How to Balance Your Chakras for Better Skin
Better skin starts on the inside. (Photo: Trunk Archive)
There are many factors of beauty that focus on the surface, particularly when it comes to the skin. We’re focused on what we can see, applying creams and techniques to erase or banish maladies that have risen to the surface. It’s that way about a good many things in our culture, including our complex relationship with weight here in the United States. It seems we’re much more focused on what you can see on the exterior than delving deeply into what’s happening on the outside.
It’s a known fact that all of it is inextricably intertwined: our emotions, energy, and internal mental health drive a good amount of what we visualize at the surface. But what if (and stay with me here) instead of the myriad of malady cures, lotions, potions, and diets you could balance your chakras for a healthier and more beautiful you?
Many Hollywood and business elite have turned to the teachings of Kimberly Snyder, certified holistic nutritionist and best-selling author of The Beauty Detox Power: Nourish Your Mind and Body for Weight Loss and Discover True Joy. Snyder book struck a chord with me as an emotional eater, and this book completely transformed my relationship with my body and food. Slowly, I’ve been balancing my energy with meditation and yoga every day in order to balance my feelings without turning to food, which has in turn given me insanely glowing skin and the fastest-growing hair of my life. It’s time for some balance, and if balancing my chakras will do it, I’m all in.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Beauty-Detox-Power-Discover/dp/0373893183
What are chakras exactly? “Chakra is the Sanskrit word for ‘wheel,’ and it stands for the seven energy centers that concentrate along your spine and affect all aspects of your health: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual,” says Snyder. “The more balanced you become, the more energy can flow freely. ‘Stuck’ energy in the body can lead to impaired tissue and organ function, accelerated aging, lowered immunity and more. Our emotions, feelings, thoughts, which comprise our overall energy, also have a large effect on our weight and long-term health.”
Snyder has created a successful practice focused on nutritionally-balanced foods and a manner of living which brings the body into balance, releasing it from the conditions that create excess weight gain and beauty maladies such as lackluster hair and nails, along with skin concerns.
But is getting your emotional, spiritual, and physical energy really going to impact your health and how you look? The answer is it absolutely can. “All the chakras are important because they correspond to different organs,” explains Snyder. “Your gut is the second brain…from the Western perspective, an upset stomach means an upset stomach, but according to the chakra-based approach, an upset stomach could stem from too much anxiety, which creates an imbalance of energy in the third chakra, also known as the solar plexus chakra. Constant nervous anxiety in the stomach can eventually manifest as ulcers and other forms of digestive distress, and hindered/inefficient digestion can cause one to hold on to waste and matter in general, making it harder to lose weight.” Which is also murder on your skin.
In order to begin healing by balancing your chakras and emotions, Snyder advises avoiding Western cures such as antacids and healing from the inside out with probiotics, eliminating dairy and other inflammatory foods, along with learning to balance stress with meditation or yoga, subjects about which Snyder is particularly keen to discuss. “Yoga is infinitely more than just a form of exercise,” she says. “Regularly and properly practiced, yoga creates a union or alignment with all parts of your being, and promotes the release of old energy stored in various parts of the body in order to move on without them.” Snyder so believes in yoga’s ability to balance the body, mind, and energy that she’s released a home-based yoga series to make the practice more accessible to all.
The other thing you can do to heal yourself from the inside out? Eating better. “Food can help balance your chakras. What you eat not only affects the physical body, but can influence your energy based on so many factors: color, nutrients, nourishing qualities, and where and how it was grown. Fiber-filled green vegetables are nourishing for the heart, containing vitamins and nutrients along with a cleansing and blood purifying effect, all of which support heart health. As energy physically opens around your heart, it can help open the emotional energies that center around love. Whole foods which contain the endosperm and the outer brand promote wholeness and balance. If we are what we eat, we want to ingest and digest whole, natural foods.” Other suggestions for foods to balance the chakras and improve your overall health and appearance are included in the book, outlined explicitly along with exercises and recipes to help release energy blockages in order to explore a happier, healthier body.
In the end, the balance that comes from aligning the chakras has given me a glow that goes beyond shimmering skin from an increase of whole foods. “Emotional eating has been oversimplified, but there are specific food cravings for specific emotions. I’ve never seen a happy person eat a whole pizza. Like chakras, cravings are more complex than physical and involve emotional, mental aspects of our energy that needs to be balanced once and for all to be overcome.” Personally, I’m convinced the more calm I am, the absence of tortured eating shines through.
“Let go of anger and live in the now, let go of the past, which is easier said than done, but it’s a process,” Snyder counsels. “Only when you incorporate all these aspects of energetic healing will you truly heal yourself.”
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