Prime Your Muscles and Skin with the Ultimate Pre-Date Workout Healthy living - Tone Every Inch: Resistance Band Workouts Pickup and Shrug (feel it in your: shoulders, lower back, butt and back of thighs) Step 1: Stand with your feet hip-width apart, band under both feet, one end gripped in each hand. Step 2: Keeping your abs tight to support your back, bend your knees slightly and stick your butt back as you hinge from your hips, bending forward until your back is nearly parallel with the floor. Step 3: Choke up on the band (gather the excess in your hands or wind it around your hands) so it’s taut, then squeeze your glutes (butt) to lift your torso back to standing. Step 4: Shrug your shoulders up toward your ears, then lower them and repeat for 8 to 12 reps to complete a set. Faster Toning Tip: Focus on your posture with this move. Make It Easier: Release some of the band so it’s not as taut at the beginning of the move and only hinge forward as far as you can while maintaining good posture. Chest Press (feel it in your: chest and arms) Step 3: Pause, then slowly return to the starting position. Lunge Repeater
Dry Skin Brushing The skin plays a vital role in ridding the body of toxins and impurities. Dry skin brushing is one of the best techniques to open up the pores of the skin, and to stimulate and detoxify the lymphatic system. The skin is the largest organ in the body, and is responsible for one-fourth of the body's detoxification each day. Our circulatory system has its own pump (our heart) to move blood through our bodies but our lymphatic system does not. Skin brushing helps move lymph fluid and gives us a jump-start on health. Under normal circumstances the skin eliminates more than one pound of waste products every day. Skin brushing helps exfoliate and invigorate our skin too. Dry skin brushing improves the surface circulation of the skin and keep the pores of the skin open, encouraging your body to discharge metabolic wastes. Dry skin-brushing - dry meaning not in the bath - will change the health of your whole body by helping it get rid of toxins. Benefits of dry skin brushing Additional information
The Whip: A Homemade Moisturizer How-To from Making It This 2011 post has been edited on 7/8/14, also to include new tips and new pictures. Most important of these are directions on keeping the lotion fresh. Confession: I can’t live without my homemade moisturizer. This recipe appears in Making It as Olive Oil Whip. It’s my everyday body lotion/face cream and I figured it was about time to share it with you. It only has three ingredients. You might find it heavier than what you’re used to, because it doesn’t contain all the chemicals that the store-bought stuff employs to make it absorb fast into your skin (see the Skin Deep database for the scoop on what’s in your favorite moisturizer). The Whip Ingredients: 1/2 cup (125 ml) olive oil 2 tablespoons (.5 oz / 14 g) of cosmetic grade beeswax, either in bead form or grated and packed into the spoons. 1 cup (250 ml) of 90°F (32°C) water, distilled is best. Essential oil of your choice for scent, about 10-20 drops, optional (Notes on ingredients at the end) Equipment: You need a double boiler. Note:
Bulk organic herbs, spices & essential oils from Mountain Rose Herbs New Catalog Our latest catalog for Spring/Summer 2014 is here! Enjoy over 20 brand new herbal recipes from our kitchen, fun how-tos, exciting new products, gorgeous color photos, farm stories, and plenty of herbal inspirations to explore. We have all of the essentials you'll need as the sun brings new growth our way. Organic Tea Blends Our delicious herbal tea blends are made by hand in small batches each day. Herb Day Celebration Join us on May 4th for FREE herbal education and celebration! Salmon-Safe Certified Mountain Rose Herbs is the first business in Eugene to be certified!
DIY Mediterranean Wonderbalm Back in September Carlee got in touch with a request—”Mediterranean Olive Almond & Sage Wonderbalm”. I’d never heard of it before. Apparently Boots, the British chemist, makes it. Carlee included the ingredients in her e-mail. I started by kicking all the petroleum products, preservatives, and fragrances to the curb. The original contains a bit of sage essential oil, along with some more floral artificial fragrances—probably to keep the balm from smelling like a turkey dinner, haha. The resulting balm is nice, and rings in at a whopping $0.35/15mL.