The Highlights
- Ayurveda and Essential oils that keep your feet healthy and happy
- 6 Pampering foot care tips for Spring, some old school, some not so
- Find out how Henna Art on your feet can up you self care game
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Free Lion Body Care things that you can use in your Foot care rituals.
Woohoo! Spring is here and sandal weather is just around the corner. Your feet work so hard all year round. As we emerge from heavy boots and sock season, your feet deserve a little pampering. Happy, cared for feet ensures comfort and your continued effortless mobility. Foot care rituals give you an opportunity to relax, detox and de-stress while putting a smile on your face.
In Ayurveda, massaging the feet with warm herbal oils balances energies, promoting vitality and inner harmony. Sunflower OIl, Coconut oil, Rice Bran Oil and Shea Butter are excellent moisturizers, preventing dryness and cracking, leaving your feet soft and supple.
Essential oils like peppermint, neem and tea tree oil can deliver natural antifungal and antibacterial properties, keeping your feet healthy and odor-free. Lavender oil soothes tired feet and promotes relaxation, while Rosemary oil can help relieve muscle tension and inflammation.
Massaging these oils into your feet not only nourishes the skin but also enhances circulation, promoting overall foot health and vitality as you step into the new season. Here are some tips to love your feet from winter funky to spring fabulous.
1. Go polish free for a bit. We love our nail art, but its important to go paint-free as much as possible. So start by Removing any polish you may have applied for the winter and let your toenails breathe for at least a week or so.
2. Give them a good soak in warm water and bath salts. Soaking gives your feet that relaxing Aaaah feeling. it also helps soften up skin to make exfoliating easier and gets toenails polish ready. Grab a bucket or a small tub. Add some Epsom salts to draw out toxins; some lemon or cucumber slices; flower petals or mint leaves and a few drops of the essential oil of your choice. Kick back, relax, read a book. Let feet soak for at least 10 minutes.
3. Exfoliate. After the foot soak, your skin is softer and ready for exfoliating. Tough skin can build up over the winter Remove dry, calloused skin from heels and foot bottoms with a foot file or pumice stone. Follow with a sugar or salt scrub to remove the top layer of dead skin from your legs and feet.
From our shelves: Free Lion Body Scrub Collection
Namika is a salt scrub and polish, made with mineral salts, ground azuki beans, sunflower oil, shea butter, kaolin clay, nori flakes and Vitamin E. Perfect for tough skinned feet.
Lavender is a salt scrub made with mineral salts, ground apricot kernel seed shell, sunflower oil, shea butter, kaolin clay and Vitamin E. A lighter salt exfoliant that works wonderfully for most feet.
Espresso is a sugar scrub made with organic cane sugar, ground coffee beans, sunflower oil, shea butter, kaolin clay and Vitamin E. A gentler exfoliant with the added kick of coffee to perk up the skin.
Rose Garden is a sugar scrub made with organic cane sugar, oat flour, ground brown rice, chick pea flour, sunflower oil, shea butter, kaolin clay and Vitamin E. An even gentler exfoliant designed for sensitive skin.
4. Massage. Ayurveda loves a good massage for relaxing, moving your lymph and keeping your prana, or chi, flowing. It's especially wonderful for a good night's sleep. You can self massage or this can be a ritual you share with a loved one. In an ayurveda home, how to do a foot massages is taught to the young as a form of service to others within their capacity. In case you are wondering how to do an Ayurveda foot massage, here's a video. The instructions start at 1:47 minutes.
Ayurveda Massage is done primarily with oils or anhydrous salves. What you want is therapeutic benefits with a wonderful slip to make massage flowing and fluid.
From Our Shelves: Ma’s Massage Oil
I’ve prepared this Ayurveda Oil the old school way, using my grandmother’s recipe. Castor, Camphor, Eucalyptus, Peppermint, Mustard Seed, Ajwain Seed, Coriander Seed, Clove and Cinnamon Oils work together for a wonderfully healing massage. Perfect for tired, aching feet. Just remember to warm up the oils before using.
5. Moisturize. Keep that dry skin nourished. Follow exfoliation with a lotion, cream or body butter. Ideally, you want to do this when you are not using your feet. Apply moisturizer to your feet, put on a pair of cotton socks and put your feet up. Its Netflix time!
From our Shelves: Free Lion Foot Salve
Made with with a highly moisturizing blend of shea butter, coconut, sunflower, rice bran and castor oils to soften your skin and cuticles. Then we add neem oil to help repair cracked skin; tea tree, lavender and rosemary essential oils for their anti-bacterial, anti-fungal properties and peppermint essential oil to stimulate circulation and bring some healing oxygen to your feet.
Free Lion Body Butter
Our best selling, luxuriously rich formula deeply moisturizes, soothes and breathes new life into your skin. Made from Shea Butter, Sunflower, Rice Bran and Avocado Oils with Aloe Vera extract and vitamin E. These fabulous ingredients work together to easily penetrate the skin for long-lasting nourishment that heals, softens, brightens, protects, calms, rejuvenates and revitalizes skin.
Free Lion Body Lotion
This light lotion is our top seller for a reason! It deeply hydrates and nourishes the skin, leaving it feeling silky smooth and supple. And it absorbs in seconds, cooling and soothing your skin and giving you the perfect post-sun pick-me-up. We use natural ingredients like Calendula Flower Tea and Aloe Vera Juice combined with Rice Bran Oil, Macadamia Oil and Vitamin E.
5. Nail Care: Cut, File and Cuticles. Now that your skin has been refreshed, time for those toenails. Trim your nails into a square shape and not too close. No, that’s not just a fashion thing. Having a square at either edge of your toenails helps keep ingrown toenails and the pesky bacteria that can make them hurt in check. Use a nail file to gently smooth nail edges and any rough spots. Or get a professional to do this part. It’s all about the pampering! Gently push your cuticles back to make room for some bold, bright polish. You can use the end of your nail file, a special cuticle tool or, if you're a minimalist like me, your fingernails.
6. Get out your paint box. Nail colouring has always been a thing in Indian Beauty care. Back in the ancient day, this was done using henna to create a natural stain on the nail, while delivering anti-fungal protection for nail health. People still stain their nails using henna. But it's hard to resist including the fabulous colours that come from Nail Gel and Polish world. It's just too much fun!
You know how I just said I was a minimalist? Well, when it comes to nail colour, I like mine sparkly, shiny, and all the colours. Then I like to admire my toes. It's one of the places I like to have fun with paint. I don't really paint my fingernails, as I have what I consider working, busy hands on which nail polish lasts a day or two before chipping sets in. Gel nails work but they compromise the health of my nails so that's also a no. I don't do the make up thing either, beyond eyeliner and lipstick colour, due to skin irritations. So when it's time to paint toes, I'm all in!
My two bits: Choose nail colours that makes you feel happy and bright because you’ll be the one that gets to enjoy your toe colour all the time--in fact, every time you look down at your feet. If you usually pick the same kind of colours, step out of your comfort zone and pick something you don't usually choose. What's the worst that could happen?
Start with a nourishing base coat, followed by a 2-3 layers of your colours. Get creative. Paint each toe a different colour; add stickers; paint on a pattern; add sparkles. Just have fun with it. Finish with a protective top coat. You can DIY it or have a professional make that magic happen for you.
7. Henna Body Art. Turn your feet into a work of art. You can DIY it or book an appointment with a Henna Artist.
I'm a big fan of the Henna experience. I loved applying henna from the time I could weld a toothpick, dip it into henna paste and make lines and dots with it on my skin. That's a very old school way of doing it, long before the advent of Henna piping bags. Henna patterning is organic in its process. You can learn basic pattern forms but there this no fixed way it must be applied. It will be as unique as you are, for no two patterns are actually ever the same.
Having Henna applied to your skin, by yourself or someone else, is a therapeutic experience. You enter a world of relaxation and mindfulness. Its slow art, which means it’s meditative. You can slow down and appreciate the pattern unfolding on your skin. It is both mesmerizing and calming. Your mind wanders into a zen state.
Henna has a number of beneficial holistic wellness properties. First of all, it’s really cooling, when wet and first applied, which makes it helpful for taking the temperature down on hot, swollen feet. Henna is also an astringent with anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory properties that help soothe and heal various irritated skin conditions. It is also used on nails to protect cuticles and the space under the nails from infections and bacteria. Its anti-fungal properties make it an excellent and natural treatment for foot and nail fungus.
After the henna paste is applied, let it dry and leave it on your skin to give the henna dye time to sink in. As the henna dries, it leaves a cooling sensation on your skin, like a gentle breeze.
Once the henna is dry and has had time to stain your skin, it's time for the big reveal. Gently scrape off the dried henna paste, and voila – your skin is left with a beautiful, design that's uniquely yours. You’ll find that your skin also feels soft and supple. Apply plant oils to your Henna art to preserve it. My favourite thing to use is a bit of Free Lion Body Butter.
There! You're done. Now it's time to take your toes out for some fun— a night on the town or to the beach or any place that says, "Play time!" to you. Go barefoot in the grass and practice Earthing—a way to reset your energetic system and anchor into the Earth. Or you and your toes can stay in and relax. If you do, make sure you put your feet up so that you can admire them. Whatever you choose, enjoy the work of art that is YOU!
Sherazad Jamal
What are your favourite ways to pamper your feet? Leave us a comment below.