Greetings!
Rupam and I are loving our new pattern of choosing a product each month to shine the spotlight on, share our thoughts about, and then raffle off a bottle of! As you read in Rupam's blog post last week, August is all about our Lady Nada Breast Oil. Rupam did a lovely job of detailing the creation of this formula and highlighting the herbs that comprise it and why she chose them. So in my take here, I want to focus on the importance and benefits of topical body oiling.
Often, when we think of using herbal medicine to support our bodies, we picture ingesting teas and tinctures for internal health. Applying herbs externally, however, is a powerful mode of application. After all, our skin is our body's largest organ and through its porous nature, it is the site where our initial immune responses and detox processes often occur. Extracting plant medicine into water or oil and then using topically on wounds, rashes, bruises or any other skin irritation, allows the medicinal constituents of the herbs to come into direct contact with the tissue that you are treating. That is almost always the objective--to get the medicine of the plants to make actual contact with the body system that needs the support. Tinctures are best for instances when we want to get medicine into the blood stream, teas and capsules are best for any treatment of digestive/bowel complaints, steam is often best for getting herbs into the respiratory system, and body oiling is best for skin health. Topical application is ideal for another reason as well. When you rub the oil into the tissues you are treating, you are not only putting the medicine right onto the tissues that need support, but the very act of gently massaging it into the skin is medicine itself! While it's widely acknowledged that body massage can be an important tool for self-care, stimulating circulation and resetting the parasympathetic nervous system for relaxation, when it comes to body oiling, we are using the term "massage" a bit differently. The goal in this type of touch is to stay very light. We not only want the herbs to penetrate into the skin gently and slowly, but we want to move any stagnation in the lymph system, the vessels of which are right under the skin. So, if you massage with any sort of pressure, you are influencing muscles instead of lymph vessels. Rupam made a video showing the best way to apply Lady Nada, and in it she mentions using a touch as light as if you were brushing your eyelid. This is important. The goal in using this particular formula is to activate the movement of lymph fluid in our breast tissues, doing so in an upward and outward direction to guide that lymph fluid towards the lymph nodes in our sternum and armpits.
Be sure to check out Rupam's video for other key notes about the use of Lady Nada, such as applying it to moist skin and the importance of intention when caring for breast tissue as part of self-care routines.
May you all be healthy and blessed as you add body oiling into your lives!
Blake