Dry brushing may sound strange for most of people, except those who concern with health care on traditional touch or have much knowledge on it. As the name implies, you may likely be able to imagine that dry brushing is brushing activity conducted in the condition of drought or without water. When this idea comes first at your mind, you should wonder whether it is true and how could brushing be done without water. It is normal to ponder this question because daily, brushing is closely connected with water. Brushing the teeth, brushing the dirty cloth, brushing the floor and the likes are done using water, besides any special complementary materials. Those materials range from toothpaste, detergent, floor cleaning liquid and so on and so forth.
It is absolutely yes that dry brushing is done without water. If you wonder why and how, or particularly what for, or what kind of ‘thing’ to brush with no water, you should read this writing using very much attention because it would introduce you about dry brushing and some related things with it following this writing structure
Brief Introduction of Dry Brushing
Shortly speaking, dry brushing is an activity where you brush your body in the dry condition with no water using a soft scratchy brush. It is a traditional health care requiring you to brush your skin and having a shower or bath afterward. If you wonder how it is done, you would find the information in the next part of this writing or you could go to beauty salon right away. Some of beauty salons offer dry brushing service and you could enjoy the service before doing it yourself at home.
As mentioned above, this is actually a traditional health—and beauty—care. However, as it is broadly known that it is easy to do, almost not cost needed, could be done in very short time and even daily, and the most important, offer much benefit, modern people begin to adopt and modify it. If you are still a newbie on this type of care, you do not need to worry because this writing would give you comprehensive understanding so you could practice it right away. It would be far better if you consult with a friend who used to have this practice, but if you do not do so, watching video from internet would help you much.
To be short, dry brushing is done before your bath time. You enter the bathroom, take off all of your clothes and scrub down a scratch bush over your dry skin. If you wonder what part you have to brush, it is actually based on your preference. Some of practitioners say it that the area covers torso and limb, although you have to be very careful in brushing some sensitive areas such as breast. Pay very much attention that you should not miss to brush your heart area to maximize the benefit of day brushing.
You could do it in five minutes a day and having a shower or bath afterward. It is recommended that you do this activity at the morning before going to work, school or beginning your activity as it would refresh not only your body, but also your mind.
How to Do Dry Brushing
If you read this part after the above part or subtitle, you may already have an idea about how to do dry brushing. However before everything, you have to know that you need a proper brush which is soft and scratchy. For sure, you should not use any type of brush for this purpose, because there is a specially designed one for dry brushing. You can find the brush at some beauty and or health stores. It would be better if you could be selective in choosing because the more proper a brush you take, the more comfortable and beneficial the dry brushing process would be.
When it is possible, try to find any stiff brush made from firm natural materials, such as bristles derived from cactus or vegetable to assure your skin safety and healthy. It is also recommended if you could find any brush with long stick handle so it would be very helpful in reaching every detail part of your body, particularly at the back area. Online shopping available everywhere would help you getting the one that you want and need without requiring you to go somewhere and spend too much money for looking around.
Video
After you get the brush, you could have your first time dry brushing at home. Remember that it is a full-dry treatment. You do not need any water for dry brushing before it is finished and the brush must also dry as well.
Begin brushing your skin from the lower part, which is your feet and your legs. After the lower part, you could move to the middle part of your body including your stomach, back and cheese. Make sure you brush the front and back part of your body throughout. The one part you should not miss to brush, as mentioned above, is your heart. Brush the skin covering your heart for smoothing blood circulation and lymphatic system
Finish the treatment by brushing your arms, armpit and also neck. It is not recommended to brush your face unless you have a special and softer brush—designed for delicate skin of the face—for doing it. Please also notice that you should neither brush your genital area and other areas with irritations and abrasions. It is also recommended that you do brushing in one upward movement except in brushing your toes and fingers.
Anyway, if you wonder about how you brush, you could use the principle of massage, which is from left to the right. Additionally, do it firmly but not painfully. Do it with your heart and remember the function of dry brushing to make the blood circulation smooth and open the pores. Everyone has different standard on how to brush firmly but not painfully. However, to measure that your brushing is right, you could rely on the color of your skin. If you find it reddish or irritated, it means that you brush too roughly. Pink color or light red of skin (erythema) is a real sign that you brush correctly and properly as showing the blood circulation.
Having dry brushing means that you open your pores of skin along your body. Therefore, you should do bathing, shower or other types of hydrotherapy after the treatment and optimize the bathing process. You may use soap or other materials for bathing and when the pores open, the liquid or other materials you use would penetrate better and cover the nutrition that your skin need.
For getting better result, it is advised that you do this treatment everyday, or if possible, twice a day, before and after work. If you make it as a habit before having your bath time, it would be very good as you would consider it as pre-bathing treatment instead of compulsory agenda. You would not feel your bathing time perfect without having the dry brushing. Anyway, it is not recommended if you have this treatment before you go to your bed because it would make you energized and hard to sleep.
Benefits of Dry Brushing
The main reason why nowadays people are willing to come back to the past by having dry brushing is because of its big benefit. People today likely think that traditional things are not worse than modern lifestyle so they try to modify various things from the past to keep its benefit(s) while packaging it to be modernized ‘product’ so modern people would be interested in using it as well. Dry brushing is one of those things that make modern people as if coming back to the past.
Traditional people liked to have dry brushing when they did not know and use any soap or modern beauty and health treatment or care. This simple practice could cover their need to keep the healthy as well as the beauty at one time. A common saying states that it is even traditional people who have longer life and more beautiful body and face. Whether it is true or not, the following list of dry brushing benefits almost reveal that how traditional people do the dry brushing as the skin treatment turns out as really beneficial for body, heart and mind. Pay very much attention on this following list to ensure yourself about the power of dry brushing.
Dead skin cell attaching at your body does not only make your skin look dark and delay skin regeneration, but also block your skin getting nutrition from sun light or other liquid—such as soap or moisturizer—you use for skin treatment. Therefore, people try so hard to remove the dead skin cell by consuming various types of food and doing various kinds of treatment. Unfortunately, there is still a few of them who rely on dry brushing as a reliable treatment.
Dry brushing could give more direct impact in stimulating the removal of the dead skin cell as it gives direct and proper touch on your skin. You can prove by yourself that only in your very first few days of routine dry brushing, your skin would feel softer than before. By doing dry brushing, you would be naturally and freely exfoliate any dry and rough skin, which are the signs of the remaining dead skin cell, and assure your skin look in relatively short time.
In addition to block any nutrition you give to your skin, dead skin cells could also prevent your skin to breathe through its pores. It would automatically block the access of oxygen and your skin would not get what it deserves. This condition could harm ranging from very low to very serious effect in either health or beauty aspect. You, therefore, could ‘trust’ dry brushing in clearing any clogged pores because of the dead skin cell.
This one benefit still closely relates to the previous one. As the positive effect of the removal of dead skin cell, the problem of any clogged pores and congested skin could be solved. Unclogging pores and decongestant skin would therefore influence your performance and health.
For your performance, it would make your skin look dense and fresh while for your health, it would assuring oxygen supply of your body covered well and the sweat finds its exit easily.
In addition to make your skin dense, dry brushing could also make it glow through some ways. Firstly, maximizing the function of lotion, moisturizer or other cosmetic liquid you use for your skin care by opening the pore. Secondly, gently stretching connective tissue serving as reproduction medium of collagen and elastin fibers through its touch. Thirdly, stimulating sweat and oil glands to restore moist and supple character of skin.
Lymphatic system is a system responsible for collecting then removing the waste of body metabolism ranging from feces, sweat, cholesterol, stone of kidney, crystal around joints and others. Those wastes are collected from all tissues of your body then sent to the blood stream for elimination process. All ‘lines’ of this process is called lymphatic drainage.
As you could see and imagine, the removal process of your body is determined by this system. If it works well, there will be no waste hiding at your body and changing its function into toxin. At opposite, if your lymphatic system is not at the good condition, the waste of metabolism would become toxin and could harm your body as it is the main cause of inflammation and various types of disease.
Here, dry brushing really helps in stimulating lymphatic system work well particularly in detoxification. Dry brushing does it through touching lightly to the nerve under skin playing role in connecting lymphatic system or line. When this nerve gets the right touch, it would automatically stimulate the smooth run of lymphatic line and assist in draining out those waste or toxin from the body.
As it applies to the lymphatic line, the touch of dry brushing also gives positive effect on the nerve of blood artery. This would automatically increase the blood flow by making it smooth.
If you could ensure the blood flows smoothly in entire body, it means that all your body organs would work well and properly as they get adequate supply of oxygen and food carried out by the blood stream. Particularly to the skin, the smooth blood flow would energize your skin and make it look healthy and fresh.
One of the positive effects of increasing blood flow to the entire body is making it energized. You could easily imagine how much energy you could get when the blood flows smoothly to your entire body and your whole body organs get what it deserve in the right portion.
Therefore, it is recommended to do dry brushing at the morning for supporting your whole day activity.
Making mind relaxed is another concrete proof of the dry brushing benefit. Some testimonies say so and the same thing may apply to you particularly if you begin to do it routinely. Technically, the relaxed mind is closely related to the smooth blood stream which is one of main benefits of dry brushing.
When the blood could easily reach your entire body organ, particularly the brain, you would feel more enjoyable. Additionally, brushing could also reduce muscle tension and calm your mind, especially when doing it at any quite place. It is not a few people who say that doing dry brushing is addicting as they feel so invigorated after doing it more and more.
As your mind relaxed and your body organs work well, you would not find any trouble in sleeping and would deserve for a high quality sleep.
This is also confirmed by dry brushing practitioners saying that after a few first day or week of dry brushing, they could get better sleep quality.
Although it is still debatable, some people believe that dry brushing could also heal and prevent the cellulite. Dry brushing is considered having the ability to do it through softening hard fat deposit below the skin while distributing it more evenly and broadly.
As everyone may know, cellulite appears because of a bundle of fat is deposited below the skin. It should be distributed to other broader part but the body could not do so then it accumulates in one point and appears at the skin surface.
Applying the same principle as like massage, dry brushing could touch and reach the fragile part of cellulite ‘location’ and distribute the fat so it would not assembled in one point. Dry brushing could do this ‘job’ more by removing the waste found at the area so the possibility of cellulite could be minimized and the recovery of the cellulite could be accelerated, although some people believe it is temporary.
Knowing much information about dry brushing may make you could not wait to try it soon. However, there are other things you need to pay attention in doing the dry brushing. First, pregnant woman should consult to doctor first before doing this treatment.
Second, if you suffer cancer, it is strictly prohibited to do this treatment because it possibly helps the cancer cell to spread broader. Third, wash the brush once a week and replace it regularly when you find any damage. Fourth, for your brush care, you could apply a natural fruit oil into it to keep it clean and sterile before making it dry.