Mamaguru is pleased to announce the beginning of our new body care line: Extreme Self Care.  The idea behind the line is that the best way to give yourself a treat is through extreme self care.  Most of us can’t afford, nor do we have the time to go to the spa for body treatments, but we shouldn’t neglect taking good care of ourselves.  High quality, all natural and positively delicious smelling body treatments you can use at home is the solution.

This beginning is only available in Miami now, but will go national in 2013.  If you’d like to try some products, come to the Miami Springs Farmer’s Market on Saturday.

This week we will offer:

Key Lime and Coconut Salt Glow

French Lavender Salt Glow

Gingerbread Cookie Sugar Scrub

Honey Almond Goat’s Milk Hand Soap

Please stop by.  The usual baked goods will also be available, including Gingerbread and Eggnog Scones for the holidays.

Saturdays, 8 am to 1 pm

1801 Ludlum Drive.
Miami Springs, FL 33166

My latest beauty secret comes straight from my kitchen: Brown Rice and Yogurt Mask.

I used to work in cosmetics and I have tried many top-of-the-line products.  Most of them tout the natural ingredients that they use as a part of their marketing campaign.  Why not skip the added chemicals and staggering mark-up and go straight to the source?  This recipe is amazing and costs only a few pennies!  My skin has never felt so soft. 

I combined beauty tips from two countries I used to call home: Japan and India.  For years I have used Japanese washing grains to clean my face in the morning.  I like a bit of natural exfoliation to brighten my complexion and they always leave my skin soft, bright and clear.  I’ve purchased these from the Body Shop and L’Occitane, but an idea hit me when I was cleaning out my spice grinder with rice. One day I just kept grinding for about a minute and created my own washing grains. 

You can use brown rice washing grains as a cleanser by adding just a bit of water to moisten them, but I decided to take it a step further.  Indian women use yogurt as a daily beauty treatment.  The lactic acid in yogurt softens and hydrates skin and reduces wrinkles.  Combining these two elements makes for a fantastic beaty treatment.

Brown Rice & Yogurt Face Mask

brown rice
plain yogurt

1.  Grind rice in a spice or coffee grinder until very fine.  This will take about 1 minute. 

2.  Take 1/2 teaspoon of the washing grains and mix it with 1 tablespoon of plain yogurt.  Store the rest of the washing grains in a jar.

3.  Apply to face.  Leave it on for 5-10 minutes.  As you rinse with warm water, gently rub the grains in circles to exfoliate.  Use your favorite moisturizer with sunscreen afterwards.

If you have very sensitive skin, you should do a small patch test first.  Obviously, if you find this irritating, you should not use it.  I truly believe that this works wonders for most people.  Please give it a try and leave your results in the comment section.

My carriage arrived at noon.

Of course, not a real carriage, but a town car to take me to lunch at the Fontainebleau, a swanky Miami hotel dating back to the era that defined swank, circa Mad Men. 

It was not your average Thursday. 

I was invited to an intimate luncheon to learn all about Hollywood beauty secrets, so I could share those tips with you.  To be honest, my expectations were low.  I thought the event would be lovely, but mamaguru embodies a holistic lifestyle.  Although a touch of glamour and fabulousness is always fun, I’m much more concerned with helping people live lives of meaningful happiness.  Smokey eyes don’t contribute much in that regard.  What a surprise it was for me, when the speakers spoke about substantive beauty, not a flash and dash trip to the salon, but cultivating beauty that comes from within.

The first speaker was Kino MacGregor, an Ashtanga yoga instructor who began studying yoga in India thirteen years ago.  I’d like to say our lives were parallel, because I studied Ashtanga in India twelve years ago, but that wouldn’t be accurate.  Vertex is a better word to describe our lives, a point where two lines come together and then leave in different directions forming an angle.  I saw in MacGregor what my life would have been if I had completely devoted myself to Ashtanga.

What an opportunity, to glimpse at the path I did not take. 

I am a yoga instructor and still base my practice in Ashtanga, although I have a looser interpretation.  After India, I opened and closed a yoga studio, wrote two books, travelled, moved across the country, got married and became a mother.  MacGregor, in turn, returned to India multiple times to deepen her practice, recorded yoga videos, wrote a book and opened her yoga studio in South Beach.  She is lovely and exudes the joy of someone who has daily practice.  She gave me an advance copy of her book to review, so expect another mention of her.  What I appreciated most were the connections she drew from the physical practice of yoga to the spiritual benefits that manifest in our lives from practice.

The next speaker was former Top Chef contestant, Andrea Beaman, also known as the healthy chef.  Regular readers know how much I love Bravo trash TV, and Top Chef is a favorite with me because I love to see people cook things I can’t.  So many other cooking shows are either at my level or below, but Top Chef blows me away with creativity and skill.  I have only learned one thing in all my years of watching the show (how to flash freeze), because it is so over my head.

Back to lunch.  Delicious, I might add.  Lots of yummy nibbles from Hakkasan.  

Tender-crisp beans were my favorite.

Along with a dessert of white chocolate mouse paired with a very sour lemon sorbet. You had to combine both of these components in each bite to achieve a balance that was spectacular.

Ok, back to lunch, for real.

The positively radiant Beaman told us the story of her own journey into healthy cooking.  It started with a problem with her thyroid.  Her doctor recommended medication, but she simple changed her eating to whole, healthy fare.  In nine months, she had reversed her condition.  After Top Chef, she went back to her partying ways and once again became sick.  This time she didn’t mess around.  Her doctor explained that her body simply couldn’t go through the ringer anymore, so she returned to her healthy lifestyle for good. 

As someone who suffers from an autoimmune disorder, it is so inspirational to hear about someone who changed their lifestyle and prognosis.  Like Beaman, I resist taking medication for life.  I want to feel well by living well. I asked her about moments when diets get off-track.  So often, my healthy eating gets derailed by a party.  There’s nothing wrong with having a piece of cake now and then, but I notice that it activates all sort of cravings in me.  The next day, I obsess about sweets and it feels like I’m back at square one.  Beaman explained that there is an enzyme activated by chewing that satiates us.  Sweets are usually soft and we scarf them down without noticing, which means we don’t ever feel satisfied.  Hmm, I can’t wait to try that out next time I have a treat. 

The other two speakers were more about topical beauty.   Krystle Poulin, a celebrity make-up artist, spoke about the importance of using natural skincare and using lots of sunscreen.  She recommends the Neutrogena Natual Collection and using powdered sunscreens.  Powdered sunscreens are a physical, rather than chemical sun blocker, which makes them more effective and safer for your skin.  Dr. Wendy Lee spoke about a new botox treatment, and I had to remind myself that it’s OK if life marks my face.  I do have a worry line I tend worry about.

And then, lunch was over.  I bid good-bye to the ladies I lunched with and found my driver waiting to take me home.

To my mop.

Because Thursday is cleaning day, and Cinderella still had to do her chores.

But that night, full of inspiration, we feasted on cold cucumber soup, avocado toasts, ginger and garlic sauteed spinach, followed by dripping ripe peaches for dessert.  This morning when I unrolled my yoga mat, my boys rushed from the breakfast table to join my practice.  Our practice.  You see, I know I am not Cinderella and that’s fine by be.

I am already living happily ever after.

I recently stumbled across an article titled, Are These Celebrity Photoshopped?  The Answer is Always Yes*.  I followed a link to some photos which showed the original and enhanced pictures of a number of female celebrities accompanied by a laundry list of exactly what was changed in each shot.  It was eye-opening and encouraging to see how average these icons actually are.  It’s no surprise that images are manipulated, but seeing exactly how it’s done is akin to Todo pulling the curtain back on the wizard:

You can’t unsee the truth. 

The women in these pictures were beautiful before they were changed.  A form of beauty created by a combination of genetics, eating disorders, plastic surgery and expert hair and make-up.  The before pictures seemed almost doable, like any pretty girl could achieve that look.  The enhanced images seemed completely out-of-reach.  It left me wondering:

Why have we allowed our culture to sell us an image of beauty that is not only unattainable, but unreal?

Why do we let them trim inches off waists, add cleavage to bustlines and erase any trace of age on the face?

What do we gain as a society by creating an image of our species that only exists in computers?

Who benefits from creating an image of beauty that does not exist?   

These are not rhetorical questions.  I sat with these thoughts until the answer finally dawned on me.

Selling something that doesn’t exist creates insatiable customers.

By setting up not just an unrealistic image of beauty, but an unreal image of beauty, companies have a market that is always searching for something, anything to get their customers closer to that image.  

It’s a perpetual mirage and we are always thirsty.

We really haven’t come that far from history’s famed seekers of the fountain of youth.

Here’s another question to ponder:

Who wants to live a life with a definition of beauty that excludes them?

Not I.  It takes effort to fight against such a pervasive cultural image.  We have to constantly remind ourselves to tune out almost every message we receive about our own beauty and the standard of beauty.  It would be helpful if celebrities, models and those blessed with good genes stopped participating in these damaging marketing campaigns.  All hail to Kate Winslet when she decried an unauthorized, computer-trimmed version of her body in a magazine.  All hail to Jaime Lee Curtis for her famed, unedited photo shoot.  But those two drops in the bucket are not enough.

We need to surround ourselves with art from eras that celebrated and elevated that natural beauty of women.

We need to surround ourselves with loving eyes and kind words.

We need to resist plastic surgery and not say it’s OK if it makes someone feel better.  We need to help those people who feel ugly recognize their innate beauty.

We need to filter our information sources so that we hear wise voices more often than snarky snippets.

We need to boycott the most flagrant perpetuators of unrealistic beauty and call out those who abuse us subtly.

We need to redefine beauty as a culture.

We need to define beauty with a mirror.

 *NOTE: I am so sorry that I can’t find this link.  I thought I had saved it, but after spending two hour following links, I have given up the search.  If you happen to know the link, please leave it in the comments.