skin elasticity . . . your skin elasticity is totally different in different parts of the body.” I said “Oh.”

I learned a lot in 4 years! I published a book on women’s wellbeing 13 years ago which included what I’d learned, my experiences, knowledge, and body wisdom. I just can’t imagine life without a natural healthy skin-care routine which supports my Yoga and Meditation Practice.

In this 3 part series there are some great, natural methods to include in your selfcare body routine will help you to show your body on the outside that you care about it on the inside. And the result in a very short space of time, is glowing good health.

The Skin-Body

I like the term skin-body as a way of increasing awareness. So, the skin-body: what does it do and why do we have it?

The largest organ of your immune system is your skin. It’s what keeps the outside world (and all it’s threats to your health) OUT. Your skin is the largest organ of elimination of your body – it’s the most effective method your body has to get rid of waste products.

But, your immune system is affected by Stress, Personality, Attitude and Emotion, which can all ‘cause’ disease (remember you are a mind-body system). So, soothing, nurturing and nourishing are important elements of skin-care, as is awareness. Things that also affect your immune system are: Fat, Sugar, Malnutrition, Pollution (including noise). So, diet and nutrition, and also elimination are important elements in your self-care.

And here’s a note about diseases: we know now that most diseases are epigenetic – an individual’s unique response to nutrition/malnutrition, toxicity thro non-elimination, and stress – and causes can often show up in skin conditions. We know now that Cellulite is a Syndrome of Mindbody imbalances and not just a peculiar kind of fat under the skin that women get anxious about (or neurotic in my case!).

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. The Body’s Lymphatic System

This is a good point to have a note about “How Your Body Works”: especially the lymphatic system.

Your lymphatic system is made up of a system of fluid and vessels. There are two ways of carrying things around your body, one is the blood system, the other is the lymphatic system. So lymph is one way that fats, amino acids and sugars are transported out of your digestive tract for absorption by the body. Lymph is also an important part of your body’s defense system.

What the lymphatic system does, basically, is act like your body’s collection and delivery service – it is supposed to regularly collect the waste rubbish and transport it around your body for safe disposal and elimination. As your body is regularly working to keep you free from disease, there is a lot of activity constantly going on – this does result in cellular rubbish which has to be cleared, along with any rubbish that has been dumped and stored as a result of what you eat, drink and do with your body (and if you’re doing drugs, basically just say goodbye to a healthy mind and body).

Lymph has to be moved around your body for it to do its job. It doesn’t have a pump in the way that your blood has your heart. The only way to move lymph around your body is by muscular activity – as you exercise and contract your large muscle groups, this moves the lymph around. That’s why exercise is so important to drain your body of excess fluids and waste products. (And why we place so much emphasis on the importance of our cool down following Yoga practice.)

The other way you can stimulate the movement of lymph is by Dry-Skin Brushing. Skin-Elimination

To successfully get rid of toxins which cause body imbalances on a regular basis, you need to be using some way of helping your body to eliminate through your skin.

Remember that your skin is the largest organ of elimination and the largest part of your immune protection – it will literally throw things off your body that you don’t need. But to do this it has to be healthy, clean and free from debris (that will clog up your pores), so that it can ‘breathe’.

The ways that you can help your body to eliminate are by exfoliating, or clearing off dull, old, dead, dry or flaky skin or by sweating out wastes. And the more ways you find to help your body, the more strain you are taking off your kidneys and liver, and the healthier you will look and feel.

Here’s a note on the liver: if you have skin rashes, you may need to support your liver’s function by including fresh, raw onion, garlic, celery, apple, kale and turmeric as well as leafy green salads in your daily diet. Your skin will thank you.

Back to skin-elimination and how we do it. One of the cheapest and easiest ways to exfoliate your whole body is by ‘skin-scrubbing’ with oil and salt. If you’re not able to scrub your whole body because of discomfort or sensitivity then just do your legs, it’s a great way to start. Dry Skin Brushing

My personal favorite after 22 years is Dry Skin-brushing: This method of skin-elimination and circulation boosting has now passed almost into legend. I haven’t read a book about detoxing, healthy lifestyle changes (or legs and Cellulite) in the last 22 years, without it containing this amazingly simple and effective method.

Skin-brushing is invigorating, it will energise you and it directly works on stimulating your lymphatic system.

You use a Mexican-cactus fibre brush. You will recognize it as a back bath brush, they are wood and bristle, have long handles and oval brush heads. For those of you with sensitive skins, follow the instructions but use a soft face flannel or muslin wash cloth instead of the brush.

You use long repetitive strokes, using the brush DRY, on dry skin, working from your feet up to your neck – and you need only brush your skin for up to five minutes at a time in total.

This is where Homeostasis comes in (more about Homeostasis in Part 3 of this series). Where the body is concerned, more is not necessarily more. 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. And you only brush every day for the first week, then start chopping and changing the days you Skin-brush to keep tricking your body into getting rid of wastes.

So this is what you do: Start with your hands, brush up your fingers and palms to wrists – use 7 long strokes for every part of the body you brush. Then move from wrists up to elbows, moving around your forearm. Then brush up from elbows to armpits. Move back down to your feet, and brush up from toes to ankles, up the balls of your feet, up your ankles and heels. Then move up, brushing from ankles to knees. Then from knees to buttocks. This is when I then do some very long strokes up the back of my legs from calves through the back of my knees to buttocks, which really gets circulation and drainage going. Then use circular motions around your buttocks, and your stomach if it is not too sensitive. If this area is still sensitive, (usually due to sluggish digestion) then use longer upwards strokes. Brush up from your waist to diaphragm, front and back towards the heart.

Now, change directions and brush down from your neck to your nipples. Brushing your neck downwards from jawbone to collarbone, very gently on a regular basis greatly improves skin texture on your neck area. Be careful as you brush down your breasts, don’t actually brush your nipples, they are far too sensitive (for both men as well as women). Lastly you need to brush down your back from shoulder to the bottom of your shoulder blades. If you do have any bad skin sensitivity, dry or broken skin, wounds or eczema, then do not brush that area but simply work around it.

Now you get in the shower or bath – then massage your skin-body with oil when you get out. It does not take long at all to notice an improvement in your skin tone and texture. Before there is an improvement, your skin may appear very dry for a few days as it goes through the process of finding a balance, before it gets softer and clearer. But by cleansing your skin in this way you will find that you don’t need to use as much soap in the bath or shower, as your skin is already clean – and the less you can use in the way of artificial or chemical cleansers on your skin the better, resulting in healthier skin.

Self-care is the self-healing in self-effort.

I’ll leave you with this quote from the ancient Sage Vasistha…

“O Rama, one should, with a body free from illness and a mind free from distress, pursue self-knowledge . . . and such self-effort has a three-fold fruit: an inner awakening in the intelligence, a decision in the mind and the physical action.”

Sage Vasistha

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Susan’s Note: Deep and regular, nurturing and nourishing self-care of the skin-body is one of the most powerful ways to increase your sense and feeling of wellbeing and vitality.  Caring for your skin is caring for the largest organ of your body. Here’s some guidance for Salt Skin Scrubbing and a Circulation Booster at our website. Susan Ni Rahilly is the Founder of www.suZenYoga.com: spirituality, understanding, Zen, energy and nutrition thro dedication to Yoga practice.