A Plant Based Spa Experience

It’s no joke when they say plants are medicine. And their benefits go far beyond what they do inside your body at a cellular level. This post shows you the best ingredients for a plant based spa experience  and how you can max out these benefits at home!

Now, I talk a LOT about how to get vegetables in your body through simple and delicious plant forward recipes and prepared meals from my Clean & Colorful Kitchen. But hey, why not put them ON your body as well for more plant powered benefits?

On my trip to India, I indulged in a spa an Ayurvedic spa day at the Dewa Retreat. I was surprised when I walked in for my massage, facial and pedicure and was presented with a 100% plant based spa experience. I found a platter of what looked like it could be lunch.

It made sense because this is an Ayurvedic Spa. Meaning it’s a holistic approach to wellness so they use no chemicals (with the rare exception of nail polish and remover). If anybody was ready to get down and dirty with fruits and veggies it’s me, so I was curious to see how this plant based spa day was going to unfold.

Now, the experience itself was kind of wonky and that’s another story. But I learned so much more about the power of the external application of our plant based friends that I just had to share this post and everything the lady taught me about ayurvedic beauty care.

Plant Based Beauty Menu:

My plant based spa platter consisted of yogurt, milk, juice, chick pea flour, a tomato, a lime, fresh aloe spears, pureed apples and bananas, turmeric, coconut oil and honey.

I’ll admit this would have made a great breakfast smoothie (in fact, it just might inspire my next recipe) but that was not the plan for the day. These were mixed together in different formats and used as exfoliants, scrubs, cleansers, moisturizers and polishers.

Other plant based beauty and remedies

While the lady mixed up my foot and leg scrub for my pedicure we got to chatting. She was a wealth of information and I enjoyed her insight very much. Here are the few nuggets I was able to jot down while she polished my calves and feet up:

• Foot and leg scrub: Yogurt + Honey + Milk +Turmeric + Chickpea Flour. Mix them together, scrub in well and let sit for 5-10 minutes. Rise.
• Moisturizing mask: Honey + Yogurt (cream optional to thin it out) mix together at night and rub it into your face. Let it sit for 2 minutes then wash away with cold water.
• Dry Nails: Almond Oil + Olive Oil and massage into nail beds before bed.
• Dry Feet: Coconut Oil + Candle Wax. Melt the wax, mix with the oil then freeze it. It should become a cream. I’ll have to give that one a try and let you know if it’s a bust, something may have been lost in translation there.
• Hair Loss: Fresh aloe, onion juice and lemon juice. Apply daily.
• Fresh Aloe: good for everything really, I need to plant a bush in my backyard (when I get one).
• Topical Antiseptic: Turmeric + Mustard oil (or coconut oil).
• Topical Pain Killer: Mustard Oil + Onion Juice + Fresh Garlic + Fresh Ginger. Boil them all together then strain them and apply to hurt area to relieve pain.

Hmmm….Interesting right?

How I felt after the treatments

I am not going to lie. It was one of the more aggressive and whack-a-doo spa experiences I’ve been through. Between all the scrubbing, the oil, the globs of pureed vegetables…it took me 10 Q-tips to get the chick pea flour out of my ears. I left with the advice “don’t take a shower for 2 hours” and I just couldn’t do it. I’ll admit, I did leave feeling pretty gross.

I got up to my room, I took a hot shower to remove the thick oil (which she would not tell me what it was made of, which was odd considering how detailed she was with everything else), washed it out of my hair and cleaned out my ears and eye lashes and then… I felt great! In fact, it was the best I’d felt in quite some time.

My initial days in India I felt pretty gross (one the outside) I felt super fat, my face looked dull and I kept my hair in a pony tail because it just wasn’t worth having down. I figured it was the first time I’d slowed down and looked at myself all year long. It’s been a busy year and self-care has not been at the top of my list.

So maybe this aruvetic plant baed facial experience truly was effective? Or maybe it was the 5 days in Rishikesh that was finally catching up with me. But I’ll tell you what, it felt fantastic! I just might make a habit of scrubbing yogurt and honey into my face from now on…we’ll see!

It got me thinking…what would happen if we popped up a farm to table spa and skipped all the chemicals at home? Would it be a hit? Maybe that will be my next business adventure…the Clean & Colorful Day Spa….ahhhh

Do you think you might give any of these plant based beauty care tricks a go?

**This post was originally posted on Eat. Drink & be Skinny**