Dry brushing is my favorite simple healthy lifestyle practice to recommend. It doesn’t require you to spend a lot of money, adjust your eating habits, or hit the gym, but it provides numerous benefits including: increased circulation, better lymphatic function, improved skin condition, and greater mental alertness.
There’s no excuse why you can’t add dry brushing to your daily routine when you’ll get such huge benefits for such little effort.
Benefits of Dry Brushing
Circulation
Dry brushing stimulates the circulatory system and gets your blood flowing. Brushing from your extremities towards your heart protects your veins from damage and helps refresh your body by encouraging a fresh blood supply.
Especially when you first wake up and have laid still for several hours, getting your blood flowing to your extremities will help you feel more awake and will help your body get moving faster.
Lymphatic Function
Our lymphatic system is great at dealing with pathogens and keeping us healthy, but it doesn’t have a pump to circulate like our circulatory system.
Natural ways lymph gets circulated through our bodies is through activity like running or bouncing on a trampoline.
Dry brushing helps manually circulate the lymph and can help break up sore lymph nodes where our bodies are fighting infection by introducing fresh lymphatic fluid to the node.
Skin Condition
Dry brushing can help improve skin condition in several ways. It gently exfoliates, unclogging pores and allowing your skin to breathe.
It increases circulation at the surface of the skin which speeds up healing and regeneration of new skin.
And it also helps reduce the appearance of cellulite by stimulating the skin to release toxins and gently breaking up pockets up collagen encouraging stronger cell structures.
Mental Alertness
All of the benefits listed above culminate in improved mental alertness as the body has increased circulatory and lymphatic flow and the skin feels woken up with the increased blood flow.
Dry brushing first thing in the morning has helped me feel so awake that I’ve even been able to skip a cup of coffee or tea on mornings I was sure I would need a caffeine boost.
How to Dry Brush
Note: Check with your doctor if you have diabetes or circulatory issues before dry brushing
Get Your Dry Brush
A natural bristle brush with a long handle for reaching your back is perfect.
Some have detachable heads with a smaller handle that can be nice for more control around your feet and arms.
Keep the brush dry but it is ok to clean it with some soap and water once every few weeks or so.
How to Dry Brush
Dry brush every day before you shower, while the water is heating up.
Starting at the soles of your feet brush your skin towards your heart paying special attention to joints where lymphatic fluid can collect.
Brush up your legs giving special attention to your inner thighs. Be careful not to brush too aggressively. You don’t need to brush so hard that you damage the skin.
On your stomach brush in a clockwise motion.
Brush from your hands towards your heart, give a few extra brush strokes to your armpits where there are a lot of lymph nodes.
Along your chest and back continue to brush towards you heart.
You should now feel more awake and alert and feel the blood pumping through every part of your body. Hop in that shower and enjoy your day!
