Holistic Products April 2007
A Healing Scent: Kesca Body Candles
Candles can help set the ambiance and mellow mood for any room, and often their therapeutic scents can offer a dose of aromatherapy. Since many candle companies include harmful ingredients in their scented candles, such as lead or zinc, paraffin wax or synthetic wicks, many companies have begun to offer cleaner burning, more natural candles. Now a skin care product company called Kesca Body has taken candles to the next level with their Body Candle line. This earth friendly product is made from soy bean oil and is intended for use on the skin. The candles are completely wax free and burn at a temperature just two degrees above normal body temperature. Because of this, and the use of added essential oils, the candles are perfect for use as a warm and soothing body massage oil, a moisturizer, or even a first aid ointment. Vitamin E and Lecithin oil extracted from soy are excellent for many skin ailments, including cracked cuticles, psoriasis, sun poisoning, eczema, poison ivy, burns, cuts and insect bites. Kesca Body Candles can even help relieve pain and discomfort associated with arthritis. Chose from delicious scents such as Plumeria, Pomegranate Martini, Lemongrass, Cucumber Melon, or sweet holiday favorites like Cinnamon Spice, Gingerbread Cookie, or Dulce de Leche. Kesca Body Candles are perfect for practitioners looking to offer massage clients a new and healthy alternative to body oils. Go to www.kescabody.com or call 561/793-2001 for information. -JD
Snacker's Delight: Crum Creek Soy BitesFor those of you who, like me, are suckers for potato chips, crackers and other crunchy snacks, Crum Creek Mills offers a healthy alternative—Soy Bites. One of the latest offerings from the company, known for its line of wholesome staple foods, Soy Bites are the perfect option for when you're in need of a little refueling. Packed with protein, the mini-breadsticks come in individual bags that are perfect for lunch boxes, briefcases or purses. Made with only the best ingredients, Soy Bites are vegan, made with non-GMO soy protein, and include no artificial flavors or preservatives. Only 105 calories per bag and with no sugars or saturated fats, you can be sure you're doing your body good. Try Remarkable Rosemary & Garlic, Superb Sesame, Outrageous Onion, and the newest flavor Everything, based after the famous bagel of the same name. At $7.50 for a pack of ten, they're just as affordable as those greasy Lays potato chips. Serve them up plain or dip them in your favorite hummus, peanut butter, vegetable spreads, or whatever makes your mouth water. Crum Creek Mills also offers other soy-based food products, like Soy Nut Trail Mix for on-the-go hikers, Soy Nuts bags, Protein Powder, two varieties of pasta, and Muffin and Pancake Mix to start your morning off right. Can't decide which one to try? Order their Soy Protein Sampler and get a little taste of everything. Their products are not available in stores, but can be ordered online at www.crumcreek.com or by calling 888/607-3500. -JD
Gifts of Great Skin from the Garden:
Making Your Own Personal Care Products
by Elizabeth H. Florio
Learning to make your own personal skin care products like shampoos, bath drops and sugar scrubs with essential oils is an easy, fun, and healthy practice. The recipes are often simple to follow, take little time, require only a small amount of materials per batch and ultimately save you money. Plus, home-made personal care products are a wonderful way to reap the nutritive and healing benefits of essential oils (which mass-produced products rarely contain).
Essential oils are extracted from grasses, roots, flowers, leaves, fruits, and wood by various methods, but the most common are steam distillation, expression, and maceration. It takes a tremendous amount of plant or wood materials to produce a tiny amount of essential oil, so prices vary based on how much raw material is required to make the oil. More expensive oils require more raw materials. For example, it takes approximately 60,000 rose blossoms to produce just one ounce of rose oil.
Essential oils contain highly medicinal properties. They relieve the symptoms of (or downright heal) many skin and hair problems such as eczema, rosacia, acne, alopecia, and dandruff, among thousands of other physical ailments. Essential oils also help increase circulation, build and repair cells, bring vitamins and nutrients to the tissues, and regulate hormones. They have anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, antiseptic, antispasmodic, astringent, and analgesic qualities, among many other restorative and healing effects. In fact, from the roughly 300 essential oils in modern use, relief is found for nearly every disease the human body manifests.
Essential oils are not to be confused with synthetic fragrance oils, which are widely used in mass-produced cosmetics and skin care items and have no healing properties. In fact, fragrance oils often cause skin irritation. When making your own skin care items, be sure you are getting quality, pure essential oils and not lab-created alternatives.
Essential oils are perfect for personal care items because they often smell wonderful and the oils enter and exit the body cleanly. Unlike chemicals and synthetic ingredients, essential oils leave no toxins behind and do not lodge in fat or tissues.
Due to their potency, many essential oils must be diluted in what are called carrier or base oils before use. There are roughly 17 base oils that are ideal for use in personal care recipes, but four of the most popular are Sweet Almond, Evening Primrose, Jojoba, and Olive.
All the ingredients you'll need to make your personal care items can be purchased at most health food stores or natural skin care suppliers (see a brief list at the end of this article). Be sure to buy organic ingredients, because toxic residue from pesticides can counteract the healing properties present in the materials.
Just because all essential oils are natural, not all of them are safe to use. The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy by Valerie Ann Worwood is an invaluable resource for detailed information, excellent recipes, and cautions. (See Ms. Worwood's list of essential oils to avoid at the end of this article.)
The following recipes are easy to make and provide excellent nutrition for the skin and hair. Before you begin, have a selection of glass jars or bottles available to use as receptacles. For example, old baby food jars or spice jars work nicely. You'll also need a medium size cooking pot, a Pyrex measuring cup that can fit down into the cooking pot (to serve as a bain-marie), several eye droppers, and a spoon for mixing the ingredients.
Recipe for a Relaxing Geranium Bath Oil (Normal Skin)
Bath oils are a great way to relax and rejuvenate the body. In our busy times, many have fallen away from the practice of bathing, but taking hot baths with essential oils is one of the best ways to refresh your body. The ingredients for the bath oil follow:
• 3 Tablespoons organic olive oil
• 8 drops geranium essential oil
Run your bath. When the tub is half full, pour the oils into the water and mix with your hand. Geranium is an excellent mood lifter and nerve tonic, and it brings a healthy glow to the skin. Olive oil is high in vitamins, minerals and protein.
Recipe for the Eden's Kiss Lavender and Lemon Sugar Scrub
Eden's Kiss, an all-natural skin care company in Northern California, makes high-quality sugar scrubs that gently remove dead skin cells and surface dirt from the skin, while providing deep moisture. Eden's Kiss prefers to use sugar as the exfoliant versus salt, because sugar won't burn if you happen to have a scratch or cut somewhere. The ingredients follow:
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup of oil—you can use any carrier oil mentioned previously or if you lack one of those, regular vegetable oil works great. Eden's Kiss uses sweet almond oil as its base, because it's a high-grade, luxurious oil that is rich in protein.
• Honey (preferably organic), 2 tablespoons
• Finely grated fresh lemon peel, 1 teaspoon
• Poppy seeds, 3/4 teaspoon
• Crushed lavender buds, 1 teaspoon (optional)
• Lavender essential oil, 1 teaspoon
• Lemon essential oil, 1/4 teaspoon
• Plastic, wide-mouth container with a lid (at least 8 oz.)
Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl until the sugar is completely saturated. Scrape the mixture into containers and store.
Valerie Worwood's Moisturizing Shampoo Recipe for Normal Hair
Shampoo requires a simple soap base and various essential oils. The soap base is made from plain, white Castile soap that is grated and melted in purified water. Once prepared, the base lasts forever. When ready to make a new batch of shampoo, you simply simmer some of the soap base with the essential oils you want to use in a bain-marie and then bottle the concoction. The soap base ingredients follow:
• Castile soap grated, 4 oz.
• Spring water, 1 quart
To make the soap base, simmer the water and soap flakes in a pot on the stove until the soap melts. When cool, pour the mixture into containers and store. When ready to make your moisturizing shampoo, fill a pot with approximately two inches of water. Place your Pyrex measuring cup down into the pot and make sure the water meets the bottom of the measuring cup without coming up the sides of the cup. In the measuring cup, simmer 4 oz. of the soap base with the following essential oils:
• 3 drops geranium oil
• 4 drops carrot oil
• 2 drops lemon oil
• 4 drops borage seed oil
Making your own personal care items with essential oils is an easy and fun way to benefit from the healing and nutrition that nature provides. Great home-made products don't require much time or effort and are an excellent way to connect with the natural world while providing your family with high-quality products that reduce stress and nurture the body.
Essential oils to avoid (from The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy) include: Bitter Almond, Boldo Leaf, Calamus, Yellow Camphor, Horseradish, Jaborani Leaf, Mugwort, Mustard, Pennyroyal, Rue, Sassafras, Savin, Southernwood, Tansy, Thuja, Wintergreen, Wormseed, and Wormwood. Find Eden's Kiss Natural Skin Care at www.edenskiss.com. Natural food and skin care essential oils can be found at places like Whole Foods Markets, or online sources such as www.newdirectionsaromatics.com. Castile soap can be ordered at www.apothena.com. Elizabeth H. Florio is a freelance writer who can be reached at liz@butterfatdp.com.
Taste of Life:
Reawakening to the Wonder of Food
by Loba
Imagine you have been backpacking in the wilderness, with little to eat since a late breakfast. It's almost dusk now, and you think you've never been more hungry in your life. As you get closer to the cabin where you're staying, your nose alerts you to the smoke from a wood-fired stove and the delicious scent of something being cooked.
You arrive just in time to watch as your host pulls a tray full of perfectly cooked, piping hot yams out of the oven, and begins slicing them open and slathering them with butter. She spoons you a little taste and asks you if you want yours with a little brown sugar. "Mmmm," you say, "No, it's perfectly sweet just as it is." She hands you a pre-warmed bowl of them, along with a salad of fresh wild greens simply dressed in olive oil and lemon juice, jeweled with a gloss of pure maple syrup and lots of sparkling fresh pepper. You fill a mason jar full of fresh rainwater and stop to take in the quiet of the surrounding woods, unable to remember ever having had a more satisfying meal.
It helps to have spent a day active and outside in nature, building up a formidable hunger. It is hunger that contributes to childlike wonder, enthusiasm, vision and hope ... opening our senses and hearts so that a simple baked yam seems like the food of the gods. On the other hand, in our modern lives our beings can become so overloaded by input from our surroundings that it's easy for our senses to shut down. We can be so inundated by commercials and traffic—thoughts of things to do and not enough time—that deciding what to feed ourselves or our families can feel more like a burden than an opportunity. Wandering the aisles of the supermarket, there's so much to choose from that it can be hard to think. Even with such challenges and distractions, we can—and must—reclaim the wonder and magic of food, the satisfaction of full stomachs and full hearts, and the delight of our creature lives.
Such food does not need to be fancy or served swimming in complex sauces in order to be tasty and nourishing. Consider the joy of gingerbread; a pile of garlicky greens with a bowl full of perfectly cooked rice; fresh strawberries with plain yogurt; hot corn on the cob; a homegrown tomato, sprinkled with salt; a roasted pepper stuffed with fresh goat cheese; or a fresh plum, chilled and perfectly ripe. None of these things takes much time to prepare, yet each is chock full of potential for sensual satisfaction. In fact, we could get two or three people in a kitchen and make every one of these in the time it takes to sit on the couch and eat our way through a bag full of chips, most likely beating ourselves up afterward about our poor choice of cuisine!
Sensing our connection to the source of our food can make a huge difference in how we feel preparing it and eating it. I love teaching everyone who comes to our Anima Center how to identify, lovingly harvest and prepare the local wild plants, simultaneously connecting deeper to our sensual and grateful selves, and relating deeper to the sustenance and inspiration Mother Earth provides. And it's likewise inspiring to see how many people are growing gardens today, taking the time and effort to seek out heirloom seeds, and reviving interest in vegetables and fruits that we seldom see at the stores. Getting our hands in the dirt, and caring enough about what we eat to sweat for it gives us so much more appreciation. Yet even making the extra effort to shop at growers' markets helps us have a stronger link to the food and earth we depend upon. Wandering through the displays, we notice how everyone seems more excited and enlivened than they are when indoors, and we feel a spirit of community with others who care about both what they eat and where it comes from.
But even in the glaring modern supermarket it's important to try to hold on to our wonder and gratitude. I like to take a look at some of my cookbooks before a shopping trip and write down ideas for items to look for that are in season, like a true urban hunter-gatherer. Next time you shop, let yourself linger at the lemons, imagining how their zest, juice and fragrance will spark up your next salad, or inspire you to find that old recipe you have tucked away for lemon bars. Let your hands caress the smooth glossy skins of the eggplants, and daydream about ratatouille, or a simple cheesy grilled eggplant sandwich with tomatoes or red peppers, fresh oregano or spring greens.
The extra efforts of giving our food the attention it deserves can be thought of as part of a spiritual or personal growth practice, as cooking becomes prayer, celebration, magic, communion and delight! Noticing our hungers and finding joy and wonder in our food opens up our senses to a full-body experience of the blessings of nature and spirit, and opens our hearts to the fullest experiencing of life.
Loba is a purveyor of sacrament and delight, cookbook author, and regular columnist for SageWoman magazine. She and her partners tend an enchanted river canyon and ancient place of power, hosting wilderness retreats and vision quests, plus events like The Medicine Woman's Wild Plant Weekend, May 24-28; and the Wild Women's Gathering, June 29 through July 5. The Anima Retreat Center & Women's Sanctuary, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830, www.animacenter.org.