Wellness Month: Ways To Help Relax and Care For Your Skin

Wellness Month is a time to focus on self-care, managing stress, and practicing healthy routines. In managing self-care, caring for your skin can play a role and help encourage you to reconnect with your best self through busy work weeks, or when you’re slightly overwhelmed with the kids at home.

Did you know chronic stress can show on your face in two ways? First, the hormones that your body releases when you feel stress can lead to physiological changes that negatively impact your skin. The second comes from the feeling of stress that may lead to bad habits such as grinding your teeth or biting your lips. So what physiological changes are possible signs of stress? Acne, under-eye bags, dry skin, rashes, etc.  

There are lots of effective ways to care for your skin that can become a part of your long-term self-care routine:

Healthy Eating:

Eating healthy foods in the right amounts can help keep the organs functioning well, including the skin. Some foods are a good source of essential fatty acids that can help regulate your overall skin health. These foods include fatty fish (salmon, herring), avocado, red or yellow bell peppers, broccoli, and dark chocolate. Of course, staying hydrated and drinking at least eight glasses of water a day will help further clear your skin for a healthy glow.

It’s recommended to stay away from consuming large amounts of refined grains and sugars, fast food, and dairy products to help decrease the development of acne!

Meditation:

Meditating for just a few minutes each day can bring a relaxing and calming energy into your body. Mindful breathing while meditating can also deliver oxygen to your skin, which helps in producing energy to cells, promotes cell's natural regenerative abilities, brightens complexion, eliminates toxins, reduces stress, and improves circulation. 

Meditation also lowers blood pressure and tension-related pain such as headaches!

At-Home Gua Sha Practice:

The use of gua sha can help reduce puffiness and increase circulation which helps with your overall skin complexion. Other benefits include alleviating migraine headaches and tension or pain in the neck. There are many ways to massage specific areas of your face using the gua sha tool, and here are a few to help get you started.

For the forehead:

Start at the center of your forehead and sweep the tool outward.
Move downward toward the brow bone.
Repeat three to four times.

To help reduce eye puffiness:

Use an eye cream of your choice to moisten the eye area.
Sweep your gua sha tool slowly over the under-eye area and outward the temple, all the way up to the hairline.
Repeat three to five times for each eye.

To help de-puff the chin and jawline:

Lightly sweep the tool from the middle of your chin up along the jawline toward your ear. 
Repeat three to five times on each side of the face.

And each of our Spavia {LOCATION_TITLE} facials includes a deeply relaxing facial massage that will provide the same calming energy and tension relief for clear and glowing skin. Wellness Month is a great time to reset with new wellness goals, and self-care and skin care go hand in hand!