Dry Skin Brushing
2012
Dry Skin Brushing is one of the most effective detox therapies. It’s easy, quick and doesn’t cost anything after the initial small investment of a skin brush. Get one with natural bristles; they are usually not expensive and easy to find, available in most health food and department stores. Skin brushing helps strengthen the immune system and to balance many systems in the body. It’s one of the best healthy habits to get into!
Benefits of Dry Skin Brushing
Exfoliating the skin makes us radiate and gives us a healthy glow but it also has many health benefits:
- Skin brushing stimulates blood flow and gets the lymph moving. 70% of our lymph moves around the body through the tissue just underneath the skin. Many processes in our body work automatically, like breathing and our heart beating, but our lymph moves very slowly on it’s own, especially with a sedentary life and is something we can really affect easily and get moving more quickly by skin brushing.
- Reduces cellulite and fatty tissue stores that can build up underneath the skin. Brushing the skin will help break up the toxic waste deposits and help eliminate them from the body.
- Removes dead skin cells to keep the skin clear, able to effectively eliminate waste, and allows for the growth of new skin cells. Regenerating new skin cells means tighter and more youthful looking skin and it helps overall skin health.
- When your skin is eliminating waste efficiently then stress is taken off the other elimination organs in the body, such as the lungs, liver and kidneys.
- Brushing the skin and exfoliating the dead skin cells helps to strengthen the immune system by moving toxins out more effectively out of the body. This means less inflammation, infections and illness.
About our Skin
- Your skin is the largest elimination organ in the body and excretes a large amount of waste each day, much more than most of us realize. We shed about a pound of waste through our skin every day!
- The skin works like our kidneys, in fact, the constituents of sweat are actually close to urine and we move a lot of waste out of our body through it. We eliminate a quarter of our body’s toxins through our sweat.
- If you cannot effectively release toxins through the skin it can show it with redness, itchiness, hives, psoriasis and body odor. Dead skin cells and accumulated waste can build up on your skin and block your pores from effectively eliminating more fat, waste and toxins through them. So we really want to keep the skin clean and pores clear so they are able to move the bad stuff out. If toxins are unable to be eliminated they often get stored in the body, in fat cells, or redistributed through the body back into the blood stream.
Our Lymph System
We often think of blood when we think of the circulatory system of the body but the lymph system is another circulatory system often overlooked. The blood’s circulatory system brings oxygen and nutrients to the cells, but it is the lymph that cleans out the waste products from the cells and gets rid of infections. When the lymph system is not functioning properly wastes accumulate and chronic infections can build up leading to conditions such as fatigue, depression and poor health.
Lymph fluid surrounds every cell in our body and when our cells excrete wastes as they do in their natural processes it is the lymph fluid that washes the waste away and cleanses all of the tissues throughout our body. The lymph transports this waste away from the cells through its lymph vessels. We have an estimated 100,000 lymph vessels throughout the body and we have 5 and a half gallons of lymph fluid in our body – that’s 3 times the amount we have of blood!
Skin brushing is one of the most effective ways to get the lymph moving in the body. The lymph system is a fascinating system and is one of the most important detoxification systems and is closely linked with our immune system.
Move that Lymph!
The circulatory system has the heart to pump blood through our body, but the lymphatic system relies almost exclusively on the movement of our muscles to push it around our body. It moves a little from the natural processes of the body, the blood flowing and lungs breathing but without physical activity lymph flow decreases 94%! We are meant to move so get active! Some of the best ways to get the lymph moving throughout the body is through exercise, such as rebounding, an ideal exercise for this, eating bitter vegetables which helps to stimulate it, and dry skin brushing – one of the most effective ways of helping to get the lymph moving and eliminating toxic waste out of the body.
Skin Brushing Tips
The main areas with lymph nodes are around the base of the neck-collarbone area, the armpits, the groin and intestines. So although it is generally true what most people recommend with dry skin brushing – to brush towards your heart, what we really want to do is brush towards the lymph nodes.
Brush lightly. The lymph system in mainly just underneath the skin but is very superficial; it is not deep in the muscle tissues so you don’t have to brush hard.
Brush in the same way on both sides of the body.
It is ideal to brush your body just before a shower in the morning, but if time doesn’t allow you to do this, then brush later in day, perhaps before bed. Better to do it at any time than not do it at all.
Always brush dry skin, not wet and before applying any lotions or creams to the skin.
Get into a Routine
3-4 minutes is all it takes. Get into a habit of brushing your body before a shower in the same way you brush your teeth so it just comes naturally. Learn the proper way to do it and then it can become a quick routine you do regularly.
Quick Fix
Even quicker is better than not at all! Skin brushing doesn’t have to take a long time. Better to do it quickly regularly than take a long time with it very infrequently. Taking 3 long swipes in each area will only take a minute or 2, easy to do while the water is running and getting hot, and will help a lot in getting the lymph active.
Skin Brushing Techniques for Best Lymphatic Drainage
- Start at your collar bone around base of neck and brush in a circular motion, sweeping this area and above breast from center to outer edge of body. The thoracic duct is here, this is the largest lymph vessel in the body so it is good to get it stimulated first.
- Brush around breasts, avoiding sensitive nipple area, but brushing from nipple out. Do the same for men as with women, we have the same lymph patterns in the body.
- Brush the arms, from the palm of the hand upwards especially along inner arm to arm pit, bringing the sweeps right into and over armpit area where lymph nodes are. Brush both arms.
- Brush belly in sweeping strokes from the center to the sides of body and up towards armpits.
- The back is brushed similarly, upper back with upward strokes and across lower back to sides and up toward armpits.
- Brush legs from feet upwards towards top of leg. The lymph has one way valves so best to brush with it. Always brush up the leg.
- There are lymph nodes around groin area so brush well around this area. Sweep up from inner leg around to outer leg in a circular motion, like going along panty line.
Getting into the habit of skin brushing can really help along your bodies cleansing process. It’s so beneficial for your body and will give you a vibrant healthy glow!
