Beauty and Wellness Were Never Separate

Beauty and wellness were never separate from each other. Every ancient practice knew that. Ayurveda. Chinese medicine. Every indigenous lineage that understood the body as one seamless field of energy.

Then beauty marketing came along and split the two apart because profits supercede everything.

They couldn’t sell wholeness, so they sold separation.

And when that stopped working, they brought wellness back into the mix just long enough to sell you “balance” in a bottle.

I watched it happen in real time.

I lost 120 pounds--a literal person off my body. I was a beauty junkie. Products, promises, packaging, all of it. And then one day, every favorite I’d ever had stopped working. My skin was reacting. My nervous system was wrecked. I couldn’t find anything that soothed both.

So I started blending my own. There was no business strategy here. It was literally desperation, curiosity, instinct and my determination to solve my problem.

“That’s how Essential Body Couture was born — a minimalist, 'clean' line before either of those words were trendy.”

A line that bridged the gap between the nervous system and the skin, what the world would later call neurocosmetics.

Then came 2020. The world went into lockdown, and the collective nervous system lost its sh*t.

I started going live on Instagram to teach people my face massage moves, to help them relieve stress while building connection with other humans across the globe. We danced to Bappi Lahiri and old Bollywood disco. We laughed, drained our lymph, calmed our anxiety, and massaged our faces while I told stories and played music. Ten moves. Ten strokes. Ten minutes a day. That was my 101010Technique™. And that was how The FaceWorkoutParty™ was born.

It wasn’t all about vanity. It was really about our collective sanity. (yes, I made that rhyme.)

We built community through laughter, lymphatic pathways, oxytocin, and presence.

And inevitably, the industry noticed.

Enter: Face Yoga.

Some teachers claim ancient origins for face yoga. There are modern mentions of facial exercises in beauty lore, sure. But no scripture I’ve ever read prescribes facial sculpting for aesthetic purposes.

“Face yoga as it exists now is a modern invention dressed up in Sanskrit and sold in soft pastels.”

Not shocking. My technical issues with face yoga aside, it's the marketing that gets my goat.

The gaslighting dressed as empowerment. The casual cruelty. The endless chorus of:

“Your face is fat. Your jawline is weak. Your double chin is ugly.”

These days, it’s evolved into a new kind of hypocrisy:

“We can age gracefully, but also… your face is fat and your double chin is hideous.”

Let’s just call it what it is. Beauty culture is patriarchy at play.

Real feminism is not about rejecting our beauty. It’s about rejecting submission to thoughts and cultural mores and practices that normalize the systemic dehumanization of women. It’s taking back your power and deciding what you want for yourself. It’s saying, “Yes, I have a chin. Maybe two. Maybe four. And none of them make me less. And for the record, fuck your opinion on my FUPA."

Also, what unkind satanic gremlin comes up with these absolutely destructive terms that are so normalized by beauty, diet, and wellness culture?

Meanwhile, my students are over here healing. They are sleeping better, feeling calmer, watching inflammation and pigmentation fade away. Many tell me their chronic pain has vanished. They aren’t chasing “younger.” They are chasing peace of mind.

Because you cannot separate the body from the skin.

“If it shows up on your face, something deeper in your system is asking to be seen.”

Ayurveda says it. TCM says it. Functional medicine says it.

But beauty marketing will seldom say it, because how do you sell something to a woman who finally trusts her body?

And now the industry is at it again, blurring the lines between beauty and wellness as if it just invented the connection. But this is NOT a revolution. It’s a rerun. A marketing pivot disguised as an earth-shattering awakening.

I say this as someone who loves beauty, who builds within the industry, who consumes it: You are being gaslit, constantly told that you’re not enough so that you keep spending your money, fighting this and battling that, at war with yourself, wrecking your peace of mind, feeding the bottomless rotting pit of consumption culture that claims to be sustainable and good for the planet.

That’s the rot under the enticing packaging and the buy-one-get-two sales.

The urge to spoil yourself is real. I get it. That’s why I create formulations that do more with less. Products that actually feed the cells and calm the system. A single bottle that lasts for months.

“True luxury doesn’t scream for your attention. It regulates your nervous system.”

So go ahead. Spoil yourself. Want better and want more for yourself. But stay awake. Because there’s a difference between caring for yourself and being sold your own insecurities.

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If you're tired of bouncing around and treating yourself like a project,

If you're finally ready to jump off the roller coaster of quick fixes and false promises,

Then you will benefit from a 1:1 Deep Dive with me.