Skincare should be all about Nourishment

Nourishing the skin, nourishing the senses, nourishing ourselves. It is a small daily act of kindness to ourselves.

It is why we call our best selling Wild Seaweed, Comfrey & Rose moisturiser ‘Nourishing’. It is full of Active Botanicals which deeply nourish the skin, and Essential Oils and Flower Essences which nourish the heart.💕

Skincare should also be about making wise choices.

Choosing skincare which won’t cause us or the planet any harm.

This means making sure your skincare is 100% natural (not always easy, getting skincare that is 95% or 98% natural means there are probably parabens or synthetic ingredients in there), organic, vegan and not tested on animals. It’s a lot to think about!

It’s important to think about these things, to help us to make good choices, but it is just as important to not get weighed down by worry or negativity. Then we are no good to anyone!

If I find myself feeling burdened then I play the Nourishment Game.

The Nourishment Game

The first time I played the Game, I was walking on a glorious beach in Donegal, Ireland, called Marble Hill. I was with a dear friend called Rachel and we were staying in her family’s lovely holiday home up on the hill, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. A precious girls’ weekend away. It was a bright September day and although the sun was shining, we had the beach to ourselves. Life doesn’t get much better, and yet as we walked, we became aware that we were complaining about various things in our lives. We sat at the bottom of the hill at one end of the beach and had a Pause. A moment to reflect and take it in. It was in the slowing down that we really started seeing the beauty around us. We began experimenting with the idea of the Nourishment Game. It started with just looking around us and asking ourselves the question. “What is nourishing me now?’

As you can imagine, on a day like that, the list was long and full.

Then we started actively looking for the apparently negative things around us: the unsightly, lopsided telegraph pole; the rubbish near but not in the beach bin; the group of teenagers who suddenly arrived with their loud, cool indifference. The little, little things that we don’t normally comment on but might bite at our calm. With each thing we noticed we asked “What is nourishing me now?” and received surprising, often beautiful answers. The gratitude for the telegraph pole that let us make phone calls (and a perch for that seagull). The beauty of the rubbish, when you stopped seeing it as rubbish and saw it as an object, as well as an appreciation for the bin being on the beach which was so well used it was overflowing. The joy of seeing teenagers out, together, enjoying the beach.

The question always brought us to gratitude and appreciation. It did not mean that we suddenly felt like there was nothing to be done. The telegraph pole still needed to be fixed, the bin still needed to be emptied, and the teenagers…

The difference was, we weren’t giving our happiness, our nourishment away to negativity. That simple, little question completely transformed our afternoon. Years later, I still use it when I’m aware that I’m becoming negative, scratchy or worried.

It is better to try it with the small things first and work up to the big things. However, as I write this I’m aware that my mind has started thinking about Coronavirus, which is a Big Worry for everyone right now. It is hard to imagine that you could feel nourished by something as potentially scary as this but when I ask the Nourishment question the answer I get is a sense of love for everyone, and the desire to do the right thing in terms of not being part of the problem, and so being responsible in not doing anything or going anywhere that isn’t essential right now. It is also a great opportunity to send Loving Kindness to anyone who is unwell or families who have lost loved ones to the disease.

Burgs is a meditation teacher I greatly respect, I try to go to several of his retreats every year. He has set up a new website in response to the impact of the Coronavirus called www.theartofseclusion.com and has a series of videos on YouTube called Love Vs Virus in which he explains how important it is to keep calm and settled in your energy, to help boost the immune system. He also talks about the importance of the Loving Kindness meditation at times like this.

So give the Nourishing Game a go, you never know what response your mind and heart will come up with when you ask the question “What is nourishing me now?”