Anointing Bowls 101

You might have heard me talking about anointing bowls recently.

I want to explain why I think these little dishes are a crucial part of any beauty ritual.

First of all, what is an anointing bowl?

How to choose an anointing bowl

I like to use any dish that ranges in size from little soy sauce saucer to small ice cream bowl size. If it’s too tiny, it’s harder to mix stuff without it sloshing out, and if it’s too big, it’s kind of ridiculous to be blending 8 drops of oil with a finger in a giant soup bowl. But a little too big is better than too small.

I would go a little bigger if you plan on using it mostly for mixing masks, and a little smaller if you will just be mixing oils.

So why and how to use anointing bowls?

Elevate your beauty ritual

I like them because they elevate the whole experience of your beauty ritual. You can find a really gorgeous saucer that makes you really happy to use. Objects have power, and the more times you use your anointing dish with reverence for yourself and your skin, with joy and hope, the more it will become imbued with those qualities and send them out to you.

I like to think about it in the same way as food – you don’t drink milk directly from the carton, and you don’t eat salad directly from the bag, or cereal from the box (or maybe you do!). But if you transfer that food to a nice plate or bowl, the meal becomes so much nicer AND you don’t contaminate the food still to be eaten. Same with skincare.

less mess, more hygiene

Which brings me to: I also like anointing bowls because they are more hygenic. Instead of getting your fingers all over your pipette and/or pump you simply drop the oil/absorbing fluid and pump the serum directly into the dish, which you can later rinse, leaving your skincare completely untouched and bacteria free.

Anointing bowls also cut down on mess. Mixing something in, or applying oil from, the palm of your hand is messy. You probably have to wash your hands or chase the oil down the creases in your palm as it threatens to drip all over the counter. When you use an anointing bowl, you can simply use your fingertips to apply the oil or mixture that is safely contained in the bowl. This is especially true for things like face masks or herbal cleansing powders.

Anointing bowls also cut down on waste, so this doesn’t happen: half of the expensive oil you were intending to put on your face got absorbed by your hand instead.

mix n’ match custom formulas

Finally, and most importantly, I saved the 2 most important reasons for last:

1) Anointing bowls allow you to customize your skincare

2) Anointing bowls allow you to put lots of product on your face without congesting it

Bonus: anointing bowls let you see if products will react with one another before they are doing so on your skin!

Let me go into these 2 things in a little more depth. I love to mix skincare and I think it should be mixed to get the exact right ritual for your one-of-a-kind skin. So anointing bowls are fantastic for that – they are literally mixing bowls. A drop of this, a drop of that, voila! Perfection. And this isn’t a huge issue with natural skincare, but on the off chance that you’re trying to mix 2 things that aren’t happy touching, the anointing bowl will reveal the chemical reaction and your skin will be saved the trouble.

gives skin breathing room

A lot of my clients are putting so much stuff on their skin, and they are doing it in LAYERS. First toner, then serum, then lotion, then cream, then oil. I just cringe. Of course, your skin is going to get clogged and congested. That’s like a huge force-feed binge right there! It’s the equivalent of feeding your body 5 different meals all at once. It’s a lot – too much – for the skin to digest and process.

But, they protest, my skin needs all of these things!

Ok, fine.

Mix ’em all up in the anointing dish, and then just apply one thin, light layer of the supermix. You can even save the extra supermix by putting some saran wrap over the dish and storing it in a cool, dark place. But hopefully, there isn’t a whole lot of extra because you’ve been very careful to only mix what you’re going to use.

how much to use?

A good rule of thumb is to not put more than 8 drops of stuff on your face at one time. Most oils you only need 2-6 drops. And just FYI, one full pump of serum equals 4 drops.

The beautiful thing about using natural skincare, well, at least I can totally vouch for this being the case with moss, is that it is SO nutrient dense, SO rich with healing, that only the tiniest amount is needed. It is a thousand times more powerful and more alive than conventional skincare.

If a company tells you to apply a pea sized amount or larger, that just means that the percentage of active in the formula is TOO LOW, so you need to put a really thick layer on to get the advertised benefits. BOO.

So get an anointing bowl or more than one – I have a whole collection! – and before long you won’t know how you lived without it.

Anointing bowls – the hottest new thing in skincare! 🙂

In beauty and bliss,

xx

Celestyna