Your skin has its own emotional life.
It comes in contact with every act of love, hardship, laugher, play and stress you encounter. It’s filled with all of your feelings, regardless if you choose to embrace them or suppress them. While your skin can’t articulate how it feels, it will show you in the only way it knows how: from radiating a healthy happy glow to revealing an angry eczema flare up and anything in between.

Research has correlated a troubling mind with troubled skin. According to Harvard Medical School psychologist Dr. Grossbart, as many as 60 percent of people who seek a doctor’s help for skin problems have significant life stress. Some skin problems have a physiological basis that are exacerbated by stress and emotions. These include, but aren’t limited to, acne, alopecia (hair loss), rosacea, hives, profuse sweating, eczema, dermatitis and other itching skin conditions.

I am a firm believer that the condition of our hair, skin and nails reflects the greater complexities of what is going on on the inside. In fact, just by looking at the face, where blemishes arise, lines form and irritations develop, one can map out underlying problems connected with your inner organs.

How your emotions affect your skin

There are unavoidable life stressors that pop up for all of us, everyday. They evoke different emotions in us: anger, fear, worry and anxiety. We can try to suppress these feelings, but they won’t be destroyed. Sooner or later they will come to the surface, and unlike other internal organs, our skin will show it.

If your thoughts, feelings and emotions are in fact the underlying cause to your stubborn skin problems, you might think to yourself: would my skin (and life) be better off without a mind or by subduing any unwanted thoughts? No stress, no skin problem, that’s the theory, right?

Life lobotomised isn’t the answer. Being less able to function mentally and emotionally to avoid worry, stress or fear would be to avoid the facts life. Those emotions are essential to life, and in their absence we would be unable to appreciate and relish in the beauty and song of life.

The good news is: there is a better solution than a lobotomy.
The better news is: you have the power to make the shift within yourself, beginning now.

Using your emotions as an ally for your skin, instead of its enemy. Learning how to acknowledge those feelings and let them go. It’s all about activating the ability to liberate your mind; helping your mind help you. When we are able to liberate your mind and calm yourself against stressors, you become relaxed. When we are relaxed our breathing is slowed, muscles are loosened, heart beat lowered and blood pressure dropped. It’s the physical opposite of the flight or fight state of being. It’s the opposite of stress.

Below are 3 ways to get you into a state of mindful liberation:

It starts by making time for yourself, free from your phone, people and distraction. It’s important not be worried about being successful in the mindfulness practice. Have a passive attitude and practise this for as long as you feel you need or want to.

• Day dream meditation

Let’s call it day dream meditation, but it can run by other names like mindfulness, present breathing, mediation and so on. This is the practice of allowing your mind to take a small vacation from your day. When we daydream, our mind drifts to a not too distant place, away from worry, fear and anxieties. It’s a blissful state, where we are relaxed, which is not only good for us but also for healing. Relaxation brings heightened control to our mind/body connection, including our skin.

Find a way to enter a state of mediation that works for you. This state should allow you to stop and take a pause from your daily woes. Listening to music, running, breathing, observing animals and children and reading can all help get to a vacation meditation.

• Steer clear from false relaxants

Contrary to popular belief alcohol is not much of a relaxant, but rather a tranquillizer and watching TV is actually stimulating. In fact, watching TV subconsciously stimulates our parasympathetic (restful state of the) nervous system and therefore is stress producing.
Poor or troubled sleep has long been associated with stress, and problematic skin. The artificial blue light emitted from the television, tablets, computers and smart phones causes a disturbance with the body’s circadian rhythm as it’s known to mimic the light of a sunrise. This affects sleep quality, especially if we are using these devices at night. The blue light prompts the body to be awake not prepare itself for sleep.

• An anywhere, anytime practice

Whenever you find yourself waiting, whether it be on the train during your daily commute, in a queue, or at work. Simply close your eyes, curl the edge of your lips into a slight smile and breath into your belly.

Note: breathing into your belly and not into your chest. We want the breath filling the belly and squeezing blood out of our abdominal organs, creating blood flow and a state of calmness.

In closing, your skin’s emotional life doesn’t need to reflect every single thing you think and feel. By conscientiously including relaxation exercises into your daily life, it eventually becomes habit. The idea behind this habit is to successfully focus the mind and encourage the body to slow down. This creates small shifts in the body which have an enormous impact on the physical processes that produce our skin’s symptoms or alleviate them.

This article was based on the clinical research by dermatologist Dr. Grossbart. Read his E-book for free