Mind-Skin Harmony: Thriving Amidst Chaos

The connection between mind and body is an essential concept in understanding overall health and well-being. Particularly, the brain-skin connection demonstrates how psychological states can influence skin health and vice versa. Incorporating mindfulness and self-care into daily routines can significantly enhance this connection, leading to improved self-acceptance and well-being, and feeling a little less, well, chaotic!

Life's Towering Demands:

The Skin Struggle is Real

We have all had those weeks where everything feels like it’s piling up into a teetering, sky-high tower that looks like it will collapse at any moment. The daily maintenance at home, the stress of work, perhaps kids, perhaps farm animals, perhaps all the things need your immediate attention, or they will plunge into utter chaos. We are doing everything we can to get through the day much less the week or even the month, our nerves are frayed and if one more thing gets piled on, that tower is going to come crashing down leaving you no choice but to set everything ablaze and walk away to join a commune or be committed to an institution. You are doing absolutely everything you can just to keep it together and as if to add insult to injury, your skin breaks out and you have pimples on top of your wrinkles and every time you look in the mirror you utter something along the lines of “God, I look terrible”.

Wow, just writing that paragraph gives me anxiety.

BRB.

Where did I go? I took 15 minutes to myself. We’ll get to what I did in those 15 minutes in a moment, but I want to tell you why I stepped away first. If I take some time to myself, FOR myself, I am better equipped to handle all the chaos life is throwing at me. I can navigate with a little more grace and don’t experience the whole “burn it to the ground” feeling quite as often, Plus, my mental well-being is better grounded, and my skin looks phenomenal!

Let’s look at some of the science behind why our skin goes to shit when we are stressed. Our emotions and stress levels can leave their mark on our skin. A fascinating (to me) study by Hunter, Momen, and Kleyn in 2015 delves deep into this phenomenon. Here is an overview of the study if you’d like to check it out. When we're stressed, our bodies activate certain pathways like the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) sympathetic adrenomedullary system. Sounds complex, right? Well, these are just fancy terms for the stress-response systems in our body. These systems play a crucial role in how stress affects our skin's balance. If you would like some lighter reading, Mind-Body-Green wrote a lovely little article on the subject.

So, what did I do when I stepped away for a moment? I took 5 minutes to cleanse my face. I didn’t just wash my face though. I used my oil cleanser and practiced some facial massage targeting pressure points on my face that trigger my parasympathetic nervous system or PNS. There is that sciencey jargon again! The PNS is essentially our rest and digest nervous system, it takes us out of the “flight, fight, fawn, and freeze” response and helps us think more clearly about everything being thrown at us.

While I was cleansing my face, I turned on some calming and I began to focus on my breathing. After rinsing the cleansing oil off with warm water, I sat on the closed toilet and took 3 deeeeeeeep breaths, filling up my belly then my chest, holding for a moment at the top then releasing completely. Finally, I applied a lovely smelling antioxidant oil blend to my face, neck, and chest and with my knuckles I worked the tight muscles of my décolleté (I promise you; you don’t know how tight they are till you take a moment to massage them)! This helped to relax the muscles, stimulated lymphatic drainage, and relaxed me even further. The smell of the oil is calming, my breathing is regulated, I feel less tension in my neck and jaw, my skin is hydrated, blood is circulating freely to help with cell regeneration, and lymphatic fluid is draining so I appear less puffy. All of these wonderful things happened in 15 minutes and I am ready to face whatever crazy the world has to offer.

 I feel better in my own skin,

literally and figuratively.

When I look better, I feel better. When I feel better, I look better. Simple facts. My guess is that you can carve out 15 minutes a day for yourself. Lock yourself in the bathroom, sit in the car before going in the house or store, get in bed 15 minutes earlier! There are ways to sneak it in. The more you allow for the space, the more the space will be available to you.

Introducing Sacred Skincare Membership

If you’d like to know more about what you can do in 15 minutes, click the link below and get signed up on the waitlist for some really cool offerings I have arriving in March. I know, you want it now. I would too! You can take the time while you wait to begin creating space in your day for yourself. We’ll take this in nice, easy steps. We’ll begin layering in the changes so the habit sticks. You don’t want to take on everything at once and make it one more overwhelming thing you have to do.

Click the button, sign up for the waitlist, then go sit and breathe for 5 minutes. Yes, just breathe!

Stay Radiant!