An Evening Facial Cleanse With Paige
Last year, after attending a really interesting workshop about how the lymphatic system affects your skin, I met Paige Gayle of Samatva Skin, which I consider to be a very happy accident. I wanted to share the magic with you, so I asked her to write a blog to guide us through the importance of daily massage and a supplementary video (link at the end of the article).
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An Evening Facial Cleanse by Paige Gayle
Cleansing at the end of the day as part of your nightly routine can greatly impact your skin health. I hear the confession too many times by clients that they are terrible about cleaning their face at night or they are just too tired. Or maybe you just haven’t been inspired enough to do a nightly cleansing routine. My goal is to help you wind down with an easy massage while cleansing and helping to stimulate your lymphatic system. Help your body by giving a little love and attention to your parasympathetic nervous system. Not familiar with your parasympathetic nervous system, just think “rest and digest” and I’m sure you’ll be happy to connect! More on that, keep reading.
Nightly oil cleansing feels refreshing, calming, and soothing. It’s a time to remove your makeup and the environmental pollutants from the skin’s surface while giving yourself a soothing self-massage with nurturing oils that encourage movement of your cells and tissues. And along with that, engaging with your lymphatic system ups your cleansing game.
The lymphatic system seems to be on everyone’s radar right now and that is really exciting. You may be asking yourself, “Exactly what does this system do?” It does A LOT and I’ll be talking more about this in future videos and blogs. But for this cleansing routine, let’s just focus on one major thing that it does. It activates your parasympathetic nervous system. When you are in a parasympathetic state, your body is in a “rest and digest” state. This is the place to be for all your cells and tissues to regenerate. This is where your body rests and rejuvenates itself. So, activating your parasympathetic nervous system in your evening cleansing routine helps release the stress of the day and get to a more relaxed, restful state.
The main goal of oil cleansing is movement, movement, and more movement. Movement is key to get the cellular debris moving out and nutrients moving in. Lack of movement results in stagnation. Stagnation, in my mind, equates to accumulation and no flow. So with stagnation, your skin begins to show congestion like blackheads or pimples, and signs of dullness start to appear. Oil cleansing massage breaks up that congestion, hydrates the skin, and brings vibrancy to the tissues. Plus, oil cleansing shines as a cleansing method by helping balance your own natural oil (sebum) production. Oil balances oil. When you strip the skin of its natural sebum, the body recognizes this and sends more oil to the skin’s surface to replenish the oil just stripped, therefore creating an imbalanced cycle.
Take 5 minutes and see if you feel inspired for a change.
Here is a video of Paige walking through how to do a facial cleansing massage:
