Skin Brushing: What is it?

There are many daily practices we can incorporate into our lives to help us improve our health. Helping our bodies to detoxify is an important part of any wellness regime. Caring for our skin is one way we can stimulate the body’s natural mechanisms to detoxify.

With your skin being your largest organ it is made up of nerves, glands, and several cell layers that serves as a barrier to protect your body. One of the functions of the skin is to aid in detoxification, however if your skin is full of dead skin cells, it will not be able to detox as effectively. Dry skin brushing aids the body to rid of the dead skin cells that may inhibit the natural ability of the body to detox. Other benefits of skin brushing include: stimulating lymphatic system, stress relief, increasing circulation, and exfoliation.

How to do Skin Brushing:

Starting from the feet, brush the soles as well as the upper side using a long-handled natural brush. Using long, sweeping strokes, brush up the legs, covering all of the skin’s surface area, concentrating on the thighs and buttocks.

1. Starting from the feet, brush the soles as well as the upper side using a long-handled natural brush. Using long, sweeping strokes, brush up the legs, covering all of the skin’s surface area, concentrating on the thighs and buttocks.
2. Put one arm up in the air, allowing gravity to help drain the lymph to the armpit, and sweep down the arm with gentle strokes, drawing towards the armpit.
3. Brush the torso by brushing towards the heart, and when doing the lower abdomen, brush up the right-hand side, just on the inside of the hip bone, across the transverse colon beneath the ribs and down the left-hand side, then gently across the pelvic area to complete the circle. Repeat.
4. When working near the breast area, brush over the top of the breast, always aiming for the armpit – and remember, be gentle over sensitive areas.

Skin brushing should be performed once a day, preferably first thing in the morning or before a bath or shower and on a dry and naked body.

After brushing your body, rinse off in the shower while alternating temperatures from hot and cold. Alternating temperatures will bring more blood to the outer layers of the skin and stimulate blood circulation, further invigorating the skin.