Tangible Illumination: Touch and Be Healed
Welcome to the season of sudden change, leaps of faith, level ups and worldchanging breakthroughs. Gemini, the cosmic twins, the two-in-one, as reflected in its celestial star shape as seen in the graphic above, guides us upwards at this time. Our elevation and illumination requires us to ground in our knowing and, despite our fears, to look up. To ascend. A powerful way to begin the journey is to become freshly familiar with our divine physical selves. To reintroduce ourselves to ourselves through touch, and to begin to heal on deeper and deeper levels.
Touch is one of our fundamental necessities as living creatures of this planet. We share this principle with all other living beings, great and small. The mental and physical effects are many - and though they have been researched and studied time and time again, it can be safely said that our intuition can sense the importance of touch as a foundational aspect of being - even for those who may feel unsafe or uncomfortable with it. For everyone, and especially those who do not wish to be touched by others, the administering of self-touch is readily available, and can be regularly employed as part of our healing journey and rituals of wellness. Touch allows us to meet ourselves once again; to heal the wounds of trauma, and to truly connect with our inner beings.
Having this in mind, my friend Keanu has agreed to help demonstrate a very simple facial massage, as seen in this simple graphic. This part of my personal skincare ritual has been with me for more than a decade since graduating from esthiology and massage school. I’ve found that as the years have passed, during brief bouts of forgetfulness or busy’ness, my skin and facial muscles aren’t as toned or clarified without it. This massage, done with good healing oils, is something I will have with me forever - and I’d like to share it with you.
I recently shared this video on my instagram with a personal demo of this very facial massage, and the comments tuned me into some collective desire for much needed insight. The benefits of touch are endless, and for those just beginning to create ritual around healing, skin and body care, the face is a wonderful gateway point. When done consistently and with care, you really can support your skin and spirit in ways you may have never known possible. Working with gentle and slow pressure, using clean hands and clean ingredients, your lymph will thank you, your muscles will relax, and your elasticity will increase. A daily facial massage is beyond botox, and entirely within your control. What a beautiful and simple method of simple but potent self-love.
The blood circulation that is triggered through this regular application of self-touch will support the dissolving of acne especially when paired with anti-inflammatory and antibacterial oils. Scar tissue will soften over time, and blackheads will be far less frequent. Your skin will glow, showing you your own radiance from the inside out. Some folks love to use a tool such as a gua sha, and they can be super helpful! Just know that your hands are the original tools of healing, and the strength and grace of the palm, heel, and fingers each offer their own gifts and abilities. Under the jaw, guide the thumb with gentle pressure from the tip to the ear. Along the underside of the cheekbone, use the heel of your hands to drag and massage the facial muscles that get the most use. This is especially beneficial for folk with anxiety or who experience TMJ. On the forehead, slide your fingers in upward strokes, paired with a few zig-zags from right to left, left to right. From there, work around the eyes with slow but steady circles. You may wish to drag your knuckles along your neck on either side, offering even more relief to those overworked muscles. A full step-by-step tutorial can be found at the bottom of the page.
Working around the sinuses, especially during allergy season, use gentle pressure at the top of the nose, up and underneath the supraorbital ridge (the eyebrow bone) from the inside out, you can enact a wealth of clarifying and healing to overactive, exhausted or enflamed sinuses.
Self-massage bolsters our innate healing capacity, and our sense of living presence. It lowers the common stress-response hormone cortisol, and actually increases our killer cells - the first responders of our immune system. As children, touch is an essential part of growth, both emotionally and physically. We first learn as we grow how to give and receive energy primarily through touch. It is our first psycho-spiritual lesson in reciprocity. Touch teaches us to trust - or not to trust. If something is dangerous, causes pain, or appears agitated or displeased through touch, we learn to give space and develop respect for boundaries, as well as mindfully form our own. We are more inclined to explore things emotionally and energetically if we can first engage physically.
Another gorgeous method of self-touch is bathing. In Moroccan tradition, the ritual of hammam is a singular and collective opportunity to excel through touch and cleansing all in one, usually done once a week, making the ritual all the more natural as it is incorporated into the weekly schedule. In each hammam, there is often a person who is present for no other reason than to scrub. It can be a transcendent experience, a rebirth every week as we are washed clean of dirt, transgressions, stagnancy and toxicity of body and mind. This very gift is also offered to oneself during hammam, just as it can be performed in a shower or bathtub. Using Beldi Black soap, as is traditional during Moroccan hammam, you are invited to explore and nourish the body in full through the support of whole healing ingredients - including mint.
MINT AS GENTLE WARRIOR OF GEMINI
Gemini is the overseer and ruler of the lungs, and the act of breathing in general. Gemini also rules all tubular systems such as fallopian, urinary, and bronchial - the great connectors of the body - as well as the upper limbs. The arms, shoulders, hands, and fingers. Mint / نعناع (which can be found in Beldi Black soap as well as Maghrebi Mint Tea), is a naturally cooling and soothing herb. It relieves upsets of body and skin, as well as calming the heated mind. It’s also a centering herb, supporting and grounding the airy nature of the Gemini, bringing the twins into sacred, healthy union once more. Containing high levels of salicylic acid, mint battles acne and blemishes - particularly those which come about from an imbalance of inner heat. Spearmint is commonly used in Morocco as it is native, deeply healing, and grows in wild abundance. If you have mint essential oil, consider adding a few drops to a carrier oil for a cooling, soothing self-massage. You may also wish to add a few sprigs to your tub, or drink as a hot or cold tea. The clean and cool scent alone does wonders, supporting the respiratory system and in turn, healthy and balanced speech. Breathe deeply, speak clearly. Mint is known for being safe during pregnancy as well, though do always consult your care provider prior to introducing.
This long season of isolation is beginning to thaw, and with it may come new excitements - as well as new anxieties. The repercussions of touch starvation surfaces as low energy, distractedness, or bouts of depression. This is a direct indicator of our innate need for touch. There are several ways to engage with touch in healing and respectful manners, even on our own. We of course can and do feel our own bodies everyday through passive actions like itching our skin or doing our hair - but what if we tried viewing our bodies as true temples, even for a few moments of every day? This can feel like a strange and silly notion to some, which is totally understandable. We have been steeped since birth in a culture unwilling to see the body as much more than a machine of productivity. It sleeps, it eats, it works. But to unfurl towards the truth of your sacred physical nature - to honor it as a gift from the creator - it is here where we may begin to drink from the cool well of healing.
To voluntarily offer attention towards how we engage with self touch can be almost just as powerful as receiving from someone else. Have you ever noticed the elegance of your own form? Have you taken time to explore your own landscape and fall in love? This could be in an action as simple as tracing your fingers along your hand. Allow further exploration, in your own safe awareness and at your own pace. Watch how your skin moves, rolls, and flexes for you. What does gentle scratching feel like? Pinching? Rubbing? Squeezing? We often seek touch from others to feel cared for or witnessed. Take some time to offer this powerful attention to your own being. Explore your body. There are likely mountains and valleys of yourself that have missed you for a long time. Offer up some understanding and gratitude for the body that you are blessed to have. Feel the countless generations of ancestors who reside in your warm blood, and know that you're never truly alone.
Touch brings us back to our inner selves, and develops our whole being. The inner child who lives within each of us aches to be loved. Touch brings us back to ourselves, and to that inner child. Your tenderness and strength are like the equal and opposite dual natures of Gemini. Invite healing, soothing, cooling herbs such as mint to guide and support you through the simultaneous work of rebirthing and reparenting. The celestial two-in-one, Gemini, says to now recognize and care for our sensitive child self - and in doing so, then we may become the strong parent self, too. There is no right way. Remember, healing is an ongoing, active path. To find the benefits, you must enact them throughout this lifetime. Like watering a plant, it doesn’t take much. Just consistency, care, and dedication.
the late great DMX modeling the secrets of healing.
These aspects of touch can also be inspected in your living space or outdoors, with the more subtle lives and sacred forms you share space with at a given time. Take a moment to gently wipe away dust from the leaves of your plants, feeling how sensitive their surface is, much like your own. Share a breath with them. Share a moment of knowing. If you have four legged kin in your midst, repay their unconditional love with soft strokes and extra scratches. Think about what it must feel like for an animal to be touched, and why they, like babies, are often happy to flop and fall all over each other like puddles of simple joy. Caress the surface of rocks, crystals or gemstones. Explore how each one has their own physical nature, whether cut, tumbled, or fresh from the earth. You'll find that even in solitude, you have caring beings all around you - and you are one yourself.
FACIAL MASSAGE WRITTEN TUTORIAL
◑ Use a small circular motion to gently rub your fingers at the top points of your temples.
◑ Using your palms and fingertips, work them towards the sides of your face, starting at your chin and moving up toward your forehead. Gently slide your hands back down the face towards the neck.
◑ Press and glide your ring fingers into your brow bone. Move from the inner to the outer corner. Repeat this movement underneath your eyes. This is some of the most sensitive skin on the body so do take care to be soft with yourself here.
◑ Using your thumb and first finger, start at the inner corners of your eyebrows, pinch as you move to the outer corners.
◑ Press your fingers into the center of your brows. Glide them up toward your hairline. Then move your fingers toward your temples.
◑ Add a little zig-zag motion across the brow, using the tips of your fingers.
◑ Press down firmly on the space between your eyebrows for a few seconds. Gently carry on under the eyebrow bone.
◑ Use your index and middle fingers to press under your cheekbones. Start at the center of your face and move toward your temples.
◑ For a stronger effect, use your knuckles to press into your face. Start at your nose and move them across your cheeks to your ears.
◑ Use your thumb and first two fingers to pinch the center of your chin. Pinch the skin as you move toward your ears.
◑ Using your thumb, press into your jaw as you move your other fingers from the outside of your jaw from your chin to the earlobes.
◑ Use a firm circular motion to massage the area under your earlobes with the full fingers.
◑ Use the outside of your hand (pinky finger side) to press into your neck, starting at the top and moving downward.
◑ Use your ring finger to firmly press into the inner brow, gliding toward your outer brow.
◑ Use your fingertips to gently tap over all the areas of your face.