World Mental Health Day, October 10, 2019, celebrates mental health education and advocacy against social stigma. Mental health is a topic near and dear to my heart. Depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem darkened every corner of my younger years until a wilderness intervention launched me on the path to holistic healing. My experience navigating mental illness to mental health is the reason why Essential Rose exists today.
As the first-ever mood-balancing beauty® brand, we make it our mission to help you arrive at a healthier and more beautiful place in your life through products, programs, and social impact that shifts a toxic beauty paradigm from "you're beautiful because of how you look,” to “you’re beautiful because of how you live.”
We thought it would only be natural to celebrate World Mental Health Day by giving you some tips for mental health and stress relief! Unfortunately, with modern, fast-paced living, becoming stressed and anxious can feel inevitable. The positive news is, you can strengthen your resiliency to stress and get into greater control over how stressful circumstances impact your mind and emotions.
Leading an active lifestyle is one of the most important things you can do to combat stress. Numerous studies show that people who exercise regularly are less likely to experience anxiety and are generally in a better mood. There are a few reasons behind it.
First, exercise lowers your body's stress hormones. It helps release endorphins that are responsible for your cheerful mood and act as natural painkillers.
Second, regular exercise can also help you sleep better, which is crucial for your mental wellbeing.
Third, achieving your exercise goals can feel very empowering, able, and confident in your life off the exercise mat.
So, whether it's a walk in nature, a gentle yoga class, or an active, beat busting HIIT, find an exercise routine that works for you and your lifestyle.
Here at Essential Rose, we know that scent can be so much more than just a passing pleasant experience. When inhaled, scent actually travels into the limbic system of the brain, which houses your emotions, memories, hormones, and stress response. If you're feeling stressed, tired, or on-edge, scent can lift your mood and promote inner peace by impacting the limbic system on a chemical level.
Aromatherapy, or the therapy of essential oils, uses the chemistry of natural plant extracts to heal the limbic system, hormones, digestive system, musculoskeletal system, and skin. You can bring the benefits of aromatherapy into your daily life by placing essential oils into a diffuser, or by using them in your skincare products. Essential Rose is an entire aromatherapy skincare line expert-blended from my background in Advanced Clinical Aromatherapy that harnesses the power of essential oils.
Depending on what you're looking for, our products can promote stress relief, balance emotions, boost confidence, and foster self-love while nourishing and regenerating your skin!
Find out more about our line here.
Mindfulness is a meditative practice that promotes compassionate and non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. When you spend too much time worrying about the past or being nervous about the future, it’s easy to become stressed, anxious, and depressed. Mindfulness is all about bringing you to the present moment by focusing on the breath and senses. There are numerous techniques for increasing mindfulness, and no - they don’t have to take hours! A great place to start for a short, sweet, and impactful practice is a 5-sense mindfulness meditation.
Sit back and try to take in everything you’re currently experiencing.
Name 1 thing you’re smelling.
Name 1 thing you’re tasting.
Name 1 thing you’re hearing.
Name 1 thing you’re seeing.
Name 1 thing you’re touching.
We've also incorporated mindfulness into our products. Each of our natural beauty blends comes with a custom mantra or a positive affirmation that encourages you to apply the products with a heightened sense of self-connection. For example, “Indulge Mood Oil” has a mantra for intuition - “I move from my power and intuition,” that can transform the act of applying the oil into a mindful self-care ritual.
Journaling is also a powering tool for anyone looking to understand, process, and release their feelings. Keeping a consistent journal can help you clear your head and even buffer and reduce the effects of negative thinking. Most importantly, it allows you to take control of your emotional response to your circumstances and put things in perspective. Start with a practice of free-writing where you keep pen to paper and get out all of your thoughts - even the most mundane - for 1-2 pages. Free-writing helps reduce mind chatter and allows our true feelings and insights to rise to the surface.
Overall, I hope you will find these tips useful to balancing your mental health on a daily basis! It’s through taking up daily practices that we can strengthen our emotional resiliency and cope with life and stress with greater control.
