Top 3 ways to practice skin love
Skin love is definitely a practice and not a destination.
That’s the most important component to understand when considering adding in a practice for your skin health while trying to be conscious of your mindset. In order for me to really benefit from any skincare, I have to remind myself that caring for my skin is really just taking care of my whole self. Which means it’s a total mind, body, and spirit approach.
That’s why I wanted to share my top 3 ways to practice skin love for anyone looking to elevate their skincare and overall self-care. Note that all of these practices are not only free but also things you probably know and subconsciously do anyways. How to achieve a beneficial outcome for your skin with the following practices simply requires you to participate consciously in them.
Here are my top 3 ways to practice skin love:
Deep breathing. What I have learned about breathing in this life is that even though we naturally do it to stay alive, most of us aren’t conscious of how beneficial this practice is to our overall health. Think about the difference your breath can make in a workout or even a stressful situation. When we breathe, we are feeding oxygen to our cells enriching them to thrive. Our skin is also an organ that naturally absorbs what we put on it and also is constantly shedding dead skin and waste. It doesn’t actually breathe on its own but benefits from the nutrient distribution and oxygen flow through our nostril and mouth breathing as all other organs do.
The more we consciously breathe, the more we can support our overall central nervous system as well which also reflects the health of our skin. The less stressed we are and the more fresh oxygen we have running through our systems, the healthier and happier our whole beings become. So before you grab your first skincare product, put one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach. From here you can close your eyes gently and take 3-5 diaphragmatic breaths through the nose. Feel the pulse of fresh oxygen flowing through you waking up all the cells that keep you alive and vibrant! This act of skin love is often overlooked but can be such a lovely turning point in your skin love journey. Try it out and let me know what you think! *If you’d like to take your practice to another level, try the WIM HOF method.
Light stretching. You are allowed to take up space within your own body and stretching will help you expand to your fullest potential. Stretching is also a mindful way of achieving presence in your body. We can often live with a fair amount of tension and even pain before we do anything to support ourselves. Just think of that tightness in your neck from working on the computer or jaw tension from the stress of your morning commute. Our bodies have a way of storing emotions in those areas of stiffness that if we don’t ever address them, it can become too big of a burden to carry. A mindful stretching routine before your skincare not only breaks up that tension but also allows your body to find its flow again. When we aren’t riddled with tension that blocks lymph and blood vessel pathways, our skin tends to respond more efficiently to our skincare. *You can follow the sequence I have in my Intuitive Skincare Rituals course here.
Affirmations and gratitude. It may feel silly at first, but spoken affirmations and gratitude towards yourself and your skin is a great way to achieve long-term skin love and acceptance. Your mind is so powerful that your thoughts have the ability to really change your life. One of the best ways I personally understand this is via the confirmation bias concept which is beautifully explained in this TikTok. When I say that my self-talk has been so negative it caused me to physically feel ill all the time, I am not lying. For me personally, I have to remind myself that pain receptors are also stored in our brain so the more I would speak about how bad I feel, the worst I actually felt. I’ll never claim to be a neuroscientist or that I really fully understand how the brain works but I do know my personal experiences with spoken affirmations and gratitude. They are life-changing but take daily practice for the brain rewiring to really occur. “I am…” statements are a strong way to start but you can also try and find 3 things about your skin you find gratitude for. For me, it’s usually how quickly it can heal, how it communicates what I need, and for protecting me in this world. The more you practice, the more you will find .
Just start with where you are and if you need some musical inspiration, listen to the song below:
I hope this helps you and you discover new ways to support yourself on your skin love journey. For more skin love, check out my ebook, workshop, and audiobook on how to find radical skin acceptance.
Let me know in the comments if you have another practice of skin love that works for you. xo - Hayley
