Dry Brushing 101

My Personal History with Regards to Dry Brushing

Dry brushing is one of the practices I’ve included at the very early stages of my lifestyle change in April 2016. As of April 2018 it has been exactly two years that I have been dry brushing regularly. As opposed to other starting points, I haven’t been experimenting extensively with this actual practice. So far it has been a pretty straight forward practice that I happened to include in my weekly routine. I have no real evidence that it is specifically helping me in my regeneration process, other than seeing all the dead skin falling out of the surface of my body, and feeling more energized after each dry brushing session.

As with sunbathing and other starting points that I’ve been sharing on this blog, one should adapt this practice to her own reality in order to be safe and get the best results. As I mentioned earlier, my approach is fairly simple and hasn’t changed much since the beginning. That said, there are plenty of different approaches, information, and opinions about dry brushing on the web. There seem to be plenty of room to get more involved than I have been with this practice and experiment more extensively with it.

While browsing through the information that is out there, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised to see articles and posts about dry brushing on many beauty websites. I personally see dry brushing as practice to support well being more than beauty. The positive effect in beauty is a sort of a byproduct of getting healthier in my opinion, but obviously there is a lot of emphasis out there on the superficial benefits of dry brushing.

My main motivation in embracing dry brushing is to promote the movement of the lymphatic fluid throughout my body. I know for a fact that dry brushing alone won’t be enough to provoke the necessary amount of lymphatic liquid movement needed in order to positively affect my well-being. This is why I see it as an additional support to exercising, and practices such as cold and hot showers, sauna sessions etc… If in the process of dry brushing, I can also get rid of dead skin cells containing toxins, that will be an additional supporting point in what I try to accomplish with this journey.

How often do I dry brush?

I usually dry brush my entire body four to five times a week. I do it before jumping in the shower, but it can also be done at other times, as long as the skin is dry. I had periods when I would dry brush my body everyday. To dry brush on a daily basis did not trigger any negative symptoms, but it just makes more sense to me, to give the skin some time to rest and not dry brush it everyday. I personally do not use lotions. Dry brushing alone, has a natural softening effect on my skin already, and I don’t feel like it needs anything else at this point.

How do I dry brush?

My technique is to start from my toes, and work my way up. I always move my brush towards my main lymph nodes. Some advise to move it towards the heart which is almost the same thing. It’s just that in the lower back and lower belly regions, I find the main lymph nodes near my hips to be closer to these areas than my lymph nodes near the armpit region.

My personal understanding of the process, is to help to get the lymphatic liquid full of toxins to the nearest main lymph nodes, so the waste can be processed by those lymph nodes to make their elimination process way easier later on. Since I don’t know which approach would get me the best results, I’ve been using both on different days. One day I stroke towards the heart, and next session towards the closest lymph nodes.

As far as the actual stroke movements, I also switch between two different techniques. One is to do straight long strokes, and the other one is to do circular shaped strokes while moving towards lymph nodes. Both techniques have been working great for me so far. Usually I alternate between the two on different days.

Dry Brushing My Face

Although I’ve been regularly dry brushing for the past couple of years as of April 2018, dry brushing my face is a fairly new practice for me. The reason for this being that I always thought I needed a softer brush for my face, and I never got the opportunity to find one in the city I currently live. One day I decided to try to brush my face with my regular brush I use for my entire body. I came to the conclusion that it works just fine. It is possible that using the actual brush regularly for the past two years made the bristles become soft enough to not hurt my facial skin.

Starting to dry brush my face was one of those moments when a new practice will help me to get to the next level of feeling good. I would have not thought that it could actually make a such a big difference. I am thinking that since the face is fairly close to the brain area, getting the lymphatic fluid and blood move around in this region of the body seem to have an immediate effect on feeling more vigorous mentally.

My Conclusion for Now

At this point in my journey, I would highly recommend dry brushing. It is still very difficult for me to correlate precisely this practice with the overall positive results I am getting in becoming a healthier individual, but the fact that I naturally want to dry brush several times a week, makes me think that at a subconscious level something is pushing me towards having this practice on a regular basis.

Here is a video of Rob Stuart on dry brushing that gives plenty of information on how to dry brush the skin. His focus is more on reversing and healing skin related issues, but I find his dry brushing technique very close to mine.

I AM NOT A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. I would like to make it very clear that I am only sharing my own experience on this website, and have no intention to give any specific advice on health. Please read the disclaimer section for more information.