by Sarah Ivens
• Honey supports testosterone and estrogen production.
• Nutmeg is used in Hindu culture to sweeten the breath to attract a mate.
• Pine nuts are loaded with testosterone-boosting zinc.
• Pomegranates are rumoured to increase genital sensitivity.
• Red wine, unsurprisingly, lowers inhibitions and acts as a relaxer, and it also increases blood flow.
• Rocket, or arugula, leaves were loved by Romans, who thought that they helped to get a romp going.
• Truffles—their scent mimics an opposite-attracting smell similar to pheromones.
• Vanilla is a mild nerve stimulant, which might make sexual touch a little more exciting.
• Watermelon increases nitric oxide, which opens the blood vessels and speeds up circulation, and the bodily response might be increased arousal.
The eyes have it
Ah, remember in that first flush of romance, when you’d catch your beloved’s eye across a crowded room and give a knowing smile? That visual contact was so loaded with passion, intimacy and love back then you’d have to look away. Probably blushing. Or at the very least excited about what would come later, that night and in life. You could literally feel your heart leap when they looked at you. Now, not so much. You’re too busy to stare lovingly into each other’s eyes anymore. After nine years of marriage and two children, my husband and I were only likely to glare at each other over a wailing toddler’s head, a puddle of spilled milk or a supermarket freezer chest, rather than gaze. We would spend more time looking at our phones than each other. But if the eyes are the window to the soul, we needed to do better, so, we took on a new practice:
Eye gazing This practice of mindfully staring into someone’s eyes feels awkward at first, and still weird after a few attempts, I found. It takes you back to the playground and those days of staring competitions and “whoever blinks first is a loser,” but practitioners have found that it helps them to reconnect with their beloved, and it is easy and fitting to do it when you’re out in nature, fuelled to focus and think positively by the fresh air and feel-good factors of the outdoors.
How do you do it?
1 First, set an intention: what do you want to achieve or reclaim? Intimacy, electricity, comfort? Set the word in both your minds.
2 Next, take a position opposite to each other, sitting or standing, and close your eyes for a few seconds to calm your minds. Breathe in the phytoncides or ocean air. Feel the air. Whoever opens their eyes first can wait quietly for the other one to reach the same space.
3 Gaze into your loved one’s eyes. Or eye. Choose the left or the right eye to focus on or you’ll feel a bit off-kilter.
4 You will probably get the giggles when you first begin the practice. Don’t worry about it. You might cry. Don’t worry about that. Love is funny and scary.
5 Feel free to blink, too. This isn’t a staring contest.
6 Really look. See how your partner’s eyes have changed. It’s amazing how you can be around someone but never truly look at them. I always find a new wrinkle, a new twinkle, changing color flecks of light in my husband’s eyes. I can tell if he’s tired, sad or anxious.
7 Applaud your shared bravery. Eye gazing is bold and bare, with no escape. You are literally face to face. People might dismiss the practice as wimpy hippy-woo-woo stuff, but you need to be strong—or strongly want change in your relationship—to do this.
8 Don’t have any expectations other than you’ll be spending time in each other’s presence without distraction.
9 Even 30 seconds reconnecting meaningfully with someone you love but don’t make time for is better than nothing, but aim for 5 minutes or more for a truly mindful rekindling of your relationship.
10 Try to practice regularly, or whenever you feel discombobulated with each other. And aim to keep the connection even during stressful, busy times. Don’t turn straight back to your phone screen the minute you’ve finished.
Solveig, 43
“The unmistakable allure of the Nordic summer shaped my romantic attachment to nature. The summers of my first 25 years were spent on endless hikes through enchanted forests, tiptoeing across mossy floors covered in blueberries, which we picked and then packed in my grandparents’ freezer (there were always enough to get them through the next three seasons). I remember threading strawberries, one after the other, on willowy straws, a perfect treat for a day outdoors. This fairytale land of the midnight sun, the fjords, the sea, the mountains we hiked endlessly, drinking from gargling pure mountain streams, was my first love.”
MINDFULNESS MINUTE
Sit back-to-back, holding hands, and close your eyes. Don’t talk. Just think. Go back in time to a happy memory: your first date, a wonderful holiday, the birth of a child, a funny moment from that morning. Focus on how you worked together as a team. Think about why you are glad you had that experience with your partner and no one else. Open your eyes and tell each other about your recollection and how it made you feel.
10
Natural Beauty
Anyone’s life truly lived consists of work, sunshine, exercise, soap, plenty of fresh air, and a happy contented spirit.
Lillie Langtry
There’s a reason people spend an abundance of time and money on creams, potions, lotions, make-up and even plastic surgery to get the “natural look.” Sun-kissed, rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed—these are all physical attributes naturally gained from a life lived outdoors. It’s because when you’ve just taken a brisk walk along the seashore, or a heart-thrilling ride along a forest trail, you look energetic, alive and young. There is nothing wrong with looking our age, remember, but we do want to look the best we can for the years we have accumulated—God forbid we should be accused of looking decades older. The good news is we don’t have to rely on synthetic wrinkle-busters and glow-givers. We can get some forest therapy. To increase the amount of the natural world we get into our diet, healthy practices and lifestyle, means that we must become a true gem, inside and out.
Miss World
Mother Earth offers a pageantry of natural beautifiers if you can only just step away from the harsh lighting in your bathroom mirror—and the self-criticism it promotes—and get out into the world. Forget going under a cosmetic surgeon’s knife, try going under a blanket of clouds for a happy, restorative afternoon that makes you feel and look younger. Think about the people who you find delightful to look at, now work out what they have in common: clear skin, a warm smile, a relaxed forehead? They are not attractive because they are a certain weight, age, class or color, or because they are wearing a certain pair of shoes or because they are dripping in diamonds. No, you find them alluring because they bloom and refresh your eyeballs with their joie de vivre and sunshine glow (and maybe they were genetically blessed too; we can’t fight our DNA, of course). Here are some ways they will be using Mother Nature as their beauty guru—and you can too:
• When you’re gawping at something beautiful—an ocean, a mountain, a forest—it’s hard not to smile. And the good news is that smiling makes you look younger. A study proved that when respondents looked at photos of people with happy faces they guessed their ages as younger than they really were, and much younger than they were in photos of the same person with an angry or neutral expression. Even though smiling creases the corners of the eyes, these are interpreted as laughter lines rather than wrinkles, and smiling uses fewer muscles than frowning so causes fewer wrinkles in the long term too. Going green and grinning will take years off you—and is cheaper than Botox.
• When you’re active and actively engaging with nature, you spend less time on your smartphone—which is good news for our posture. Social media addicts are known for stiff necks and stooped shoulders—and the Hunchback of Notre Dame look is so not chic.
• Stress doesn’t just mess us up on the inside, but on the outside too. Anxiety aggravates acne, psoriasis and eczema. In the past, during tough times at work or in relationships, I’ve suffered
from a pimply chin and hives on my ankles. Since learning to take self-care more seriously and changing my lifestyle, they’ve both improved. Take the stress out of your skin by regularly partaking in those mood boosters we’ve already discussed in previous chapters: long walks, meditation in nature, journaling and marvelling at your surroundings in a favorite natural place.
• Meditation encourages you to soften your gaze and relax your facial muscles, which can ease facial lines caused by tension and make you look more rested.
• Deep sleep is a must for a smoother, youthful look, so regulate your circadian rhythm by getting plenty of fresh air during the day, and tying your body clock loosely into the natural cycles of the sun and moon. It is while you’re asleep that your body has the time to restore itself and repair DNA damage from the day before. Set more soothing bedtime rituals (a meditation, a long hot soak, a cup of chamomile tea, a spray of lavender and a book) than the oft-tempting fiesta of Netflix, wine and chips.
• Drinking plenty of water won’t clear your skin directly, but it will boost gut health, which in turn helps your skin. It’s nature’s best hydrator and the obvious choice to fill a bottle with on a forest hike or park walk.
• People who feel engaged and connected with the world around them live longer, happier and healthier lives—all things that will make you glow.
How do phytoncides make you handsome?
Forest therapy and phytoncides not only make you healthier, happier, kinder, smarter, more energetic and less stressed—phew!—but, as if that isn’t enough, they make you more gloriously gorgeous too. Say what? Spending time in the trees boosts your beauty in multiple ways. It improves your sleeping habits (bye-bye eye bags and dark circles) and it offers up plenty of free, fabulous oxygen—the hottest spa ingredient of the moment. Oxygen is antibacterial and anti-inflammatory, and it stimulates the production of collagen, giving that dewy glow we yearn for. Instead of paying a fortune for it in masks, make-up and salon treatments, you can get it free of charge by breathing it in deeply during regular leisurely strolls along a forest trail, away from the toxic air of roads and crowds. Yet, perhaps most importantly, forest therapy and its high dosage of phytoncides beautifies the soul with its awe-inspiring prettiness, removing the greyness of city pollution and the dullness of urban grind from your mind, body, soul—and face.
Nic, 29
“Very often, even during the grey days of a London winter—in fact, especially on these days—I substitute my gym visit for a workout outside in our local park. I love the dose of mood-lifting endorphins, rosy cheeks and the smug feeling afterwards of feeling stoic and hardy! I’m lucky to work near Regents Park in London, and on summer days I like to kick off my shoes and walk and feel the grass between my toes. It reminds me that there’s a whole world outside my air-conditioned office, which helps me to put work issues into perspective. There isn’t a season when it doesn’t improve my mental and physical world to get outdoors. I feel strong and supple, actively and attractively engaged.”
The green scene
Your mother will be happy if you start eating your greens, and so will your beauty regimen! Vegetables full of fiber such as broccoli, spinach and lettuce help to clean teeth naturally by preventing plaque from sticking to them. A diet rich in green, leafy veggies gives your complexion a kick-start, as the carotenoids (the vitamin-style pigments in fruit and vegetables) found abundantly in them improves skin tone. Aim for three servings of vegetables a day for a cute complexion.
Fruity face and salad skin
We know that eating natural whole foods gives us an internal boost, loading us up with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that in turn will make us all more beautiful inside and out, but what about slathering the contents of our fridge straight onto our face? Can the goodness of ingestible natural foods be recreated when used as a do-it-yourself face mask, hair mask or eye mask? Can coating your wrinkles in coconut make people go nutty for a new, younger-looking you? Can using items from your kitchen save you a bowlful of cash in plumpers and fillers? Yes! And there are even topical treatments to help you through the skin traumas of the harsh weather of winter and the sun-drying season of summer. Let’s investigate Mother Nature’s pantry—there’s lots of cheap, cheerful and quick things in there to make you look as dazzling as the sun.
• Acai berries are loaded with antioxidants, amino acids and essential fatty acids.
• Blended almonds make an excellent face and body scrub.
• Apple cider vinegar removes dirt and build-up through its alpha-hydroxy acids.
• Avocado is filled with skin-boosting minerals such as copper, iron and calcium, and yummy vitamins A, B and E, which hydrate dry skin to encourage a fresher complexion.
• Bananas provide a good moisture boost and dissipate dead skin cells.
• Brown rice flour unclogs pores and softens skin.
• Steamed, mashed then cooled carrots, applied as a face mask, stimulate cell renewal.
• It is believed that cinnamon can help to plump up the skin and help to treat eczema, thanks to its heavy load of antioxidants.
• Cocoa powder is an antioxidant that helps to protect and hydrate the skin.
• Coconut oil is antifungal and full of antioxidants, as well as being hyper-hydrating.
• Coffee grounds—thanks to the caffeine—work as an exfoliator that boosts blood circulation.
• Eggs—whole or just the white—will firm, tighten and moisturize the face.
• Grapeseed oil is easily absorbed into the skin for a quick moisture drench.
• Green tea—either the ground-up leaves or a brewed cuppa—helps to reduce skin inflammation.
• Honey has antibacterial qualities for a healing, clean feeling.
• The freshly squeezed juice of a lemon will close pores, mop up oily patches and give your face a shiny brilliance.
• Oatmeal is a great gentle exfoliator.
• Orange—juice, peel or zest—might help to boost collagen levels for a youthful plumpness.
• A potion of finely chopped parsley and olive oil balances out skin discoloration.
• The high levels of vitamin C and the protein-eating enzyme bromelain in pineapple allow it to work as a collagen-boosting face mask.
• Pumpkin masks can reduce the signs of aging, thanks to this squash’s mix of beta-carotene, vitamin A and zinc.
• Stir up some sea salt with olive oil for a hardworking body scrub—just don’t put it on any cuts (ouch!).
• Packing a punch of vitamin C and naturally occurring hydroxy acid: say hello to skin-brightening strawberries.
• Sugar in your diet is not good for your looks, but as a body scrub its glycolic acid works wonders.
• Turmeric, used lightly because of the bright orange color, can be applied to skin to ease acne and psoriasis and is rumored to be a wrinkle-diminisher. The spice is also known for its anti-inflammatory healing properties.
• Slathering organic plain Greek yogurt on your skin helps to repair sun-damaged skin thanks to its lactic acid.
Five quick beauty boosters from your kitchen cabinets
1 Mix two parts water and one part apple cider vinegar and apply to your skin with a cotton pad to keep pores unclogged and clean. Leave it on for the day.
2 Mix two parts water and one part fresh lemon juice, and apply it to your skin with a cotton pad to clean and brighten the face. Leave it on for the day.
3 Gently work a tablespoon or two of olive oil into your face and leave on overnight as a moisturizing mask.
4 Cut two slices of chilled cucumber and place over eyes for ten minutes to reduce puffiness.
5 Place a chilled, used chamomile tea bag on each eye for ten minutes to tighten and firm the skin.
Natural beauty recipes
Look good enough to eat with these glow-givers from the garden:
Savor the face scrub
Polish and exfoliate away dull skin and the doldrums with this skin-brightening
cleanser.
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons blended oats (see Tip)
Mix the ingredients together in a small bowl, then warm the mixture in the palm of your hand. Smooth onto your face and neck. Leave for five minutes or until dry. Wash off with a flannel or cleansing cloth and warm water, then moisturize as normal or apply a mask.
Tip Get a small batch of blended oats ready for a few face scrubs by putting a handful of rolled oats into a blender beaker and blending them until fine. Store in an airtight container.
Mouthwatering face mask
Plump up and replenish your face with a DIY mask that’s good enough to eat:
1 small avocado
1 tablespoon honey
5 strawberries
Mash the ingredients together in a small bowl using a fork. Leave to stand for two minutes. Press evenly onto your face and leave for ten minutes. Wash off with a flannel or muslin cloth and warm water, then moisturize as usual.
Delicious hair mask
Moisten, smooth and gloss your locks by coating the tips of your mane with this mix.
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 tablespoon olive oil
Blend the oils together in a small bowl, then gently work them into the hair shaft, coating only the dry ends of your hair. Leave for twenty minutes. Follow immediately afterwards with a deep shampoo and condition, then dry and style as usual.