HOW TO ADD CONSCIOUSNESS TO YOUR BEAUTY ROUTINE WITH COCONUT OIL
Coconut oil! Glorious, glorious, oil of the coconut! That lusciously, yet subtly scented, silky miracle salve that mother nature created with a wink and a you're welcome.
As a makeup remover, all-over moisturizer, cooking oil, nutritional energy booster, sexy-time lube, hair conditioner (the list goes on!) I cannot rave enough about the stuff.
And I'm not alone. Take a little dive into the google if you so desire to reveal all the other health benefits it boasts - weight loss, combatant for Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, kidney infections, yada yada, danke schön! mother nature for your kindness!
We live in a society where we want, nay, we crave quick fixes to everything.
We want to pop a pill or slather on a cream and have our bodies magically transform into Candice Swanepoel's or Ryan Reynold’s. I'll be the first to admit that I would not at all be upset if someone showed me the way to the fountain of instantaneous and perpetual youth.
But I have sadly come to discover that despite my deepest wishes, the propylene glycol, sodium lauryl sulfate, phenol, dioxane, “fragrance,” diethanolamine, and parabons, I've been scrubbing my precious kitten body with, through the medium of body wash, shampoo, face scrub, et al. are chemicals probably doing more harm than good.
Go take a look in your bathroom at the ingredient list on any one of the products you use daily.
The Huffington Post published an article stating that “the average American woman puts between 12 and 20 chemicals on their skin 365 days a year.” Not to mention you probably also read at some point that headline about how microbeads from exfoliatants and other body/face scrubs are polluting the oceans eight trillion at a time, every day since their conception.
But there is a solution!
Coconut oil (and argan, avocado, almond, sunflower and all the other natural oils, for that matter), baking soda, red wine vinegar, himalayan sea salt, activated charcoal, and the other strange products you can find at one of those wellness stores run by middle aged witch-looking ladies with dreadlocks, are all natural remedies for, or at least attempts to heal our perceived problems - minus the chemicals.
There’s no such thing as a “miracle product,” just as there’s no such thing as the right way to live your life.
Aligning your beliefs, values and actions with that of your environment is a good place to start.
Becoming conscious of the things you’re doing ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in relation to what you want to achieve during your time here on earth… or what you see as being the meaning of your time in this form, changes the decisions you make.
If you’re like us, maybe your vision is to live a long, healthy life while having as small an impact as possible on the environment in the hope that the planet will be able to sustain your children and their children and many further generations to come (and look banging while you do it).
If that sounds like your ideal, one of the best places to start is by stopping immediately the buying of synthetic products from companies who use advertising to make you feel horribly inadequate and manipulate you into buying their chemicals.
Coconut oil and baking soda are superlative, natural resources that replace nearly everything in your current beauty arsenal.
Everyone has individual health and skincare issues. Some people have acne, others have psoriasis, or diabetes, lactose intolerance, and so on.
But we all share the same planet and its finite resources.
Would you be willing to replace all your products with a handful of white powder and some nut oil if it meant slowing down the destruction of the planet? If it meant lowering the possibility of getting cancer?
We've done it and I believe that actions like these are on their way to becoming the norm, rather than the alternative.
Slide your oily self into the comments below and let is know what you think!