Keeping Your Face Years Younger Than Your Actual Age

by Sondra Fink

I’m an herbal-crafter here at our Brooklyn workshop, and I’d like to share my personal experience using our wonderful new Seeds of Change facial renewal oil. I had a “eureka moment” that shifted my whole paradigm! Beauty is so much deeper than skin.

Our Seeds of Change is a “powerful antioxidant oil blend of cold-pressed organic seeds” that prevents cellular degradation and free radical damage. As our previous writing explained, a human skin cycle is about 28 days. Each cycle, new skin cells are created, but they don’t have to renew exactly as they did the time before. Seeds of Change enhances the skin’s renewal in an upward spiral of health and beauty. Unless your skin is super sensitive, you can get a boost by periodically adding Seeds of Change to your regular regimen, like a “super-food” for the skin. I’m 51, so when the Molly and Emma created this product for “reducing the appearance of wrinkles, scars, and sun damage,” I was triple-sold. Give me that bottle!

I used Seeds of Change, emulsified with Sense & Sensitivity Mineral Mist on my clean skin as a moisturizer, morning and night. At first, my skin just felt nicely hydrated, pretty much the same as when I use our standard (and awesome) Nourish & Replenish Oil and the mist. Then, in about a week, I started to notice a difference. My skin was extra happy. I felt I had a certain glow, smooth, fresh and bright, and when I looked in the mirror, it seemed I radiated health–I couldn’t imagine why I would ever put on makeup. The bottle I was using was a trial, so I mentioned it to Molly and Emma. “I love this new oil!” I raved. I whizzed right past “periodically” to decide that this was “my new thing.” I mean, come on, it’s packed with antioxidant vitamins and essential fatty acids. One can’t live “on super-foods alone”? Why not? Wouldn’t that just make me extra super?

Guess what? About a month into daily use of the product, my skin didn’t feel so happy. The difference was hard to pinpoint, because my skin is in pretty good shape, but I felt like I’d gotten some of my natural redness back. It seemed I was a little blotchy, and makeup suddenly didn’t seem a terrible idea. I thought maybe I wasn’t drinking enough water, or I’d gone wrong somewhere in my diet. When I mentioned it to Emma, she asked me, “are you still using the Seeds of Change?”

As much as I try to resist it, my thinking is binary: something is right or it’s wrong. If brown rice is good for you, then it just is, and if sugar is bad, that’s it, end of story. I admit I crave “the answer.” Just tell me what to do, and I’ll simply do it, meaning I’ll spare myself the need to think. It doesn’t work like that?

Regarding skincare, Emma described it to me this way: Certain “active” products bring your skin to a kind of edge. Something like a peel, more dramatically, or the Seeds of Change, less dramatically, coaxes your skin along in its natural cycle of turnover and renewal, but because it is acting on your skin in this way, it’s not intended to be used indefinitely. Even with very natural products, it is possible to go too far. Most such products will include an overall prescription to use it for “10 days” or “three weeks,” and while those general guidelines are helpful, it is important to have the ability to trust your own judgment, and to recognize when the time comes to stop. It is important to remember that over the long term, your skin thrives on a regimen of gentle, basic hygiene and nourishment, the undramatic and every-day.

Oh! Eureka moment: I bet this is also true for my diet. So I can have greens for breakfast every day, until that morning when greens just don’t sound good. Maybe the time has come for rice. Maybe on Saturday, I’ll surrender to sourdough pancakes smothered in real maple syrup and chalk one up for emotional nourishment. Some foods – like those raw green smoothies – may provide an effective short-term detoxification that is entirely appropriate if I need it, but if I spend my life in detox, my insides will be stripped.

There’s an avalanche of “aha” moments in my rejuvenated brain. Set the dominos toppling: Euphoria feels great, but highs often precede lows, so cultivating emotional balance is most nourishing. Self-honesty is good until it becomes self-torture. On politics and religion, I can follow my conscience without egotistically clinging to my point of view, agitate, but also listen. On relationships, I can walk the line between boundaries and generosity, confrontation and compassion. On hygiene: there’s such think as too clean, unless I want to kill both the good bacteria and the bad.

If there is anything close to an “answer,” then it can only be that maddening, fleeting balance that requires a constant use of judgment. If I’ve surrendered my judgment, the results will manifest on my skin, or in my body, emotions, relationships and the world. Using my well-exercised judgment, I may realize the time has come to plant a renewing seed of change – to inject something new – quinoa, a church service, a new tea, that book I saw, or run a mile or learn a new way to stew beans – and work the upward spiral. I might even discover a unique blend of oils that give my skin a beautiful three-week period of rebirth and renewal to rejuvenate and encourage all my redundant, everyday efforts to live with wholeness and integrity.

My review in short? Yes! For an otherworldly glow, yes, use it. Then stop.

Sondra blogs things witchy and weird at psycho-girl.com