Ms. Mindful, what's on your face? #1: Face Wash Focus
So, you eat whole foods, exercise regularly, maybe even have a meditation practice. You, Ms. Mindful, surprise your friends with steadfast commitment to a better, healthier life. Perhaps your Instagram feed of vegan food porn inspires a following, and spending a little extra to ensure that your spinach doesn’t come with chemicals is something you are happy to do. But when it comes to fueling the sacred vessel that is your body, are you missing a bigger picture? Wellness and health articles often emphasizes things to eat, like superfoods and those to abstain from, however the question that is rarely asked remains, what kinds of things are in the products that I put on my body?
I’ll admit that even when eating a plant-based diet and being that girl on the train who brought her own green juices in eco-friendly glass jars (reduce, reuse, and recycle people!), I failed to question beauty products that I had been using since before I could remember -- products like shampoos and conditioners to lotion, mascara, and lipstick. After months of listening to the super insightful and inspiring Rich Roll podcast, I had a lightbulb moment when Rich explained how our skin is the largest organ of the body and ingests what you give it as well--
so why would we put anything on it that we wouldn’t put into it?
A tsunami of related questions quickly followed.
On my next trip to the grocery store, I started reading labels of all sorts and realized, just as I previously had with food, that a lot of ingredients simply had not been under the spotlight of my attention, much less questioned. Another simple and steadfast Rich Roll lesson I learned and applied to my food choices was if you can’t pronounce the name of an ingredient or if your grandma would not recognize it, then it probably isn’t natural and it doesn’t belong in your body-- I now realized that meant whether digested from the inside or soaked up from the outside.
When it came to a face-care regimen, I’ll also admit that I was a no mess-around and minimal-product kind of girl. I just wanted a single suitable go-to, a wash I could depend on and not have to put extra thought into; My mother, as most others’ do, taught me that washing my face and makeup off every night was a way to take care of my skin and be loving to my body, but the soap that I lathered onto my face, I had never questioned. The way facial scrubs in particular were marketed during my teen years led me to believe that oil aka dirt + face = bad; more scrubbing, deep cleansing, killing bacteria -- all things that essentially irritate your face -- was the best call. In hindsight, investing in a chemical and promise-filled product meant that I had less personal responsibility of really taking care of myself and my skin, such as paying attention to small ways my skin would react to using a new product or really listening to my body’s responses to see if that product was truly right for me. Instead, I placed my trust in the advertisements for bottles and tubes, that in actuality, I had no idea what substances filled them.
As a lover of basic products, begin to coat my face nightly with the seemingly simple Neutrogena Oil Free Acne Wash up until my junior year of college. Simple and easy. It wasn’t until that day at the grocery store sifting through product labels that I stopped and realized I no longer wanted to put whatever sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate was on my face or have it seep into my pores. My research led me to understand that as the second listed ingredient for this seemingly simple product, sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate, is categorized as an irritant on Paulaschoice.com, a site dedicated to sharing research-supported advice on actually-good-for-you skincare, makeup, and beauty products. Why is it in there, then? Well, it’s foaming agent, and most products are more about seeming clean than actually living clean. Since it's known to dry out both skin and hair, (a telltale sign that it may not be the best idea to lather up something as sacred or sensitive as our faces with) companies add secondary active agents, or surfactants, to counter or minimize the noticeable effects, which is why the list of chemical ingredients goes on and on.
Now that I had learned what things I didn’t want for my skin and body,
I had to figure out what I did want-- what would nourish me from the outside-in, and what kinds of products I ethically and consciously could support.
At this point, I stripped my apartment of all bottled products and began using the bare minimum, which included organic hand-made soaps from farmer’s or organic markets. The process became a fun, experimental way to get to know myself and my body a little better. I thought about what women over the centuries had used to wash or beautify their faces and I remembered the trip to Morocco that I took a few years back; I remembered the Hamam, or social baths that I had the pleasure of experiencing. Traditionally, the women in the community would bathe only once to a few times a week, but when they did, it was a process of renewal and purification as well as a sacred social time with their ladies. First, steam or hot water opens up the pores, relaxes the body, and promotes healthy circulation. Then, a rough scrubbing with a glove or stone sheds away the dead toxins and encourages a new glow, as opposed to our Western body washes that encourage us to scrub and irritate daily, leading our skin to angrily fight back. The Hamam experience had no fancy or modern washes, no chemicals, just materials made from honest and natural resources, like clay or mud, steam and oils from the land. One of the first things I noticed when I visited a family home in the remote Atlas Mountains was the radiance and smooth glow of the women's faces. Yes, they were eating mostly foods from their or their neighbors’ farms (don’t get me started on the butter made from the milk of their own cow), but I could see magical difference in the skin of this 96 year old woman who abided by nature’s raw remedies.
Long ago, I had read about luffas and shower scrubbies being not the most hygienic items, but I invested in a natural one like this (or grow your own!) and only use it when I feel like a deeper clean, and it works for me. I’ve learned the difference between exfoliating, washing away the old to make way for the fresh and new, and scrubbing, annoying my skin with random products with unpronounceable ingredients. I also have simplified and use Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Pure castile liquid soap for everything from face, body, to hair washing and it leaves me head to toe tingly-clean (P.S. peppermint oil is also great for your scalp and promotes blood flow to the area as well as hair growth). You can see all the other fantastic essential oil-infused scents by the castile soap master, Dr. Bronner’s here. Castile soap, if you, like I once was, are unfamiliar with the product, is a totally biodegradable and earth friendly option because it is based 100% from plant-based oils, such as coconut or hemp seed. It originated as an olive oil based soap in the historical region of Castile, Spain. So in addition to giving your face a little extra love by choosing a better wash, you can also be nicer to Mother Earth!