Get moving: 13 minute Vinyasa sequence
Sometimes when everything seems to be a bit crazy, you just need to get out of your head, move your body, and breathe. To help with this, we’ve got a short 13 minute Vinyasa sequence you can do in your lunch break to get your body moving. You can also book a class with us, or a private yoga class.
8 Tips for Flawless Skin
As a beauty therapist and makeup artist, I truly believe that flawless skin is something almost every woman wants, in one way or another. I’ve even heard women who claim that their skin is fine, asking for us to “cover up those dark circles under my eyes”, or cover up that pesky pimple, or discoloration. However, all of these could be helped by following our 8 tips for flawless skin. Currently, this is at the top of many people’s list. Don’t forget to cleanse morning and night. Although it’s been said many times, and I’m sometimes inclined to agree, that you might not need to shell out big dollars on an expensive cleanser, you need to cleanse morning & night. The cleanse in the morning means your makeup goes into clean skin & you’re not trapping dirt underneath. The evening cleanse removes makeup & prevents it from being pushed deeper into your pores as your face rests on the pillow overnight. It’s also true that leaving your makeup on overnight can cause your skin to age, as you aren’t allowing it to detoxify itself. Cleansing helps with the detoxification process. If you follow one of our 8 tips for flawless skin, make it this one. Use an SPF everyday. UV rays are one of the biggest causes of dark spots and blemishes. This step can be as simple as using a moisturizer or foundation in the morning that has an SPF included. It may be debatable whether this one should be at the top of our list. Either way, this one is a vital part of our 8 tips for flawless skin. If all else fails, even if you don’t like wearing much, if any, makeup, there are some amazing options out there at the moment, including the wave of new CC creams available. These offer a bit more coverage than a tinted moisturizer, but not as much as foundation. When paired with mascara and a touch of lip gloss, they can really lift your complexion. Use a night cream. I know some women who swear that a moisturizer is a moisturizer plain and simple. If you’re not a scientist, other than the SPF on the label of your day cream, that may definitely appear to be the case. There is definitely a difference. Night creams are packed with nutrients, and are generally richer than day creams. At night, after cleansing, while you sleep, your skin goes to work healing and regenerating itself. Night creams are designed to give skin the nutrients it needs to do this, so don’t skip it. But what about if you find a night cream too rich, and it causes you to break out? Consider a serum. Serums are light weight and if you compare the ingredients, they often have many of the same ingredients as night creams. Consider a treatment at night, such as retinol, or a hydroxy acid product which will increase cell turnover. Arbonne has some great new gentle products. Along the same lines as this, make sure the products you use are right for your skin type. More often than not, the products you used 3-5 years ago may no longer be the best bet for your skin. Periodically review what you’re using on you skin, get professional advice if needed and overhaul where required. Periodically spring clean your cosmetic and skincare cupboard. I’ve written about this before, so I’m not going to go into huge details, but products have shelf lives after opening, and use by dates, much like the good in your refrigerator. Make sure to pay attention to these and discard any products which may be past their prime. Make sure you eat a balanced diet. I know I’ve definitely been guilty of not thinking of this one when it comes to looking after my skin. I see it all the time, when I don’t drink enough water, or eat too much oily food, my skin doesn’t look as clear and can tend to break out. Oops! Avoid stress. Stress can be the biggest killer of your skin, leading to dryness, breakouts, and even more lines. Obviously, with cortisol, the stress hormone buzzing around your body, it has to be metabolized, and his often leads to the body focussing on this, rather than on regenerating the skin. Often we top this up with extra serves of comforting food as well, within can lead to breakouts. As we frown more, the number of lines in our face also sets in. Thinking about booking that holiday now? There’s a reason people say you have that post-holiday glow! Contact us if you’d like some tailored recommendations, or shop to get our ebook on flawless skin.
What is the difference between Vinyasa & Yin yoga?
I often get asked what is the difference between Vinyasa and Yin yoga. Check out our latest video to help understand a few of the differences between Vinyasa & Yin yoga.
Sustainable Beauty to feel great
As women, we often feel stuck in a sense that our self esteem is inevitably linked to how we look, and more often than not, we feel powerless to change that. This is often even more so when we don’t want to succumb to toxic chemical ingredients, and want to stay safe and make organic sustainable choices for our personal care products. Beauty products don’t need to be toxic. We’re constantly told we should be confident in our own skin, and sometimes this can result in us feeling a bit guilty when we reach for the concealer because we’re feeling a bit tired. However, this doesn’t have to be the case, as there are plenty of beautiful, natural ways to improve our lot. Let’s face it, like most women, when our skin looks and feels amazing, we feel invincible, and on top of the world, and it feels like our self esteem is at its peak. Here are a few tips to help with maintaining this feeling all the time, whilst using sustainable beauty to feel great. Get plenty of fresh air, take deep breaths, and stand up straight. I know it sounds silly, but when we get stressed, and feel like we’re lacking confidence, usually, our shoulders start to slouch, we start breathing shallowly, and not getting enough oxygen in, which really is counter-productive, and usually makes us feel more stressed, and even less confident, as our brain isn’t getting enough oxygen, so breath it in, and put those shoulders back, and usually we’ll start to feel more confident pretty quickly. Eat a good diet. It’s no coincidence that a lot of us end up with breakouts after we eat a lot of junkfood. Your body has to get rid of the toxins somehow, and one key way the body does this, is through the skin, which often manifests as pimples. Your body won’t need as many products if you take care of it from the inside, allowing you to use more eco-friendly, sustainable beauty to feel great. Gain some independence. Often when we feel trapped or dependent, we also feel less confident, and this then has a flow on effect, that we end up taking poorer care of ourself, because we feel we’re not worth it, and then it goes around in a vicious circle, and we end up feeling trapped. Get out of the rut, do something for yourself, whether it be getting out and meeting friends for coffee, getting out and doing something you enjoy, or even starting your own business, to get a bit of extra money coming in, so you can afford to do these things. Take good care of your skin. This can be done at home. Start with simple steps like cleansing morning and night, and moisturising. These basic steps will help you skin detoxify and renew itself, and start heading you in the right direction for pure, clear, wrinkle free skin. This is the foundation for looking great. No amount of makeup is ever going to completely cover blemishes and wrinkles. As a makeup artist, I constantly get called in at the 11th hour before a wedding and asked to cover up under eye circles in a way that won’t exacerbate the fine lines under their eyes, which could have been easily controlled in the weeks leading up to the wedding, by taking better care of their skin. If you don’t feel confident to set up a good skincare routine, call in the professionals. A lot of beauty therapists are more than happy to consult with clients on a good at home routine which will fit within your lifestyle. Don’t be worried that they’ll try and sell you complicated products which you won’t be able to use at home. Be clear with them about what your lifestyle entails, and if you only want to start with a few basic products, and tell them if their recommendations are starting to sound a bit complicated. Give your new skincare routine time to work. In a lot of cases, on starting or revamping their skincare routine, clients can in some cases get breakouts. In some instances, this can simply be the skin detoxifying itself, and the impurities which may have been buried in the deeper layers of the skin coming to the surface, and being removed from the body. This is perfectly normal as your skin adjusts to the new skincare. If they don’t settle down after a few days to a week and you are concerned, once again, let the therapist know, and ask questions. Whilst makeup shouldn’t replace a good skincare routine, it definitely has a fantastic self-esteem boosting place in any woman’s life. Get a good makeup routine going right from the start. Once again, a good place to start with this, is to consult a professional, and be clear about what time you have available, and what sort of budget, and what your lifestyle entails. Its no good trying to use a heap of makeup and using heaps of mascara if you have an active lifestyle and are going to look like a panda at the end of the day. Invest in some good quality products right from the start. Whilst it may seem like the $10 makeup from the supermarket will suffice, and does the same job, this is often deceptive economy. Often, you end up using less of the more expensive product, which means that you actually end up saving money. Not only this, often the slightly more expensive products are actually better for your skin, and won’t clog your pores, leaving your skin looking better over the long term, so you can end up using less and less as time goes by. Invest in just a few good items which you’ll end up using all the time. There’s no point having a cupboard full of products which you just end up throwing out because you never use them, or you don’t know how to, or you
Free 12 minute yoga sequence
Are you looking for something to get your blood flowing while you’re at home? Don’t have any equipment? We’ve got you covered with a great, short, sharp, and free 12 minute yoga sequence you can do at home. If you’d like more of this type of content, why not consider a membership? Alternatively, contact us, or comment below, to let us know what you’d like to see.
17 Beauty Ideas for Busy Mums
If you’re anything like the typical mum, your beauty routine is probably the first thing to go when family life gets busy. Who has time to run down the beauty salon for that facial when you’ve got little kids at home, or a husband with a demanding job? We’ve got 17 beauty ideas for busy mums, so you can stay looking young and fresh. Clean out your bathroom cabinet regularly. Most products have expiry dates, and will only last so long once the container is opened. We’ve got a few tips for detoxing here: Looking at all those products you never get a chance to use is just going to make you feel bad, and that leads to stress, which causes more wrinkles, so get rid of them. Keep your routine nice and quick and easy, with multitasking products. If your routine is long and complicated, its going to be the first thing that you get rid of when things get busy. Use a maximum of 3-4 steps routinely. Wash/cleanse, eye cream, and moisturize are your basics. This is a highly important one in our beauty ideas for busy mums. Pick up a few good go-to products which suit your skin type. Sometime cheaper options don’t really do the job, and you actually end up using more product, so you end up spending the same amount anyway. Stick to a cleanser or even a cleanser and toner in one if you want to save time, eye cream, day cream, and night cream. You can then add a masque, toner, and exfoliator as needed, but this is all you really need. When applying your moisturizer, extend it down your neck a bit. The neck is one area that starts to show age quite quickly. When we’re busy, its hard to justify the time it might take to apply a separate neck cream, but sometimes, just your normal moisturizer can be effective enough. Give yourself a 7 minute facial at home. A facial really can be that quick, and doesn’t have to take hours at a salon. After the kids have gone to bed, cleanse, pat on a small amount of a masque like the Arbonne RE9 Advanced Cellular Renewal masque, which contains pineapple and papaya enzymes to deep cleanse and exfoliate all in one step. Leave on for 5-7 minutes, and wash off, follow with toner, eye cream, and night cream, and jump straight into bed, and wake up with silky soft, illuminated skin. Learn a bit about your skin type. Next time you are lucky enough to get one of those gift vouchers, or get some time with a beauty therapist, pick their brains about what skin type you are, and what recommendations they can offer for looking after your skin at home. Most of the time, they’ll be more than happy to share. Employ a mobile beauty therapist. There are a plethora of mobile options available out there now. You don’t need to spend hours driving, finding parking, getting the kids a babysitter etc, so you can have a facial. How about having that facial at 8pm at night in your own loungeroom, while the kids are tucked up in bed? There are professional beauty therapists who will come to you, so you don’t have to worry about travelling, babysitting etc. Stay as relaxed as possible. Believe it or not, above and beyond most expensive creams and moisturisers, leading a stress free life will actually help avoid a lot of wrinkles and other skin problems. Stay hydrated. Water is one of the best tools for hydrating your skin. Its easy enough to carry a water bottle around with you, and hydrating from the inside is usually more effective than even the most expensive moisturisers. Get some good exercise, and sweat. Sweating is your body’s way of detoxifying itself. Sweating is one really effective way of getting all the toxins and blockages out of your pores. Eat a good healthy, balanced diet as much as possible. Incorporate enough good fatty acids, as this will also help keep your skin plump. Nutrients from food also help provide nutrition to your skin. Keep your makeup simple. A good cc cream can be a life saver, instead of using primer, foundation, concealer, and powder, a good cc cream can do all of these. Check out Arbonne CC creams. Use the makeup basics. Following a cc cream, you can keep your makeup as simple as eye liner, mascara, and a bit of blush and lip gloss if you need. These basic products can get you through almost any occasion, with a few tweaks. Get enough sleep. Wherever possible, get enough sleep. Sleep is one big thing that allows us to regenerate and heal our bodies, which in turn helps with our beauty routine. This is probably one of the hardest, but also one of the most under-rated in our beauty ideas for busy mums. Keep your hands in good condition. Hands are one area that is constantly exposed to the elements. Apply a good hand cream occasionally, when you get a chance and your skin will thank you for it in the future. Think about using a good quality natural bristle hairbrush, to brush your hair. This will help distribute the natural oils in your hair, and help keep it healthy, shiny and beautiful. Listen to your body. Often when things start happening, like breakouts or your hair not looking great, it means that something is going on, and something needs tweaking, so have a look at it, as often there is a pretty quick fix. So which of these will you be taking the time to do? Please let us know in the comments. If you’d like some personalised recommendations, why not book a personalised consultation. Contact us if you’d like more information.
Destress your skin
With everything that is going on at the moment, some of us may be starting to feel quite stressed, and this may be showing on our skin. In some cases, we may not have even recovered from the festive season. Just as our bodies can become stressed, so can our skin, and there are things we can do to help destress our skin, which will also help destress our bodies. Drink plenty of water. Our bodies are made up largely of water, and keeping ourselves hydrated assists in repair and detoxification. Cleanse your skin every night, and never wear your makeup to bed. Wearing your makeup to bed can cause the products, and any build up from the day to work their way into your pores, and clog them. Your body and skin do a lot of their detoxification and regeneration at night, and not cleansing and removing makeup can delay this process, as the skin won’t have access to all the nutrients it needs. Make sure you follow up with a good night cream and eye cream. Both of these products will provide the skin with the regenerating nutrients it needs. Check up on what your using on your skin, are you using skincare that is past its use by date? Are you using products that are past their open shelf life? Open shelf life is indicated by this little symbol on the back of the jar/bottle. This open jar type symbol with a number with the letter M indicates the number of months you should keep the product after you have opened it. Once products are exposed to the outside environment, they can grow bacteria, and degrade like any food which has past its use by date. Also check the purity of products you are using on your skin. Are you using products with parabens and phthalates? Due to their chemical structure, these chemicals (look for names on the ingredient list which end in “paraben” or “phthalate”) can mimic oestrogen when they are absorbed into our bodies, and cause disruption to the endocrine system. Other things to look out for are animal fats, which are not ideal, as you often won’t know where they are sourced from. Animal fats are usually seen on ingredient lists as fatty acids such as oleic, palmitic, stearic, palmitoleic, linoleic and myristic acid. These animal fats are often manufactured by boiling down the hard fat from animal carcasses, and may contain many impurities, which can lead to impurities in the skin. If you see these ingredients on your product’s ingredient panel, it is well worth checking on the origin of these fatty acids. Stressed skin can lead to breakouts. If you do need a spot treatment, there are many great ones on the market, which tick all the boxes. Look for a nice gentle one, with ingredients like a gentle salicylic or glycolic acid to break down any pore blockages and gently exfoliate and remove impurities. Weekly treatments can also assist with this, and prevent the return of any impurities. If you don’t already have a treatment regime, its a good idea to consult a beauty therapist for a regime which is best suited to your skintype. To assist your skin in destressing itself, exercise can also play an important role, as can keeping yourself happy. Exercise allows you to sweat which improves the skin’s detoxification process. There are plenty of affordable options to exercise at home, both now and into the future. Contact us for more information, or why not check out our membership option, with both live and on-demand options. Finally, relax and take care of yourself. Staying calm also helps to stop you from frowning and forming wrinkles, which can lead to the skin looking more stressed than it really is. Why not check out a meditation class to help with this? If you feel you need more, we’re offering virtual consultations to help you take care of your skin at home. We also suggest checking our our options for on demand and in person yoga classes above.
Keep your skin fresh
Living in these times can place pressures on our skin, particularly with high levels of stress or sun exposure (although maybe more stress at the moment). With this in mind, it’s a great idea to protect your skin, and keep it young and fresh, rather than having to resort to drastic measures later. Here are a few tips, so that in 10 years those Facebook photos look as youthful as they do today. Start early. Its never too early to start taking good care of your skin. As soon as you become conscious of it, its a good time to start, and definitely when you start wearing makeup. However, there is a fine line between this, and starting too early. Don’t start on the strong anti-ageing products too early. Many women get into the anti-ageing skincare really young, even into their teens. Then, as they age, their skin is so used to the anti-ageing ingredients in many products, that they’re left with nowhere to turn other than botox, and other extreme measures. A qualified beauty therapist will be able to assist with recommending products that will suit your skin. Ensure your routine will fit with your lifestyle. Many women get told they need to use a myriad of products, in a complicated routine, which may even be reminiscent of a science experiment. The science experiment is then the first thing that goes out the window when they get tired. A simple routine, which may only consisting of only a few products, and which is able to be maintained, is much more effective than the science experiment. Take good care of your skin at home. No beauty therapist is going to be able to repair weeks or years of damage and stress with one or two facials. Taking good care of your skin at home, and investing in a few good quality products at home will help more than one or two facials ever will, particularly in times when beauty services may not be available. Avoid picking that zit. Invest in a good quality spot creme, or a good deep cleansing masque (leave the deep cleansing masque on overnight, to fully draw out the impurity). If you squeeze too hard or too soon (before the impurity has been drawn to the surface), this can result in scarring, which doesn’t assist in a flawless complexion. Make sure you avoid too much sun exposure, and use SPF when going to the beach. There are plenty of good fake tans and spray tans out there at the moment, so that doesn’t mean you have to go down the beach with lily white legs. In fact, Arbonne even has a spray on self tanner with SPF 15, which is an absolute miracle working, doing double duty, which is a life saver for many busy women. Finally get out there and enjoy life. Lowering your stress level is the best way to prevent your skin from ageing prematurely. A smile is also the best accessory for looking great. Take care of your stress levels. When we’re stressed, we tend to frown more, and be more tense, which can have adverse effects on our skin. Take care of your body. When our diet is poor, and we’re not taking care of our body, this can reflect in our skin, with increased levels of congestion and breakouts, not to mention other signs of ageing. Need some more tips? Why not consider booking a consultation with a beauty therapist to learn to better take care of your skin at home. We offer virtual consultations, so you don’t need to be in Melbourne to take advantage of this. Contact us if you’d like more information.
Step by Step secrets for a great facial at home
Here are a few simple tips for getting glowing skin with a great facial at home without the expensive salon price tags. Also check out our video on this topic. Perhaps we could consider that some of the things that are going on at the moment, can be a catalyst for us to develop some healthy habits at home. Things to consider first Steps for a great facial at home Contact us if you’d like a virtual consultation via phone or video call to upgrade your skincare regime at home.
Introducing Online Yoga
Introducing Online Yoga, meditation and mindfulness options from SGD Body & Beauty: We will soon be launching online yoga classes, meditation sessions, a learn to meditate course, and mindfulness sessions. We will also be aiming to add online fitness and potentially barre classes as well to consolidate our offering. We’ve found that yoga and mindfulness, and meditation in particular can help the mind deal with troublesome times such as those we are going through right now. Stay tuned, contact us or subscribe to our mailing list, for more information. It’s a troubling time at the moment with everything going on, and sometimes a little mindfulness, and moving our body can help us move through troubling times with more equanimity. We’re looking forward to helping our clients through these troubling times. To help with this, we’re introducing online yoga, meditation and mindfulness. Check out our YouTube channel for some more videos as well. The video below is also a snippet of what to expect. What will you be able to expect from our offering: Let us know if there’s anything else you’d like us to add to these offerings, and we will definitely take this into account, and will add these as our time permits. This is something we will be developing as time goes by, and we look forward to welcoming more people to these kinds of options. Just because we are going through a troubling time, doesn’t mean you have to loose your mind. In fact, yoga and meditation can help us to maintain our health and our mind, and actually grow during these times.