One of the most important ways to allow the power of nature to support your health and beauty is to tune in to the changing seasons of the year. Every part of the year has a different collective energy, which in turn affects your personal energy. Riding this wave and adjusting your dietary and lifestyle patterns to be in sync with the flow of the seasons will help you achieve Radical Beauty. The more in sync you are with the universal energies taking place on a larger scale beyond you, the better your skin, hair, and nails will look, and the more power you’ll feel supporting you in everything you do.
For instance, by eating according to the seasons and largely focusing your diet on the produce that is being grown locally during the current season, you will be eating food that is at its peak of freshness. Not only will it taste its best, but it will also have the most beauty nutrition because it was picked close to when and where you consume it. Seasonal foods also tend to be more affordable since crops for each season are naturally in abundance and sellers don’t have to account for shipping costs.
If you focus on eating seasonally and shopping often at the local farmer’s markets, you may find that you end up eating a far wider variety of what happens to be growing around you at the moment instead of reaching for your favorite staple veggies. This will help you naturally get a greater variety of beauty nutrients into your diet, as different foods contain different compositions of minerals and phytonutrients to help support your Radical Beauty. You will also feel more integrated into your surrounding environment if you can eat what is grown there. Besides your personal benefits, eating this way reduces your carbon footprint and allows you to support Mother Nature. It requires less fuel (from trucks, trains, planes, and so on) to transport food from local farms to your table than from overseas growers.
From a beauty standpoint, you may notice that each season has a different effect on your skin, and it is important to adjust accordingly. The seasons will influence your exercise and activity levels, as well, and you must honor that flow. In a larger sense, as the overall environment is shifting, you can tune in to that collective energy and work with it in each season, not against it. For example, during the peak light of the summer you may feel a tremendous drive to work on creative projects that you previously decided to “plant” in the spring. Being authentic to those natural urges will make you more beautifully powerful.
Let’s explore all the seasons and how to best shift your dietary and skin-care routines as well as your energy goals to maintain your natural beauty in alignment with the larger picture of nature all around you.
Winter is the season with the least amount of light. Your skin might need more moisture at this time, and you might naturally want to eat meals that are more hearty and hot, temperature-wise. With the deepening darkness, you may sense a natural tendency to go inward and take stock of your goals and what you are creating in your life. Here are the best practices to attain Radical Beauty in the winter:
• Eat more freshly made hot meals. Your body will naturally crave hot soups and stews, baked vegetable dishes, and the like, so be in tune with those needs and supply yourself with hot, comforting foods. Though you may, of course, keep some raw foods in your diet, be sure to balance them with warming foods.
• Incorporate a lot of root vegetables such as winter squash, yams, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins, which you will find in the local farmer’s markets at this time of year. These vegetables are particularly high in beta-carotene, which converts into vitamin A in the body and is an excellent nutrient to keep your skin healthy and bright in these dimmer months.
• Add warming spices such as ginger, cloves, and cinnamon to your teas and recipes.
• Switch to organic, cold-pressed sesame oil to moisturize your skin for your abhyanga practice. Sesame oil is said to have warming properties.
• Due to the dryness of winter, you might need a heavier facial moisturizer. Switch accordingly and look for one that is oil based rather than water based, as the oil will provide a protective layer on your skin and hold in moisture longer. Products containing pure plant oils like coconut, almond, avocado, and primrose oil should not make your skin break out. On the other hand, shea butter may clog your pores; especially if you are acne-prone, avoid products on the face that contain shea butter (though it’s great to use on your body). Avoid products that contain synthetic, petroleum-based oils, such as mineral oil.
• Your skin will likely be dry and dehydrated not only from the wind and cold elements, but also from indoor heat, so make sure your moisturizer contains hyaluronic acid and other humectants to attract more moisture to your face and keep it supple.
• Increase your fat intake slightly—but not dramatically—with whole plant foods such as chia seeds, walnuts, and avocados. These essential fats will nourish supple skin. Just an extra few tablespoons of chia seed pudding (see kimberlysnyder.com for the easy recipe) or another half of an avocado will keep your skin moisturized from the inside out. Extra fat in the winter may also feel grounding during this dark period.
• Use a creamy cleanser rather than a gel one. The cream will have fewer stripping surfactants and help keep the natural oils on your skin intact during these times when you want to hold on to all of the moisture you can.
• Do a weekly at-home oil treatment to keep your hair protected from the drying weather. At least once a week, massage coconut oil into the tips of your hair and throughout the strands, pile it into a bun or tuck it into a shower cap, leave it in for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour, and then rinse out and shampoo as usual.
• Slough off dry skin cells with an at-home sugar scrub. Combine equal parts coconut oil and organic sugar and then add 15 to 20 drops or so of your favorite essential oil. Keep the mixture in a glass or BPA-free container. In the shower, gently rub off dead skin cells from your entire body, including your elbows and heels. Shaving is also a great exfoliator for the large surface area of your legs.
• Stay active. It’s tempting to just curl up during winter, but the diminished light and the cold weather can contribute to depression, stagnation, a weakened immune system, and sluggish feelings. It’s a great time of year to begin or deepen a home yoga practice, whether on your own or with a yoga DVD. You don’t have to expose yourself to the elements to stay active and move every part of your body.
• Honor the natural tendency for more “darkness” and allow yourself to rejuvenate and rest by staying at home more. Don’t push yourself to go out more than you naturally like out of obligation. You might feel that evenings at home with herbal tea, a warm bath, and a good book simply serve you more.
• If you live in a place that has limited sunlight for extended periods of time throughout the winter months, you might want to consider supplementing with vitamin D3, or getting a special light designed to help stimulate vitamin D in your body. Vitamin D plays a vital role in maintaining healthy, beautiful bones, strong immunity, balanced moods, and all-around health and wellness.
• With the very slowly burgeoning light of the winter solstice near the end of the year, complete an honest and deep assessment of where you would like to put your energy in the upcoming year and what is nurturing and authentic for your beautiful spirit at this time. In nature, new seeds are growing at the root level now, and a lot is taking place beneath the surface. This is a great time for you, too, to evaluate where you want to plant your “seeds,” which projects you want to pursue, and where you want to put your energy, which will bloom later in the year. You can determine this only by being honest and listening to your heart.
In spring, life emerges again. No matter how long the cold winter months may seem some years, spring always follows. You can see the burgeoning beauty of fresh flower buds, leaves, and shoots and feel the urge to express your natural beauty outwardly with sundresses, skirts, and perhaps brighter makeup colors. As the light increases, you naturally feel like shedding the stagnation and heaviness of winter. This includes a tendency to start eating lighter and perhaps lightening up on your skin-care products, too. You may also feel a natural rise in energy, a newfound spark of powerful inspiration that can now be directed toward whatever goals you decided to pursue when taking stock in the darkness of winter. Here are the best ways to harness the beauty of spring:
• Spring is the very best time of the year to complete a cleanse or engage in some detoxing. If you’re interested in a liquid cleanse, check out the organic, strategically designed ones offered from Glow Bio (myglowbio.com) or do your own version by making fresh green smoothies or juices and abstaining from heavier foods for a few days.
• Lighten up your diet. This is a great time of year to shift into eating more raw foods (though you don’t have to eat 100 percent raw, by any means). Reduce your ratio of fats so you feel less weighed down. You might want to eat lighter, broth-based soups and favor smaller amounts of avocado and nuts. Use all oils sparingly.
• If you indulged over the winter, it’s a great time to reset bad habits and patterns and renew your resolve to improve your eating habits. Feel in tune with the bursting energy of spring by letting go of heavier, dense, or clogging foods. Ditch the dairy, refined sugars, gluten, and excess animal protein, and eat more light, plant-centric meals.
• Increase your consumption of raw apple cider vinegar by adding it into salad dressings or hot water that you sip, as it has antiseptic qualities to help you cleanse for spring while building healthy bacteria in your gut. It also offers the beauty-balancing electrolyte potassium.
• Sprouts and microgreens very much capture the emerging energy of the spring and are bursting with living enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Wash them well and sprinkle them liberally into salads, on top of soups, and on just about any dish you eat. Even though they are so pretty to look at, you can also throw a handful into a smoothie!
• Add some natural diuretics to your smoothies and other dishes to help flush out some spring water weight. Some good options include coriander, parsley, asparagus, cranberry, and pineapple; as it gets closer to summer, try eggplant and watermelon.
• Take full advantage of your farmer’s market, which will have a much wider array of foods than it did during the winter. Lettuces, fennel, broccoli, asparagus, watercress, and collard greens are just a few of the farmer’s market spring treasures you will discover.
• Sweat any way you can! This is a great time of year to hit the infrared sauna or get out into the light of day for some vigorous hiking, walking, or jogging. Sweat is a great way to purge out toxicity and excess stagnation that built up during the winter.
• If you have a home yoga practice, this is a great time to increase the Surya Namaskars, or sun salutations, and other standing flow sequences, as you’ll naturally feel like moving more vigorously this season.
• Take advantage of the growing light. Get up earlier to enjoy the mornings, and perhaps take an afternoon or post-early-dinner stroll to enjoy the evening light and watch the sunset. This is a beautiful way to sync with the changing rhythm of the environment.
• Gently exfoliate dead skin cells that may have accumulated from winter with a cleanser that contains alpha or beta hydroxy acids.
• Try sloughing off excessive dead skin cells on your body with a salt scrub rather than the sugar scrub you might have used for winter. Salt scrubs are considered slightly more exfoliating, and salt is said to have a negative ionic charge, helping purify negative energies and impurities that you may have picked up from the environment.1 This is the theory behind the rock salt lamps sold at local health markets, which are said to help neutralize home environments from electronic devices that are believed to give off a positive ionic charge. Combine equal parts coconut oil and salt with 15 to 20 drops of your favorite essential oil (such as lavender or neroli). Keep the mixture in a glass or BPA-free container, and gently scrub your entire body in the shower.
• Pay extra attention to moving stagnation through your lymphatic system, as this is the season to detox. Refer back to this page for more tips on this.
• Ayurveda encourages Panchakarma methods to help cleanse the body and renew digestion. These are detoxification methods that include colon cleansing. If you’re up for it, try getting an at-home enema kit or a gravity colonic from a recommended therapist.
• Increase your water intake to flush out impurities. Also try incorporating hot water with lemon in the afternoons and/or evenings. This is a fantastic cleansing, flushing drink.
• With the growing light, be sure to properly protect yourself from the sun with wide-brimmed hats, large sunglasses, and nontoxic sunscreen (see this page).
• Synchronize with the creative power flowing through nature and the universe. Take the time to put energy into your creative ventures and longings, and cultivate them. Be selective with your time, cutting out excessive television watching and other more passive activities you might have engaged in over the cold winter. Spend more time going for what you want. You have all the power of the universe supporting you now to go for it!
Summer brings the most intense sunlight, which is activating and exciting. Depending on where you live, it might be extremely humid or extremely dry at this time. You might also be contending with a vacillation between hot outdoor weather and freezing indoor air-conditioning. It’s important to protect and nourish your immunity and energy during these vital summer months. Here are some of the most effective Radical Beauty summer practices:
• Eat lots of cooling, juicy in-season fruits, including apricots, grapes, blueberries, blackberries, cherries, plums, raspberries, strawberries, figs, nectarines, and melons.
• Enjoy beets, cucumbers, bell peppers, radishes, summer squash varieties, endives, and beans. These are among the bounty of summer foods you’ll find fresh and available at your local farmer’s market.
• It’s easier to get more agitated, impatient, and annoyed during this “fiery” season of Pitta, which governs our internal fire. It’s a good idea to avoid overactive foods that might enhance those qualities, including chilies, spicy tomatillos, and excessive garlic and onion.
• Drink cooling, herbal teas such as fresh mint tea or chamomile. It’s easy to grow a little mint plant at your kitchen windowsill and have fresh mint tea all summer.
• Honor your body’s natural inclination to eat lighter during the heat of summer. Listen to your body and never force it to eat. It’s important to recognize that you shouldn’t necessarily eat the same meals or foods during every month of the year. This is a great time to eat lots of raw foods such as fresh salads and fruit.
• Drink coconut water, which is hydrating and helps to replenish electrolytes and minerals that you lose from sweating.
• Enjoy lots of raw greens this season, which are by nature yin, or cooling. Be creative with the range of lettuces and greens you see at your farmer’s market, and rotate them to create some new, tasty salads.
• Since you may already feel puffy or somewhat swollen from the heat, it’s a good idea to cut back on salty foods. Try using more fresh herbs for flavor rather than lots of salt. Your taste for salt will naturally reduce over time.
• As your skin increases in oiliness, try the Radically Clear Skin Mask (this page) or other clay-based masks to help ward off breakouts and congestion in your complexion.
• Unless you have very dry skin, try switching your cleanser from a creamy one to a gel-based one, which is lighter and can help clear out excess sweat, dirt, and grime.
• If oil-based creams are starting to feel too heavy, switch to a highly absorbable, lighter, water-based moisturizer for the summer.
• Aloe is a fairly sturdy plant to try growing in a pot indoors or outdoors (depending on where you live). You’ll have a fresh source to use on any burns from excessive sunlight. (Let’s really hope that doesn’t happen, but just in case, be prepared!)
• Since coconut oil is said to have cooling properties, switch to coconut oil for your abhyanga practice (see this page).
• Wear light-colored, natural fabrics such as linen and cotton, which allow your skin to breathe.
• Fill a spritzer bottle with rose water, and spray it across your face and décolleté whenever you need a soothing refresher.
• Honor changes in movement this time of year. You might be drawn to yoga (especially a self-practice) rather than super intense aerobic activities (unless they involve beach or water sports!), which might feel depleting. This is not necessarily the best time for hot yoga in an enclosed, artificially heated room.
• You might feel activated and excited not only by your creative or professional pursuits but also to explore and revel in being outside in nature’s raw elements. This might mean beach time or more time to lounge in a park. Allow yourself to have this outdoor time and to explore feeling stimulated from nature as well as your personal interests. Your energy will naturally be high, so get outside and enjoy. At the very end of summer, however, depending on your environment, you might feel overheated and the need to chill out more, and it’s important to honor that as well.
The beauty of fall is seen in the full range of colors among Mother Nature’s changing leaves. The air gets crisper, and the wind can pick up, making it important to protect your skin and body. You may find yourself craving less coconut water and more hot teas and elixirs to feel balanced, as well as hot, nourishing meals you may have largely avoided in the summer. From an energetic standpoint, it’s important to take measures to feel grounded, as Vata, the air-based element, dominates the fall season. When imbalanced, this can exacerbate stress and anxiety, which is particularly true if activities dramatically increase after a leisurely summer. Here are the best fall beauty practices:
• It’s the natural time of year to start eating more grounding, warm cooked meals again, so be sure to adjust your dietary rotation accordingly.
• Brussels sprouts, turnips, daikon radish, cauliflower, and mushrooms are some of the vegetables you’ll find in season in the fall, so be sure to take advantage and find creative and simple ways to cook and enjoy these fortifying foods.
• Quinoa, brown rice, and amaranth are great gluten-free grains to incorporate this time of year, especially if eaten with lots of vegetables.
• Sip on lemon balm, chamomile, valerian root, ashwagandha or holy basil/tulsi teas, which are fantastic for helping you destress and unwind. You can source these teas, which can often be found combined in “anti-anxiety” formulations, at health stores.
• The drying wind and drop in humidity may make your skin feel rougher. Be sure to spend a little more time with your abhyanga practice (see this page), which is also good for pacifying excess Vata, which can lead to feeling overwhelmed and anxious when imbalanced. Abhyanga is a great practice to help alleviate stress.
• Since Vata, or the air element, is so prevalent in the fall, you may experience some constipation. This is a symptom of Vata being out of balance. Be sure to eat lots of fibrous foods, take some magnesium-oxygen supplements (such as Detoxy +) as needed to help keep things moving, and eat mindfully and slowly, always chewing well.
• Be sure to protect your skin from the quickening changes of the weather, including dry wind. Use scarves and gloves to protect your hands, neck, and face during walks or periods outside, keeping out drafts that can lead to chapping and excessive dryness.
• Your skin may need extra nourishment with the change of seasons, and it might start to feel drier. The Radically Timeless Beauty Mask (this page) is particularly excellent at this time of year.
• Be sure to protect your delicate lips, which may become increasingly chapped. Apply lip balms regularly that contain natural ingredients such as shea butter, olive oil, and vitamin E. Avoid lip balms that contain petroleum-based, synthetic ingredients (which you don’t want to continually ingest, an inevitable occurrence with anything you put on your lips).
• Since you might have gotten your fair share (or more!) of sun, salt water, and chlorine over the summer, your skin might feel a bit taxed. Try going back to a gentle sugar scrub (see Winter tips on this page) and adding more coconut oil if you feel that your skin needs extra lubrication.
• Avoid using stripping soaps on your skin in the shower. Choose all-natural, mild, and simple cleansers with essential oils instead of potentially irritating artificial fragrances.
• With the cooler temperatures and chilly wind, it’s time to switch back to thicker moisturizers with an oil base, which can feel more hydrating and protective.
• Pay extra attention to your hands. They have the long winter ahead of them with lots of potential cold and wind exposure. Be sure to keep your hands moisturized with a good hand cream (shea butter or other natural ingredient based), and reapply often, especially after washing your hands.
• After the leisure of summer, you may feel an increased swirl of activities in the fall: kids going back to school, increased work projects, or new-found intensity in hitting goals by the end of the year. Be sure to balance the stress. Make it a priority to create downtime for yourself as the holidays gear up so you don’t feel overwhelmed and resort to stress eating or other unhealthy outlets. Take time to cultivate nurturing, grounding activities such as meditation, massages, spending time at home reading, or whatever makes you feel soothed.
Making an effort to gracefully acknowledge the energy shifts as the earth makes her yearly progression around the sun and to shift your daily lifestyle routines in accordance with the different seasons is an important way to maximize your health, energy, and expression of beauty. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are impacted by the larger energy influences of our environment. Why not recognize, embrace, and align with them to your advantage? You only have heightened beauty and a greater sense of energy to attain. Start applying these modifications for the season you are in right now to feel more in tune with the collective universal energy of which you are intrinsically part.