Self-Care Tip: Bath Must-Haves

While there are many things about this season that have been challenging and difficult to process, I’ve been taking extra time to be grateful for the things I do have, and find light in the little activities that bring joy, rest, and make me feel whole. I think now more than ever, it’s important to find ways to take care of yourself, and to allow yourself to find peace. One of my favorite ways to practice extra self-care is by taking a bath! Here are a few Self-Care Tips and my Bath Must-Haves that have quickly become a part of my everyday routine: I often talk about this brand because I absolutely love their products! These bath soaks are made with many great (and of course, clean) ingredients including essential oils that add such a calming and soothing aspect to my bath routine! (I’ve stocked up on their bath line and love to rotate through them as a part of my bath routine).Any time I take a bath, I’ll use this beforehand! Dry brushing has so many great benefits, but before baths, especially, it’s a great way to practice self-care by activating your body’s release of toxins before you soak. These bath salts are simply the best! I love this brand because the ingredients are pure and raw, and they also assist in fighting off toxic build up in the body while hydrating and nourishing my skin - a self-care must! This scrub is an item that takes my time for self-care to the next level. It’s made with brown sugar and hydrating sweet almond oil that not only smells amazing but also leaves my skin feeling so moisturized afterwards! This sponge I’ve talked about a few times before because I simply love it! Not only is it a bath must-have staple for me, but the amount of body wash it’s helped me save has been amazing. It has quickly become a self-care item I cannot do without.I’ll use this particular bath soak on nights when I’m extra tired and need help getting rest. It’s also a great aid to your body when you feel you might be getting sick or are already under the weather! When I’m feeling stressed and want to relax, I make sure to use these bath salts that help calm my mind and soothe my muscles! I love the way it smells and knowing that it’s helping my body while I cut out time for self-care is such a bonus. However you’re feeling in this season, I hope you find time to do something that adds extra care and relaxation into your routine! x[show_shopthepost_widget id="4014588"]

In All Circumstances

In the third and final part of her book, Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert travels to Bali, Indonesia. Following her experiences in Italy and India, Liz seeks to fulfill her mission of finding balance between the devotion to her practice and the enjoyment of her happiness. Only after a few weeks into her stay in Bali, Liz reflects on how quickly and satisfyingly she has attained this balance. She reflects on maintaining happiness saying,

“. . . most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment. I have never felt less burdened by myself or by the world. I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”

When do you feed your soul? And when do you allot time to enjoy the things that bring you pleasure? Better yet, how do you find a balance between the two? Between working forty-hour work weeks -for most of us, it may easily be more than that- pursuing further education, caring for our families, and spending time with our friends, it is no wonder that we even find time to have a thought to ourselves. But, if this balance is so important for our lives, then we should either change the way we live, or we should reorient the priorities that seem to fill the void in our schedules, occupy the thoughts of our minds, and use up the energy of our being. Usually, instead of changing the entire course of our lives, changing our mindset and our attitude will lead us to a source of contentment, a point of balance. This source of contentment and this point of balance may look different to each of us. Because we are so vastly unique and because each of our interests, passions, and dreams cover such a diverse array of what constitutes happiness, we should open our eyes to the direction that our quest for finding this balance is taking us. Furthermore, our hearts should learn to sing the song of contentment within every valley, upon every mountaintop, and with every bend and turn that the courses of of lives take us. “ . . . continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments,” Liz writes. How many times do we lift our eyes to look for answers, to seek truth, and to fill our souls when we are trying to make sense of our circumstances? How many times do we instantly turn to prayer only when our lives begin to unravel? How many times do we practice meditation only when we are weary? How many times to we admit that we need help only when we have reached our breaking point? No doubt, these moments that bring us to our knees and point us in the direction of redemption are valuable in and of themselves. But, our contentment does not need to be found only when we reach a point of despair. Finding a point of balance, a source of true contentment, is something we can practice and maintain during those times when everything seems to be going right. When our prayer, our meditation, or all those other moments in which we feed our souls become our ritual, our daily habit, our instinctive remedy, we will notice that our contentment becomes synonymous with the way that we find rest for our souls. We may notice that feeding our souls becomes just as necessary as feeding our bodies. In the same way that our bodies become weak without food, our souls become weary without spiritual sustenance. In the same way that they say, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” creating a daily ritual where we sustain the desires of our souls and maintain our contentment, becomes necessary for us in order that we may confidently and courageously journey through our lives. We find, then, that turning to nourishing our souls does not only become necessary for surviving trying circumstances, but it is essential for living even in the midst of our utmost happiness. These moments that we pray even when we cannot find a reason to complain, these times when we meditate even when we have a complete burst of energy, will become an emblem for how we carry ourselves through the journeys of our lives. When we acquire the willpower and the strength to maintain our contentment and to relentlessly pursue it in the midst of sadness, doubt, fear, but also utter happiness, bliss, and gratitude, we may begin to see our lives in a hue we had not yet seen before. When we come to find our own point of balance and our own source of contentment, we may find that our happiness is not circumstantial but, in fact, defies every law, social norm, and personally crafted idea we have formed regarding our circumstances. With this contentment, we may dare to find peace and joy take root in our souls, flushing away the burdens we have learned to carry for ourselves and for the world around us. 

Stronger Together: A Response to Violence

Last Friday, an estimated 129 people were killed and another 350 people were wounded in three separate attacks carried out on the central city of Paris. While the world has been left in complete shock and devastation, the question of “How could this happen again?” still occupies most of our thoughts. It seems that over the past couple of years, or even weeks, our world has become prone to more violence and we are left wondering, in frustration, what we can do to help. We wonder, “Can we do anything to prevent this from happening again?” or “Will it ever get better?”I believe it will get better. I believe that we have both a power within us individually and an undeniable force collectively that can eradicate violence and restore joy and peace.Just about two years ago, I found myself in the beautiful City of Light. Paris has long been associated with light, love, magic, and beauty, and I was excited to go back after having first given my heart to this captivating city when I was just 18 years old. This time, though, my trip to Paris had placed me there just two weeks after the orchestrated attack on Charlie Hebdo. One day, I got on the metro and traveled to the memorial site where thousands of messages, flowers, and other sentimental gifts paid homage to the twelve individuals who had lost their lives in the attack. One message that gripped my heart read, “12 personnes à terre, 66 millions debout” which can be translated to mean “12 people fallen, 66 million people standing”. This message left such a profound impact on me because it beautifully illustrated a response to violence. You see, we do have a powerful reaction to violence. We are capable of responding to violence when we align ourselves with one another and when we draw upon the strength that we find in ourselves and in each other.Standing up against violence in our personal lives and on a massive scale may cause us to respond in a way that we would not normally be inclined to. Where love, joy, and peace may be wholly absent or even partially concealed in these acts of violence, we must prevail in order to find them. Our reaction to violence, then, may lead us to cover those who succumb to violence with compassion, grace, and empathy, and to empower those victims of violence with love, peace, and hope. We must love in spite of violence so that our love not only affects the circumstances of violence, but so that our love begins to transform our own hearts. With this outpour of love and grace, we may find ourselves reaching out to that lonely kid at school, we may see ourselves comforting someone who has been bullied or teased, and we may listen to someone who entrusts us with their story of pain, abandonment, neglect, or brokenness. In this outpour of love, we may find ourselves learning to understand different people whose values, morals, ideologies, political preferences, religious views, or worldviews may be in opposition to ours. As we begin to grow in this act of love, we may find ourselves acting upon compassion, empathy, and grace to understand and overcome the destruction that may come from painful pasts, bitter hearts, vengeful ambitions, and the sting of abandonment. Combating violence, then, may urge us to selflessly place ourselves in the circumstances of another person. In these instances, we may need to set aside our flaming arrows in order to relate to the humanity of another person. We may need to check our ambitions in order to see the pain of another person. We may need to recognize the way in which we speak to another person or the way in which we talk about another person so as not to allow the language and behaviors of violence infiltrate our lives. We may need to initiate a revolution of compassion and empathy to break through the walls of hatred, bitterness, anger, and shame in order to bring to light the humanity that binds us all together. We may need to suppress the deceit we lead ourselves to believe: that difference separates us, that bitterness alienates us, and that vengeance prevails in destroying us. In finding love, joy, and peace in the midst of violence, we will realize the various ways that we are each bound in our humanity with one another.  When we realize commonalities in each other, when we bind ourselves in the humanity that we share, we will form a unity in combating violence wherever it occurs. It may seem that individually standing up against violence will barely put a dent in the fight against mass atrocity. We may question the validity of turning off an offensive song, of speaking out against a crude joke, or even of boldly confronting violent actions. In trading an act of defense for an act of love and compassion, we may question whether or not these acts of love will truly conquer despair, bitterness, and pain. Yes, these actions, by themselves, may not wholly affect the continuous cycle of violence that is erupting throughout the world, but the collectivity of these individual acts of boldness, courage, integrity, and justice will create a supernatural and transcendent power that will undeniably puncture the prevalence of violence. The way in which we combat violence in our everyday lives, then, becomes significant and worthwhile.  When we realize the importance of individually standing up against violence, our eyes will be opened to the strength and magnitude of the collective impact of our actions. Once we understand that we each possess a power within us to stand up against violence, and once we draw upon that power collectively, we empower ourselves to be agents of transformation. With each action in which we overcome violence, we sustain the hope that our world will, again, know joy and peace. It is in light of this hope that we prevail against tragedies, against darkness, and against immense sorrow, for we know that this hope has the power to break through darkness and to sustain an everlasting peace. While we continue to act upon this hope, we may find ourselves bonded in our collective efforts to find the joy, light, and peace in our humanity, and in joining together to find that light, we may come to realize that we are more powerful together than we could ever be apart.

Leighelena + Project Paz: Promoting Peace through Bracelets

Leighelena buckle cuffs and licorice belts constructed from a variety of exotic candy colored skins have graced the pages of glossies and arms of celebs since designer Leigh Navarro launched her line in 2005.Now in an effort to bring peace to war torn regions of Juarez, Mexico near her hometown of El Paso, Texas, Leigh is stamping her signature “mink” lizard skin buckle bracelets with the Project Paz logo. 100% of the proceeds from each “Leighelena for Project Paz” sale will be given to the New York based organization in an effort to help carry out their goal of promoting peace in Ciudad, Juarez.

A Word on Project Paz

Project Paz is a non-for profit organization, and their mission is to raise awareness about the unprecedented crime levels in Ciudad Juárez. The city borders the U.S and it’s economy and the innocent people who live there suffer greatly every day - 80,000 young people in the city neither study nor work, 30% of the businesses have closed, and 100,000 jobs have been lost. Ciudad Juárez is actually the most violent city IN THE WORLD (outside of declared war zones) and most people have no idea what’s going on there. Project Paz raises awareness about the city’s situation and funds projects that strengthen community bonds and promote peace.

Chatting with Leigh

Your collection launched in 2005, and now six years later, your jewelry is sold in over one hundred stores internationally. What is your reaction to this astounding degree of success?I am incredibly grateful and proud of my team's hard work.  We have two retail storefronts here in Austin and now sell to nearly 700 stores across the world! (visit her awesome collection here).Your website credits your mother and grandfather for lending inspiration to the Leighelena line. What else inspires your work?Aside from my family, I draw inspiration from fashion, vintage in particular.  I love organic forms and nature.  When I am deciding to make a new piece, it is usually because I want something new to wear.A little bird told us here at LOLO that you play base in an Austin band. What’s the name of the band and when can we see you play?Ha!  That Megan.  I am only LEARNING to play.  When things develop I will let you know!!Fans of Leighelena want to know – what’s next for the line?We hope to open another store down the road, and I will be expanding on the Crowns jewelry system.What lead you to partner with Project Paz?As an El Paso native, I feel a strong sense of community with our sister city Ciudad Juarez.  I hope to help create awareness about the problems that are happening across the border by partnering with Project Paz.Do you have any words of encouragement/motivation for LOLO readers wanting to give back to their communities?Anything helps!  If you can't contribute monetarily, time is as if not more helpful in many cases. GET INVOLVED here.Tweet Tweet: Follow Project Paz and Leighelena to keep up with their efforts!