Learning to listen to your body, one ingredient at a time

The natural skin care market is saturated with products making bold claims. We are promised to feel better, look better, and live longer by popping a pill, mixing in a powder, or lathering something on our face. The access that we have to so many active skincare products can be overwhelming if you don’t know how to connect with your body, your intuition, and can't find a natural skin care product that is right for you.

 

Today we have easy access to incredible products. There has been a proliferation in natural skincare, organic skincare, clean skincare and active skincare products. We can read reviews and get feedback on how products worked for others, how the products were sourced and made. We can even order products to our door.

 

We are simultaneously bombarded with information and misinformation. Every other person is telling us what to eat, and use to look and feel like them. For many of us, it’s difficult to tell what is genuine advice or simply paid marketing. With people financially invested in promoting natural skin care, it’s extremely difficult for consumers to know what products may genuinely help them achieve their goals.

 

One tool that I rely on consistently in my life now is the one ingredient rule. The rule is simple: introduce single ingredient products into your life so that you can deeply connect with the ingredient and see, from your own experience, if it is something that is serving you or not.

 

This may seem simple, but it is actually a profound practice. For starters, most people are so dissociated from their intuition that they don’t even know where to begin when it comes to making sovereign choices for their bodies. 

 

The one-ingredient rule also requires a deep unlearning from the more is better mentality. The world of marketing relies on you believing that more is always better. If you have one, you need two. If you have last year's model, you need this year’s. If one natural skin care product is good, then ten must be even better!

 

When it comes to multiple-ingredient products, it is difficult to understand which ingredients are serving you with real active skincare benefits. Our intuition as humans has been dulled from overstimulation and overconsumption. We have been so heavily manipulated into thinking we are not capable of knowing what our bodies need that we have to rely on others to tell us what they take. Then, we take their tales and try to apply them to our life, throwing other people’s solutions at our problems, hoping that they stick.

 

By sticking to single-ingredient products, you can truly learn know how your body interacts with the ingredient. A multi-ingredient product may help you, but how do you know exactly what your body needs in the product? And what may be harming it?

 

From mild to severe allergies and intolerances, one person's salvation is another's irritation. Too many ingredients at once can impair your ability to truly commune with nature and see if the product is right for you.

 

I love sampling single-ingredient natural skin care product at health stores to see if my body resonates with it. This is how I discovered Rare by Nature’s wild sourced Prickly Pear Seed oil. Having hiked in the Atlas Mountains where Rare by Nature wild harvests their prickly pears, putting the oil on my face immediately brought me back to the purity of the air, and the delicious taste of the prickly pear fruit that I ate in abundance from wild bushes all over Morocco.

 

This organic skincare oil is so special. It’s actually like no other oil I’ve used on my face (and I’ve been using oil exclusively on my face for over a decade). It’s rich and hydrating, and it penetrates so well. I can confidently say that my skin loves this prickly pear seed oil. This is a one on one relationship between my body and a single ingredient. There’s no mystery, no “well maybe it’s this or that aspect of the product”... it’s the prickly pear seed oil.

 

Using the oil on my face is a daily mediation; I apply it to my face after rinsing it with warm water and massage it in. I then use a gua sha crystal to massage my face and direct lymph towards my lymph nodes. This helps the oil penetrate and stimulates natural collagen production.  The oil, the stone, and my face are in a sacred union - the simplicity and purity of the single ingredient bring such clarity to my routine. 

 

I also love Rare by Nature's Kakadu plum capsules. When it comes to supplements, single-ingredients are essential to me as capsules commonly contain fillers, binding, and processing agents. Rare by Nature’s capsules are 100% pure and additive-free.

 

Kakadu plum is the world’s most potent natural source of vitamin C. Rare by Nature’s capsules are so much more than an immune boosting organic vitamin C powder. They provide active skin care by stimulating the body’s ability to produce collagen.

 

Kakadu plum is also rich in copper, iron, fiber, and a polyphenol called ellagic acid. It also contains thiamine, riboflavin, magnesium, zinc, and calcium. Kakadu is also loaded with antioxidants, including flavonols, aromatic acids, anthocyanins, and lutein. This cocktail of single-ingredient goodness is far superior to typical vitamin C supplements that are made from synthetic ascorbic acid and are devoid of micro-nutrients.

 

After discovering Rare by Nature, I have settled on the combination of prickly pear seed oil and Kakadu plum capsules for my active skincare routine. It's a single ingredient duo that nourishes and regenerates my skin both from within and through the surface.

 

Rare by Nature just gets it. Not only are their natural skin care products truly gorgeous, but their mindfully wild sourced ingredients also bring the wonders of the world right to my doorstep. With many single-ingredient products to try, Rare by Nature gets my stamp of approval.

 

Camille