Get friendly with your body brush! Maybe you have one at home already, if not you can easily find one on the high street. Ideally it should be a natural fibre brush, perhaps on with a long handle so you can get to those hard to reach places! For the body use a brush with firm bristles, with maybe a lighter touch over senstive areas. Only brush on dry skin with dry brush bristles.

Why?
Body brushing is fantastic way of invigorating your circulation and lymphatic systems, and it may have healing properties too! Body brushing helps speed up the process of eliminating waste via lymph stimulation. Our lymphatic system is important for eliminating waste and dead cells from our body, by transferring them to the bloodstream ready for elimination. Since it doesn’t pump like our circulatory system, it uses our natural contraction of muscles, from body movement, breathing, excercise or manual stimulation to push the fluid along the lymph vessels which sit just below the skins surface up to the lymph nodes.

Not only does body brushing feel great, and helps with your lyphatic drainage, but you’re also exfoliating at the same time! Your skin is the largest waste eliminatin organ in the body, so brushing can remove dead skin cells that might be blocking pores – and can help if you have dry skin by stimulating sebum secretion from your sebaceous glands – giving us softer, smoother looking skin. Experts claim that it can even help with cellulite – which can’t be bad!

How?
Use long sweeping motions, towards the major lymph nodes inteh body, such as the groin, armpits and base of the neck. From your feet, brush from toes to the top of the thigh, towards your groin. From your hands, brush up towards your shoulders and down the front of your chest and to your armpits Don’t forget to include a pass over each side of the neck (lots of lymph glands here) but be gentle, where skin is thinner and avoid brusing diretly on breast tissue (see precautions). On your stomach use small circular strokes in a clockwise direction, following the movement of the gut. Aim for 3 to 5 minutes each day. I do mine before I jump in the shower.

Tips

• Use a special brush specifically designed for your face, as the skin is more sensitive here.
• Stroke towards your heart – lymph vessel valves only have one way valves that can be put under strain if you stroke the away from the heart.
• Use softer strokes where skin is thinner or sensitive

Precautions

• Avoid using on breasts and genitalia area.
• Avoid on sensitive skin, varicose veins, open wounds, inflamed skin or painful rashes.
• Avoid on sunburnt areas.
• Avoid in an active cancer state or over enlarged lymph nodes.
• Seek doctor’s advice before brushing if pregnant
• Stop brushing if an allergic reaction appears.