Sun getting through fog in the New Zealand bush, Bryant Range.jpg. Michal Klajban, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Deborah Tosline wrote and published “Skin Remodeling DIY: An Introduction to the Underground World of Do-It-Yourself Skincare” in 2015. Her approach to skin care is based on a scientific background, love of research and over 30 years of DIY skincare experience.
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In this year of uncertainty, loss, and restrictions we all need a way to nurture ourselves. One way is to integrate a simple gratitude practice into your life to improve your health. It goes without saying that when personal health is good, skin health improves. A brief daily gratitude practice can make a positive difference in our lives and every little cell of our being may benefit.
Overtime, we pursue a variety of methods to help us lean into healthy living. Any individual healthful practice for example, walking, stretching, reducing sugars, mindfulness, meditation, socializing, nutraceuticals, DIY skin care practices and many other smaller practices, may improve health. When you use multiple healthful practices, the combination results in a synergy that has a greater affect than that of a practice done individually. You may increasingly improve your health with each new healthful practice that you add to your routine.
Continuously adding, modifying, and changing the intensity of your health practices may allow you to evolve into your healthiest self at any age. The synergistic effects of healthful practices have an orchestra effect (grander) on our health foundation.
This means that every little thing that you do to improve your health not only adds up, it multiplies!
When we combine healthful practices to create an orchestra effect, we know that adding a simple gratitude practice can significantly build our health portfolio.
File:Taro leaf underside, backlit by sun - edit.jpg; Avenue at Wikimedia Commons
Studies show that a simple gratitude practice can improve your outlook which in turn improves your health. Check this article.
Practicing daily gratitude (simply notice something nice) has several documented health benefits and has been found to:
1. Improve happiness
2. Improve sleep
3. Improve heart health
4. Reduce depression
Here are a few tips on how to practice gratitude taken from this article which contains more gratitude practice tips and a guided gratitude meditation:
1. Make a gratitude practice vow.
2. Write it down. Writing it is different than thinking it. Maybe you write it in a journal, on a scrap of paper, phone note, whiteboard. Let it originate in your brain and travel through your hand. What are you grateful for?
3. Remember the bad and see the good. Notice the contrast as a basis for gratitude.
4. Pretend to be grateful… yes, train your brain if at first you don’t feel grateful.
For me, I’ve always been concerned about being able to care for myself and having a home to live in. Most of us know that a few misfortunes can completely alter a person’s life. As a result of my concern, I have been deeply grateful, to this day, to have a place to live, a functioning vehicle and money for essentials.
File:Alexej von Jawlensky - Mystischer Kopf, Meditation - G 13340 - Lenbachhaus.jpg; Alexej von Jawlensky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I inadvertently increased my gratitude practice in 2014 and wrote about it in an article titled “Do-It-Yourself Gratitude High” published by the Phoenix Publishing and Book Promotion Meet-up. The following is an excerpt from the article; read the entire article here.
“It is entirely possible for me to go from commuting in traffic to climbing up the side of a pretty little desert ridge in 5 minutes time. Grateful, grateful, grateful! I spend an hour walking, ascending, descending, trail running. I move as fast as I am able on any given day all the while compounding moments of gratitude moment to moment and minute to minute culminating in an hour of continuous acknowledgement of my gratitude for being so blessed to enjoy this urban wilderness, the Sonoran Desert, unique in all the world.
And this is what led me to discover the tangible result of being grateful. After coming out of the mountains it’s a short walk down the street to my home, urban life, and responsibilities. My mountain desert gratitude mantra subsides and the after glow is a deep-seated warmth that swells into a flood of well-being and contentment right in the center of me. This overwhelmingly content feeling after an hour of constant gratitude climbing mountains shows me how to get a gratitude high and reminds me to cultivate the practice of gratitude to significantly change my experience.
I generally feel truly grateful and blessed in life and think about these blessings daily. But this concentrated gratitude mantra that sort of happened by accident showed me that my daily gratitude practice is only the tip of the iceberg. The possibilities are great.
Test my assumption, achieve a do it yourself gratitude high.”
Use all the tools in your toolbox to keep yourself lifted during these challenging times. See the small things that you are grateful for. I hope that you have a beautiful life. Hang in there.
If you need more information, go to the library, search the Internet, read my past Blog articles, or get my book “Skin Remodeling DIY: An Introduction to the Underground World of Do-It-Yourself Skincare”
Take good care of yourselves!
XO Deborah
This article is intended to be used as general information only and is in no way intended to replace medical advice, be used as a medical treatment program, diagnosis, or cure of any disease or medical condition. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, regarding the effectiveness of the practices described in this article. Products or substances discussed herein are for educational purposes only and are not intended as recommendations of the author.