mindbodygreen's Dry Body Oil: A High-Quality, Botanical-Based Body Oil

Taking care of your skin shouldn't be hard. You shouldn't dread the lead-up to your nighttime skin care routine. You shouldn't have to feel that your post-shower routine is work. Or that your body care routine is labor-some, with little benefit.

Beauty—when it's right, when you have the right products, and when you have homed in on your unique routine—should be something you want to do. Even if you don't count yourself a skin care fanatic or beauty lover, taking care of your skin should be a pleasurable experience.

And as we're gearing up for another harsh winter ahead, I've been thinking a lot about how our dry body oil has changed my body care routine—and how it's going to get me through the rest of the year.

We worked hard to get this texture right: We wanted something soft and supple. We wanted it to be so light, so effervescent, that it would practically disappear into your skin upon application. We wanted a sensorial experience that felt rich but never left a residue. Honestly, I just wanted something easy.

And that's what this is: It's a body oil that's enjoyable to wear, but you don't have to think too much about it during or after application. It just slips on the skin effortlessly and then feels almost like it was always meant to be there.

To make my post-rinse routine easier, I really should just keep it in the shower. But in reality, my little bottle practically follows me around my apartment. I even have a spare bottle at my desk in the mindbodygreen offices—because what a travesty it'd be to be too far away from it during working hours.

I'm very comfortable using this body oil quite literally all over my body, because I know the ingredients are good: We blended together a mix of sunflower, organic safflower, squalane, prickly pear, and vitamin E oils. These are full of skin-supporting nutrients to nurture the skin barrier, provide antioxidant properties, and feed the skin lipids.

We have sunflower and organic safflower oils to thank for the silky texture, but they also provide vitamin E, linoleic acid, and fatty acids. We use an olive-derived squalane to enhance skin barrier function, comfort sensitive skin, and replenish lipids to dry skin.

For an added dose of antioxidant properties, the blend also contains prickly pear seed oil and vitamin E (in the active form of tocopherol). Prickly pear seed is full of nutrients like vitamin E and phytosterols. In addition to the fact that many of our botanical oils naturally contain vitamin E, we also added an active form of the antioxidant to stabilize the blend as well as to enhance the oil's skin-supporting qualities.

These ingredients make it great for skin at any age or for any need. It's light enough that it won't overwhelm areas of the body that naturally produce more sebum but rich enough that it can cradle and comfort dry areas too.

We don't mess around with our product's efficacy or responsibility. While there is no regulated definition of "clean," we believe it has become a useful term for consumers to identify formulas that align with their wants.

Every brand, retailer, and organization has its own set of standards for their version of clean—and we have always encouraged people to look for brands that match up with their own standards.

But in the formulation process, we actually didn't start by outlining what we didn't want. To us, creating a clean product with integrity was the baseline. So instead, we started by outlining the ingredients we did want. In the case of this oil, we wanted ingredients that were shown to be well tolerated by most people and were nutrient-dense.

Once we outlined this, we were able to craft formulas with intention. See, we have always found that when you approach an endeavor from a place of abundance—not restriction—you're better able to thrive.

In addition to that, we wanted to make sure that we selected eco-friendly packaging that was available to us. We're going to be honest with you: Making a personal care collection as sustainable as possible is not easy.

Many times throughout the process, we were faced with hard choices in terms of packaging, supply chain, shipping (i.e., contributing to the carbon footprint), and so much more. But each time, we never took the easy way out—we always went with the most sustainable option available, even if it cost us time and resources.

This oil is housed in glass bottles, and it is shipped to you in boxes that are made from 100% recycled paper and are fully curbside recyclable as well.