Steaming is another beauty ritual that I think doesn’t make it into people’s beauty routines often enough. Now there are a couple ways you can steam: either just with your face over a hot bowl/pot of water, or with your whole body in a steam room. Adding either to your routine can provide benefits to your skin, and overall health.

Benefits

Sitting in a steam room (or sauna) has many health benefits, including:

• Relaxing the body
• Improving breathing (although it may not feel like it if you’re just starting out in a steam room)
• Burns calories
• Decreases stress
• Increases flexibility, thereby improving your workout
• Improves circulation
• Unclogs pores, removes dirt and bacteria from pores, and helps decrease pore size
• Removes dead skin
• Helps control acne

How To:

• If you’re just starting out in a steam room or sauna, I would test out each and see which you find more comfortable (some find it easier to breathe in one vs. the other). Start out with short periods of time (5 minutes or as long as you can stand it) and work up to 15 or 20 minute sessions. It’s better to do steam after showering, but sometimes in gym settings, we know this is not always practical.
• If you are just steaming your face, start with a freshly cleansed face, and get a pot of steaming hot water. Once the water is steaming either leave the water in a pot, or transfer it to a bowl, add an essential oil of your choice (for extra aromatherapy benefits), put a towel over your head to trap in the steam and sit with your face over bowl for as long as you can stand it.

As an adolescent, to help prevent breakouts, I would regularly steam my face by leaning over a bowl of hot water with a towel over my head. As I grew older, and started going to gyms, I would regularly spend part of each trip to the gym in the steam room, or sauna.

Now that we live in a small town, and don’t have access to a gym with a steam/sauna, I have definitely been slacking when it comes to this one! I can definitely tell a difference in how my body carries stress when I’m able to do a steam/sauna regularly vs. nothing at all. Having a hot bath with epsom salts is a nice, relaxing substitution, but it is not the same!

Anyone around town want to go in on a sauna with me? We can keep it at my house. 🙂

What do you think of saunas/steaming? Do you steam your face regularly? Comment and let me know!

Cheers, 

Ship