3 Steps for a Self-Healing Evening Ritual

Your skin is one of the largest organs your body has, and it works hard every day to protect our bodies from harmful elements. By taking care of your skin and developing a self-healing ritual, you can allow this vital organ to do its job better and longer.  We have spoken to the experts and found the top 3 steps for a perfect self-healing ritual.

Take time with your cleanse

While your morning cleanse can be gentle, using a light micellar water to simply refresh skin, your evening routine is where a double cleanse becomes essential. We always hear the mantra of ‘take your make-up off before bed!’ but in fact an effective evening cleanse does so much more than that. It removes daily pollution (particularly key if you live or work in the city) as well as make-up and dirt to ensure skin is kept free of breakout-causing bacteria and damaging free radicals.

Paying extra care to your evening cleansing routine can also be incredibly calming. There are some really good cleansing oils which come with a kabuki brush which helps to encourage self-massage to begin your calming evening ritual. The brush also allows you to double-cleanse skin without the need for washing the face twice.

Tips: First, massage the oil onto face with hands before beginning a light buffing action with the brush. The oil melts make-up and dirt while the kabuki brush provides a double cleanse effect and mild exfoliation.

Watch your water

Even though drinking plenty of water, in order to keep the skin hydrated and supple, is one of the most common skincare tips out there, exposure to water itself has the total opposite effect. The skin has a natural moisturizing factor (NMF), composed of water-soluble compounds like hyaluronic acids. These compounds retain and absorb moisture while skin’s natural oils (surface lipids) keep this moisture locked in. Over-exposure to water removes these surface lipids, allowing moisture to leak out of skin eventually leading to dryness.

The temperature of the water also plays a key role. The skin microbiome, made up of millions of good and bad bacteria, acts as a protective layer to environmental aggressors. Essentially, the microbiome should always be more heavily populated with good, healthy bacteria to ensure your skin is the strongest and most resilient. Water temperatures that are too cold or too hot can disrupt this balance, tipping the scales in favour of unhealthy bacteria. When this happens, it can take around four hours for your skin’s microbiome to recover and, if this happens every evening, the skin ends up working extra hard overnight to repair itself. In time, an overall lower amount of healthy bacteria in the skin microbiome can lead to a weakened skin barrier and an increase in inflammation or breakouts.

Tips: Protect your skin microbiome by only using lukewarm water when washing the face and a minimal amount of water overall. A muslin cloth soaked in lukewarm water and rinsed to almost dry is an ideal way to remove your cleanser before the next steps in your routine.

Incorporate self-massage

To truly relax and de-stress, try incorporating self-massage into your evening skincare routine. There are, on average, 43 muscles in the face, all of which we use thousands of times a day. If you find yourself frowning at your computer or clenching your jaw at night, you’ll be aware of how much tension it’s possible to hold in your face. Daily massage not only releases tension and prevents it from building up, but it also stimulates the muscles to increase blood flow and bring a natural, healthy glow to the face.

When incorporating self-massage at home, it’s important to use a product that gives enough ‘slip’ for the massage to feel comfortable. Use a powerful skin recovery product that has a good gel to oil ratio, and which melts instantly on contact with skin. Whether skin is dehydrated due to pollution, sun exposure or jet-lag, a small amount of Overnight Skin Recovery Masque gives life back to the skin, leaving it hydrated, plump and dewy come morning.

Tips: Always massage up and outwards, never pulling or dragging the skin down, and take extra care around the delicate eye area.

Our Favourites

Orveda’s Deep-Cleansing Botanical & Enzymatic Oil £89 is a powerful cleanser, which comes equipped with a charcoal-treated synthetic kabuki brush.

Orveda’s Overnight Skin Recovery Masque £195 has the correct gel-to-oil texture and melts instantly on the skin. Designed to provide intense moisture for dehydrated skin, it’s super highly-concentrated with 34% active ingredients including bamboo water, two molecular weights of hyaluronic acid, botanical glycerin, seaweed extract and Orveda’s signature mix of natural prebiotics, antioxidant marine enzyme and bio-fermented Kombucha black tea.

Receive a complimentary deluxe sample of Orveda Overnight Skin Recovery Masque with your first purchase at Orveda.com using keyword HEALINGHOLIDAYS.