How To Feel More Beautiful In Your Skin Without Products

It's not often you have a conversation with someone that stays with you days or weeks after the fact. But that's how I felt about this most recent episode of Clean Beauty School. In it, I interviewed one of the buzziest beauty writers of our day, and several points that were made throughout our conversation have changed how I view my own work, the industry, and, well, beauty itself. 

"The beauty industry has attempted to take this intangible, philosophical concept of beauty and push it into this narrow understanding of physical beauty. And I think that's why we're never really satisfied with physical beauty," says beauty expert and journalist Jessica DeFino. "We keep buying more, wanting more, trying new things, and applying new things because we're searching for this satisfaction that cannot come solely from the physical. We're searching for beauty in an industry that is only serving it to us by its definition."

Sometimes (or perhaps often) fixing your outside is just a thinly veiled attempt to fix the inside. The problem is that this is never going to solve the root issue. And one thing we always discuss here at mindbodygreen is the importance of finding and treating the cause of something—not the symptoms. 

In our modern world—filled with endless content and social media—it feels like we can't escape being inundated with what the media thinks our "ideal" beauty standards should be. As DeFino discusses in the episode, these standards are inherently toxic. 

"I wish clean beauty would care about toxic beauty standards the same way it cares about toxic beauty ingredients," she says. "Because when you look at the physical and mental harm caused by beauty standards versus beauty ingredients, there's no contest: Beauty standards are so destructive to our psychological harm and to our physical bodies."

No beauty product can replace the simple act of taking care of yourself. That's why finding lifestyle practices that help your mind will help you overall. "It's really simple: I tend to think like, whatever sustains you sustains your skin; whatever heals you heals your skin," says DeFino. 

For her, she focuses on two parts. The first: "I love to meditate. Meditation actually is scientifically proven to strengthen your skin barrier and reduce moisture loss1. So that's my No. 1 tip," she says.