Embracing a holistic approach to beauty

  • Embracing a holistic approach to beauty

Embracing a holistic approach to beauty

Aging is a natural part of life, and rather than fighting against it, we can choose to nurture and accept our bodies as they change over time. Often the cosmetic brands are enforcing an attitude of holding on to youth by even naming the products for mature skin in a way that implies “resisting, defying…”.  I do wish that would move into more nurturing way, nothing to fight against.

By understanding the impermanence of our physical selves, our inner life, and the impact of external factors like global climate change, sun exposure, and stress, we can develop a balanced approach to skincare that promotes nurturing of inner as well as outer. In this article, we will explore the concept of ageless beauty, the importance of self-care, and how to approach choosing your skin care that is most aligned with you.

This is quite an interesting field of discussion. With new wellness approaches and nutrition one is actually able to reverse aging. Some people who have changed their lifestyle at their chronologically older age actually look more youthful then they did couple of years ago.

Accompanying new wellness and lifestyle guidelines for healthy life,  the skincare  offers new developments products that are not toxic anymore, and give a good result in helping the skin look youthful, nurtured and radiant. The point I am making here is that by adopting different lifestyle and supporting with quality non- toxic skincare is actually possible to appear more youthful than one did in the past.

Now, let’s explore what the driver behind the change in lifestyle and quality skincare can be. The motivation can stem from fear and the insistence on maintaining a youthful appearance, perfectionism or it can hold it’s core in a nurturing, loving care for yourself together with embracing the natural process of aging. It’s a distinction between the apprehension of “I must look great and youthful” and the acceptance of “aging is normal, and I choose to care for myself, while being confident in who I am.”

My grandmother was around 75 and when she looked herself in the mirror she said: ”it is hard to realize this is me as well now, because I still feel so young at my heart”. My perception of her is shaped by the vibrant, curious life force within her. I saw her as a beautiful and intriguing woman who takes care of herself, exuding confidence. It was this confidence that served as her magnetic quality.

Recently I have been traveling with my family to Vietnam and while strolling on the streets of Saigon, we came across a heartfelt gallery. One of those things on the trip that just calls for you. The colors, the portraits, the Life.  That was Rehahn’s gallery.  I found myself standing in front of the portrait of a lady from a series of portraits named ageless Beauty. https://www.rehahnphotographer.com/portfolio/ageless-beauty/

The Concept of Ageless Beauty

Ageless beauty is about celebrating the marks of time and finding beauty in the wisdom and experiences that come with aging. It challenges society’s traditional notion of beauty, which often values youth and external perfection. These portraits remind us that true beauty lies in the stories and history leaving memories of impressions on our faces.

Moreover, I notice expressions of benevolence, humility, joy, and lovingkindness on these faces. Collectively, they create a sense of beauty within me and inspire a desire to embrace lovingkindness and love, steering away from feelings of rage, anger, or resentment.

Embracing Impermanence: Nurturing the inner

In addition to nurturing our physical selves, it’s essential to cultivate inner peace and acceptance. The concept of impermanence, as embraced in Buddhism, teaches us that everything changes and nothing lasts forever. By understanding and accepting this universal truth, we can navigate life’s ups and downs with grace and resilience.

Step 1: Accepting Impermanence

Acknowledge that change is an inherent part of life. Embrace the impermanence of all things, including your physical body, relationships, and circumstances. By accepting impermanence, you can release attachment and find peace in the present moment.

“Impermanence does not necessarily lead to suffering. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Step 2: Embracing Change as an Opportunity

View every situation, whether joyful or painful, as an opportunity for growth and transformation. Embrace change with an open heart and a willingness to learn and adapt. By reframing change as an opportunity, you can find meaning and purpose in every experience.

Step 3: Practicing Mindful Awareness

Develop a daily mindfulness meditation practice to cultivate present-moment awareness. Mindfulness allows you to observe your thoughts and emotions without judgment, fostering a deep connection with yourself and the world around you.

Step 4: Cultivating Self-Compassion

Extend compassion and kindness to yourself, embracing your flaws and imperfections. Treat yourself with the same care and understanding as you would a dear friend. Practice self-compassion through positive self-talk and acts of self-care.

Step 5: Building Authentic Connections

Nurture meaningful and authentic relationships with others. Communicate openly and honestly, expressing your true thoughts and feelings. Build connections based on trust, respect, and mutual understanding.

Step 6: Setting Healthy Boundaries

Learn to establish and maintain healthy boundaries in your relationships. Respect your own needs and values, and communicate them clearly to others. Setting boundaries allows you to protect your well-being and maintain a sense of inner peace.

Step 7: Developing Emotional Intelligence

Deepen your understanding of your emotions and their meaning. Learn to differentiate between emotions and feelings, interpretations,  allowing yourself to fully experience and express them in a healthy and constructive manner.

Step 8: Practicing Forgiveness

Cultivate forgiveness towards yourself and others. Release resentment and grudges, freeing yourself from the burden of past hurts. Forgiveness allows for healing and opens the door to inner peace.

Step 9: Living with Gratitude

Cultivate a daily practice of gratitude, expressing appreciation for the present moment and all the blessings in your life. Start each day with a sense of gratitude, recognizing the beauty and abundance that surrounds you.

Managing Stress for Healthy Skin

Stress can take a toll on our physical and mental well-being, including our skin. It can lead to increased inflammation, breakouts, and dullness. Incorporating stress management techniques into your daily routine can help promote healthy skin and overall inner peace.

  • Mindfulness and Meditation: Practice mindfulness meditation to cultivate a calm and centered state of mind. Take a few minutes each day to focus on your breath and bring yourself into the present moment. This can help reduce stress levels and improve skin health.
  • Self-Care Rituals: Engage in activities that bring you joy and relaxation, such as taking a warm bath, practicing yoga, or enjoying a hobby. Prioritize self-care to nourish your body, mind, and soul, IR sauna is also nice to support collagen production in the body, detox.
  • Healthy Lifestyle Choices: Maintain a balanced diet, exercise regularly, drink water, and get enough sleep. These lifestyle choices can help reduce stress levels and promote overall well-being.

From attacking, handling, fixing your skin to loving it

We had a good laugh with my beauty therapist when she started with the massage on my face so vigorously to tackle those fine lines. When I felt that energy, I asked her, can you just give some love and nurture to my skin. It felt such a focus to tame and erase.

I like the approach when we consider facial muscles and tonus as you would take care of the rest of the body to keep the vitality in the cells with exercise, same with the face.

And I am a big fan of good quality cosmetics. I would love if everything would be organic, but some of those products I don’t enjoy because of their smell, lack of research and tests behind it, shorter shelf life. So at the end I have come to terms with somewhere in the middle. This somewhere in the middle is able to cover up some hiccups of stress, occasional dehydration and still not containing any of the toxic ingredients, not being tested on animals. And for daily use still use high quality brands that combine natural and research. Besides that it is important to enjoy the feel of the product when applying it on the skin, the smell and seeing that skin is taking in the love and support with gratitude.

 

Do you trust your Heart’s guidance?

  • Do you trust your Heart’s guidance?

Throughout history, people believed into intuitive heart. It would be your inner compass, your guide, connection to soul and wisdom.

Do you believe that your heart can be your source of wisdom and guidance? Truly? 100%?

If you say I believe that the heart is your connection to your soul,

do you take a responsibility to cultivate heart coherence? 

Do you intentionally tap into heart wisdom?  

Take a pause to ask a question and wait for a response?

How do you recognize what is your heart’s guidance?

This is a little peak into what you can do to cultivate heart coherence and your connection to your heart.

Gaining certainty about importance of heart coherence:

First some evidence that helps your brain to understand and thus become more certain about the role of the heart.

Rollin McCraty has done many studies and talks on the role of the heart. In this sharing I am referring and citing an article Intuitive Intelligence, self regulation and lifting consciousness, 2014, Global adv Health Med., coauthored with Maria Zayas). I would also invite you to take a look at the video: Beyond Logic: Exploring the Science of Intuition and the Heart’s Pivotal Role


Physical heart and energetic heart

Physical heart is coupled to a field of information that goes beyond limits of time and space. A study showed that the heart receives and processes information about a future event before the event actually happens. In the research this was established by measuring the heart’s response to upcoming images before they were seen. (source: Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 1,2.A System-Wide Process, THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE,  ROLLIN MCCRATY, Ph.D.,1 MIKE ATKINSON,1 and RAYMOND TREVOR BRADLEY, Ph.D)

When we use the term intuitive heart or heart intelligence this refers to energetic heart. Sometimes this is called “higher self”, “higher capacities”.  David Bohm called it our implicate order and undivided wholeness. 


Higher capacities

Why this is called higher capacities? Mostly if we operate in a reactive space in taking action, or speech, we are staying within the known, but rather limited space, moving towards something, moving away from something, using different strategies to get safety, approval, pleasure. Our decisions can be based on fear and avoidance, making ourselves smaller, following other people’s opinion and influences.

Taking responsibility to step into your heart opens the door to choice and more options, higher capacity and expansion.


Ongoing practice of coherence building techniques:

Heartmath studies prove that the ongoing practice of coherence-building techniques facilitates a re-patterning process in the neural architecture . With practice coherence is established as a new, baseline reference memory. Self-regulation of emotions and stress responses then becomes increasingly familiar.  This makes it easier for individuals to maintain their “center” and increase their mental and emotional flexibility and capacity to access all three types of intuition. (implicit, energetic, non local) . With this we built our capacity for conscious decision making.

If your intention is to tap into your intuitive heart more, I would suggest also regular practice of RAIN or Inner bonding process.


One of the techniques:

Intention: to strengthen intuitive connection through heart

 

Step 1: become aware of a life issue or challenge that you are experiencing that would benefit from intuitive guidance

 

Step 2: while focusing your attention on the area of the heart imagine breathing in a feeling of ease and balance

 

Step 3: maintain inner ease and ask you HEART for deeper understanding or guidance

 

Step 4: observe new insights that may arise. It can be today or tomorrow…


Coming home

  • Coming home

Practicing coming home to myself

Last month I was listening to Lama Rod online as part of the mindfulness meditation teacher training.  Lama Rod Owens is an author, activist, and authorized Lama (Buddhist teacher) in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.  I recommend his book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger and a coauthor of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation.

Since listening that online presentation and reading his book I am consciously including the 5/7 homecomings he writes about in my practice.

  • silence
  • community i am part of
  • sacred earth
  • ourselves (all our energetic bodies, gratitude)
  • ancestry

    What would bring more peace to me right now?

    • What would bring more peace to me right now?

    Living in the moment, Jason Mraz

    I was in meditation the other day on the theme of peace and I inquired what would bring more peace to me right now…

    Because of focusing on forgiveness this month with mindfulness meditation teacher trainer, one part of getting and insight into peace was through the process of forgiveness.

     

    Forgiving myself for how I have hurt myself and bring hurt to others,

    Forgiving others how they hurt me.

     

    Accepting that it is part of human that we knowingly or unknowingly hurt eachother or have done so in the past.

     

    Being patient with myself because forgiveness takes time and needs deep healing.

     

    Finding peace in the moment, true peace, without spiritual bypass, requires sitting with all that is. Tending to our emotions and feelings, thoughts (I would use RAIN for that practice)

     

    We can find that feeling of peace whenever we take a moment and intentionally get in touch with all in us.

     

    We cannot attain a feeling of peace in moments of depletion. Lama Rod Owens says in relation to forgiveness: we need to be grounded, have a feeling of being supported, a feeling of being connected to a community, then we have healed enough to start forgiving to others. Adding to this we also need to understand the common humanity in all of us.  Then there we can have reach a place of more peace within us.

    My choice of song for this month.. connected to mindfulness of thoughts and topic of forgiveness is Living in the moment by Jason Mraz. 

    “I’m letting myself off the hook for things I’ve doneI let my past go pastAnd now I’m having more funI’m letting go of the thoughtsThat do not make me strongAnd I believe this way can be the same for everyone”

    I am connected

    • I am connected

    "My roots reach deeply, I am connected to the core of me"

    On the morning of my morning walk in the forest today

    My mantra today was

    “My roots reach deeply

    I am connected to the core of me”

    This is part of the lyrics of the “I am connected” by Beautiful Chorus

    For me in singing those lines

    feeling the connection between the nature and myself

    I enter the feeling that enables all other feelings to be

    And still be still like a mountain a tree with all that.

    People

    • People

    People who need people

    This is an amazing performance of Barbra Streisand classic People. I have been doing a lot of observing and learning on the topic of Belonging and connection. One Wednesday as we were doing our usual group meditation and the feeling was connection and belonging was present, this  song “People” and the feeling of the community and being part of the greater whole came to awareness.

    When i was looking through the lyrics of this song, I found these lines meaningful:

    :We’re children, needing other childrenAnd yet letting a grown-up prideHide all the need insideActing more like children than children”

    “No more hunger and thirstBut first be a person who needs people”

    I guide in the 9 steps to inner peace my clients to first come in touch with their needs, stay in touch with their bodies, without separating their mind, body and soul and prioritize their needs. Yes, there is a mindfulness involved to discern between indulgence and taking proper care of your needs. Often I work with this topic with the Ennea1 and 2 energy. Both energies are inclined to have their own right way of idea of helping others and using mainly their energy to fix, help on the outside, to the other and have difficulty to connect with their own emotions, feelings and needs. Through re-establishing connection with the body, we are putting a new foundation to relationship with self and others.

    Trust

    • Trust

    Trustfall

    by Pink

    Last week we dedicated to explore the topic of emotions, feelings, interpretations and integrity with the AEIOU Breakhtrough women group.

    Beyond all specific names a lot of our live is driven by fear and protection, some from love.

    Fear and protection are emotions: doubt, anger, control, pride, envy.

    Love is joy, peace, content, happy, wonder, bliss.

    In this life it is part of us to feel fear. Sometimes it is there with a good reason and really save’s our life, sometimes it keeps us in the cage of familiar and away from freedom.

    My aspiration would be to recognize the fear, so that I can make a conscious choice to live a soul aligned life. To recognize the saboteur that shows up in the name of fear and protection. So eloquent, so wise, so persuasive. In Buddhist term my aspiration would be to say “I see you Mara” and have the patience and self compassion to sit down with it with the intention of making a choice. And sometimes when we recognize that we have been holding on to something old because of a feeling of security,  the choice might be to let go of that, recognize the fear behind holding on, and taking a Trustfall.

    From Pink’s Lyrics:

    “Go where love is on our sideIt’s a trust fall, babyIt’s a trust fall, baby”

    Self-compassion

    • Self-compassion

    Self-compassion

    gateway to authentic self

    Last Friday, 17.2.2023, I had an opportunity to talk about Self compassion, emotional resilience and decision making in collaborations as part of the AEIOU breakthrough female leaders.

    I have described self – compassion as a gateway to more authentic me. It is linked to our ability to hold ourselves when the feelings of pain, shame, guilt, self-judgement come up. It enables us to see more of who we are with self honesty.

     

    According to the research that dr. Kirstin Neff did there are three components of self compassion:

    –       Self kindness – connected to the deep feeling of Care, so we are able to hold ourselves in whatever feeling is coming up, recognizing harsh words and judgements toward self and asking ourselves Is this kind? Is this loving to myself? Would I actually say this to someone I love and care for?

    –       Common humanity – realizing it’s not just you feeling i.e. envy and judging it. Being able to take an emotion that we label with judgement and take It

    –       Opening up to broader perspective: What else could be the reason?, What else could this mean?

     

    Tending from this energy to our own feelings, naming them, is process of holding ourselves with gentleness. This energy is gentle, tender.

    However, as the title of a book Fierce self compassion indicates, there is another facet of self compassion. Fierce self compassion. This is linked to action and assertiveness. To step from the victim to taking charge. This energy is very close to anger. Kirstin Neff mentions constructive anger. To be able to handle that facet of compassion appropriately is still a process of learning and exploring for me. I have witnessed destructive anger inside and outside of myself and now learning more and more to use this energy from the place of a firm “no”, from the center of knowing myself and honoring what my emotions are saying and what my feelings are, what my values are and what is important for me.

     

    In Radical acceptance book Tara Brach connects self-compassion and mindfulness that brings in clarity, both together she writes results into self-healing.

    I find clarity a tricky one as we can get lost in our own stories, that are still trying to protect the wound in the best possible way. Sometimes talking with trained practitioner about the experience after we held ourselves and recognized the feelings, can bring us closer to the truth and clarity. So with applied self compassion and dialogue with other, the healing can take place. Healing, that brings us a bit closer to Freedom.

    Here is my favorite part from Fierce self-compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive, by Kirstin Neff, PhD:

    “When we embrace our pain with kindness, we feel loving,

    when we remember our common humanity, we feel connected,

    when we’re mindful of our pain, we are present. “

    If our intention is to live this life with an open heart,  present with what is, then self compassion is an integral part of our journey.

     

    All of me integration

    • All of me integration

    One of the continuous workshops I attend annually is In Pursuit of Authentic Self.

    When i started this work i thought, why would one do a workshop with same title every year?

    But in consistency, there is growth and taking note of growth.

    We are changing all the time, evolving doesn’t stop.  There is shedding off the limitations and gaining inner power in being more of yourself. Knowing yourself and loving yourself more with all there is.

    On one occasion on this growth I have written this poem. Pls read it in a way of understanding that this doesn’t mean “here brilliant, done that” it means what i was able to process heal, i have integrated and then continue.

     

    What is on the surface and what is in the depth

    Become one

    Integrated in all of me.

    What is it the parts that I am leaving out

    Like someone drawing a self portrait

    And doesn’t notice he didn’t draw his ears

    Or neck or brows

    What I am not noticing that I am leaving
    out

    Which part of me,

    Has vowed to burry so deep that I forgot it
    ever existed?

    Whenever there is a burial

    There is a leaving behind

    There is a sorrow of aolean scale

    “You” brings in the myxolidian scale, the
    joy.

    The new soul, reborn, integrated in true
    nature

    Seeing myself wholly.

    Old stories let go

    Let me see new world and new me in it.

     

    Getting real

    • Getting real

    Getting real

    by Susan Campbell, PhD.

    This book is a must read for topics of being true to yourself, congruency, authenticity.

    It offers the language for the journey back to self as well as better understanding of what we experience when we decide to recommit to ourselves and being real, congruent.

    Getting real requires peeling off the layers of seeking approval, safety or trust to feel safe enough, trusting enough for the essence to come through more.

    When the essence is able to flow more through you as appropriate, one becomes more at peace with who you are.

    This journey is accompanied  with noticing where we are controlling out of fear and protecting ourselves. It requires the willingness to stay with uncomfortable feelings to get to a place of real intimacy. It requires the courage to find your own expression.

     

    Here are some of my favorite parts from Getting real:

    It is part of the human journey to start out whole, then to continually cut off parts of ourselves in response to real or imagined pain, and to spend the rest of our lives searching for what we have cut off, buried, and forgotten about.

    When you know how to notice and stay with an uncomfortable experience, you have true freedom. You are not compelled by your conditioning to need things to be a certain way for you to feel okay.

    When asserting your desires, you′re going to bump up against the other person′s boundaries. You might even push some buttons along the way. By bumping against her with your request, you′re ″calling her out,″ you′re asking her to be more than her limited view of herself. Or you may be giving her practice holding her ground. Either way, it′s not going to do her any real harm