By Rob Hardwicke, Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

Florence Nightengale founded the modern nursing profession

This is National Nurse’s Week.  This week comes in May to commemorate the birth of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.  Nursingworld.org is a source of good information.

Ms. Nightingale devoted her entire life to care for the sick.  In Victorian England, women with a profession were not only in the minority, they were outside the bounds of proper society.  Nurse Nightingale, fortunately for all of us today, could have cared less what society thought.

Why should a skin care company care about Florence Nightingale?  Two reasons.  1) She was far ahead of her times with regard to her attitudes towards healthy living.  In her Notes on Nursing, she wrote: “I use the word nursing for want of a better.  It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices.  It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet — all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.“  This was revolutionary stuff in the 1860′s!  One need look only at a well-established hospital of the time, such as New York City’s 1700-bed David’s Island Hospital as the Civil War ramped up in 1862, to find an example utterly contrary to the precepts espoused by Ms. Nightingale!

Thanks in part to Ms. Nightingale’s principles, enterprises and efforts today emphasize healthy living — shopping at stores like Whole Foods Markets, avoiding known carcinogens, taking action to keep air & water clean, shedding extra pounds or getting an adquate amount of sleep each night.

The second reason we like Florence Nightingale is simple:  2) Nurses like us and we like nurses.  Our best-selling product was developed on the inspiration of members of the nursing (and construction) staff at Stanford University Medical Center in the late 1990′s to deal with nurse dry hands.  Even though hospitals across the U.S. routinely provide skin lotions at no cost to their nursing staffs, nurses still seek out our company to spend their hard-earned dollars on the mineral skin therapies that we produce.  What better testimonial is there than that?    If you have overworked, dry hands, feet and bodies, there are great solutions awaiting you.

Ms. Nightingale said, “It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirment in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.”   Yet, that same admonition could just as easily apply to many in the skin care industry today.   Just stroll down the cosmetics department aisle at even the best department stores in the U.S. — or the biggest of big box stores — and read the ingredients labels on the skin care products.  The principle of ‘do the body no harm’ should apply.

Here’s a partial list of the nurse-related facebook Pages that we’ve ‘Liked’ from our own page at www.facebook.com/awakeningskincare:  NurseTogether, Nurse-Family Patnership, The American Holistic Nurses Association, NursingLink, NurseConnect, National League for Nursing, NurseZone and the Emergency Nurses Association.

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

The noun ‘nurse’ is defined as “someone who looks after, fosters or advises; a licensed health-care professional who is skilled in

It's best to tend to tired, aching feet connected to nurses before they look like this! A Rule of Thumb: No skin = No good!

promoting and maintaining health.”

The verb ‘nurse’ in its transitive form is defined as “to work to cure by care and treatment.”

In Scripture, for folks so inclined, Luke 4:23 remonstrates: “Physician, heal thyself!”  But so many do not.  One of the truths about health-care professionals is that they’re so busily and selflessly attending to the needs of others, that their own health needs all too often take a back seat.  They neglect their own health.

The nurse-focused website, nursetogether.com, is in the midst of polling nurses on the question of how many steps each may take in the course of a day.  That little gizmo, the pedometer, is set for the length of a person’s stride and then proceeds to record the number of steps that person takes and the cumulative distance (generally in miles) traveled.  Ten thousand steps seems to be the threshold for someone to be considered “active!”  If that’s the threshhold of being active, I can just imagine the total steps logged by a really active nurse!  No wonder so many nursing feet are basket cases by the end of a day (or night)(or day & night) shift!

To reinforce the fact that nurses can indeed do very effective things to “healeth themselves”, I recently wrote a small article about the virtues of mineral therapy for the health and happiness of abused and overworked feet for the nursetogether.com site. I laid out two courses of action: a 2-minute triage and a simple, 3-step, 12-minute intensive care session.  I entitled the article, “Happy Feet for Nurses — Easy as 1, 2, 3!“  The condensed version of my intensive case advice to nurses:

1. Apply a thin layer of Dead Sea mud to the feet and lower legs.  Allow to dry for 8 minutes, then wash off.  Not only will the magnesium tackle nails discolored and deformed by fungus, but the mud will exfoliate and detoxify the skin;

2.  Apply small amount of a mineral-rich foot cream (if the formulation contains the herb arnica montaña, so much the better) to the feet.  Not only will healing take place, but the feet take on a luxuriously silky softness as the balm absorbs into the skin leaving not a hint of greasiness;

3.  Apply a ‘booster’ cream on top of the foot balm.  Not only will circulation benefit but the skin retains the sensation of silky softness.  Diabetics have registered their two-thumbs-up approval.  The tingling, burning nuisances associated with neuropathy may even be lessened.

Three simple steps.  Just natural materials applied to the body strategically with materials infused with the minerals of the Dead Sea and enhanced by essential oils and botanical extracts such as myrrh and lemongrass.  “Where,” you ask, “might one find such efficacious products?”  While not trying to be pushy, I’d suggest looking here!

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Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts.  With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea.  However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

The old adage is that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder‘.   What I may think of as beautiful may be butt-ugly in the opinion of my son (almost guaranteed!).   Take architecture, for example:  A great many people are devoted to the Bauhaus school of

Aroma is in the Schnoz of the Beholder. 'Fragrance' to this critter's delicate nose may be 'Stench' to you.

modernist design originated with Walter Gropius in post-WWI Germany — simple, clean lines; whereas I’m fascinated by a form of Victorian architecture known as the Wretched Excess school — if one of something is good, then more is better — if you’re going to need a roof, then why not add two or three cupolas, a widow’s walk and a couple of gargoyles?

The great 19th century architect of skyscrapers, Louis Sullivan, promoted an overriding precept to architectural design: “Form follows function“:  The shape of the structure should be determined by the structure’s intended use or function.  The shape of a skyscraper should be vertical if you’re going to accommodate a very large number of office workers on a small plot of very valuable land.

In creating Awakening’s aromas, we took a page from the “form follows function” book.  We went after the healing attributes of our aroma-bearing ingredients rather than after the aromas in and of themselves.  Say what?

For example, we concocted the aroma base for Awakening HANDS to include ingredients that would prevent the growth of disease-causing organisms — in other words, something that would be antiseptic.  In addition, we wanted ingredients that would suppress the itch response — in this case, astringents.  What’s more, we wanted only natural substances derived from botanical versus animal sources.   Consequently, we ended up formulating HANDS with the ancient antiseptic, myrrh, plus two natural astringents, ginger and cinnamon.  Those were the two ‘functions” we were after.  The resulting “form” — in this case, the “aroma” — was whatever came out of the process.  In the case of HANDS, we were really fortunate that all three aroma ingredients produced a natural fragrance that is considered pleasant by about 98% of our customers.  The inspiration for the ingredient combination in HANDS originated with my ex-cousin-in-law, Jon Eivers, as much as I would prefer to claim credit myself!

Even so, I did refine the mix — especially after one notriously vile batch of hand cream evaded the entirety of our quality control procedures and ended up on the U.S. market with an aroma comparable only to that of pig urine.  To our customers who still remember this olfactic atrocity, I continue to offer my personal apologies!  (The hand therapy still worked in awesome ways even if it did stink to high heaven).

Then again, the aroma of Awakening FEET is top-noted with lemongrass with undercurrents of orange, eucalyptus, peppermint and menthol.  Given that FEET — before we added the lemongrasss — had found a very early market with reflexologists and massage therapists in Florida thanks to the efforts of a petite lady with hands of steel, Bette Gibson CMT, we quickly discovered that our original foot balm formula (again, without the lemongrass but with lots and lots of very volatile, very costly, very therapeutic essential oils) when applied to hot, sweaty feet in very humid, summertime Floridian conditions was causing reflexologists to keel over and drop like flies from the foot stink fumes!  Kind of comparable to the fragrance that results from placing a head of cabbage in the trunk of your car for a 3-week trip across Texas during an August heatwave.  So we added the lemongrass, and voila’, ‘problem solved‘!

The next time you purchase any Awakening product, just remember that you’re purchasing the successful end result of some very painful R&D experiences!  But the end result is awesome.  Because we absolutely refuse to test Awakening products on animals, this is why our friends & family are so important to us.

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Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts.  With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea.  However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, President & Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care 

April is National Garden Month.  One of my favorite gardening facebook pages belongs to Annie’s Annuals.  This is a nursery in Richmond, CA that enjoys a following with avid gardeners from across the entire U.S.  Annie’s is whimsical.  Annie’s is unique.   Annie’s throws an awesome party each year.

This year’s shindig is in April.  It’s a time of muses, clowns and kids and food and plants the likes of which you rarely see anywhere on the planet!

A favorite of my wife’s is the botanical equivalent of a hairy space probe that arises from a clump of green leaves in the form of a 5-foot fuzzy stalk peppered with tiny yellow flowers.  Deer don’t like it, which is just as well, since we live up a ravine where there’s no road to our house — just a winding footpath.  The plant doesn’t require much in the way of water, which also is just as well, since what water we do have is gravity-fed from an artisian spring that produces all of one gallon every five minutes — not exactly Old Faithful.  More like Old Gurgle.

The plant is called Verbascum bombyciferum, and it’s totally typical of what Annie’s stocks in its inventory of leafy marvels.

It strikes me that the nursery’s annual party is earlier this year.  Perhaps that’s not surprising given the most recent report from the Government’s National Climatic Data Center about the weather.  March 2012 was a warm one!  As a matter of fact, according to NOAA’s map shown below, it was the warmest on record.

March 2012 was a warm one!

Emphasizing only the positive, we at least get to start the joys of home gardening this year a bit earlier than normal.

For us here at Awakening, spring is always a busy time of our year.  Skin starts spending more time out in the elements — hands start digging in the dirt and bodies start enjoying the sun.  Since we  formulate ultra-potent natural mineral skin care products, we help to protect and nourish skin that’s exposed to the elements and to work.  Our hand therapy cream, Awakening HANDS, is the proud recipient of the Home Gardening Club’s “Member Tested and Recommended” seal of approval.

So, this year let’s be out there sooner — and happier — spending time in the garden (and, for anyone who can make it, having a great time at the Annual Annie’s Annuals’ Spring Party)!

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Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts.  With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea.  However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, President & Product Master — Awakening Mineral Skin Care

Why should a skin care company for peoplebe concerned with horse grooming tips?  The answer is simple: Because horses are a

Hooves/Heels. Hide/Skin. We're not all that different. We both need grooming.

shared interest of ours.   People who groom horses typically live, work & play in tough physical and weather conditions, so their

own hide needs special handling!  The products that we formulate are designed for people living and working in these sorts of conditions — challenging conditions.

What’s not to like about being out for a three-beat canter in Virginia’s horse country, riding the fence line in New Mexico or Montana on a day with a clear, blue sky, or surviving those six, loooooong chukkers on Florida’s First Coast?

Regardless of whether you’re involved with only one or perhaps even all of the above types of activity, your body — and not just that of your horse — is under the gun from many non-skin-friendly forces.   Forces such as wind, polution, UVA and UVB radiation, low humidity. high humidity, cold, heat — and that totally nasty force on all of us — our age!

Although it’s a commercial site, Rio Vista’s presence on the web at horsegroomingsupplies has a nice collection of grooming tips.  Here’s their tip on hoof health & grooming (and “yes”, we have had people comment that they’ve blended our foot balm, Awakening FEET, with Rio Vista’s Hoof Manicure with interesting results — talk about “off label” use of our “people” foot cream.  But Rio Vista can relax; we’re absolutely not in the horse skincare or hoofcare biz!) :

Give your horse a solid foundation. Inspect his hooves frequently.
	There’s an old cowboy saying “no hooves, no horse.” If old paint doesn’t have a solid foundation you’ll be the one who walks the trail. To make sure your horse’s hooves are healthy, pick up his feet regularly and inspect them. If your horse has been standing in mud or water it can lead to cracked hooves.
Check for loose clinches. that’s the firs sign of a shoe about to pull. Call your farrier to reset the nail. Watch for hairline cracks.If they spread up to the coronet band, they can seriously compromise the hoof’s integrity. Get rid of unsightly slough around the coronet band. It’s a sign of dryness. Apply our Hoof Care Manicure and massage into the hairline.	Many horse owners have also discovered a secondary benefit of Hoof Manicure. It strengthens and promotes growth of your nails and softens rough spots anywhere on your body. It also helps relieve itching and has a great fragrance. So keep one in the house. For more information click here.

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, President & Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

In the nearly 20 years that we’ve been formulating Awakening mineral skin care products, many things have changed — we’ve

Yes, bananas have lots of potassium. So do oranges & apricots. But what a mess when you try to spread these on the skin! (Anyhow, who wants to smell like a banana)?

moved our office three times and our lab twice; we’ve changed our label colors, marketing  copy and half of our packaging; we’ve evolved through three versions of our web store software (with trauma incurred on each move); we’ve added 4 products and have dropped one.  But one thing that hasn’t changed is the preoccupation with our formulation hallmark: Our use of highly concentrated natural magnesium and potassium in every one of our products.

Potassium is a mineral we cannot live without – of course, we can’t live with too much of it, either.  How many times have you heard of someone on a ‘low potassium diet’?  Most likely, quite a few.

So, if potassium is a mineral for or against which doctors prescribe vast amounts of medicine in order to reduce or increase body concentrations, why would anyone want it in their skin care creams, lotions and balms?

First, if someone is on a low potassium diet, there is no quantifiable risk in their using a topically applied potassium-rich skin cream.  You can’t effectively dose the body with potassium transdermally by just applying a cream to the skin.  What you can do, however, is improve the health of your skin by means of each such application.  Whereas the cream’s dose is too small to make a difference on the body’s potassium readings, it is concentrated enough to make the skin itself a lot healthier.

This is a MUCH easier form of applying much-needed potassium to the skin.

If your potassium level in the skin declines, the skin has trouble regulating the amount of water in its cells.  Dry skin ensues.  Potassium is vital for maintaining a proper moisture and pH balance in the skin.  As molecules go, potassium molecules are large, which affects its absorabability through and into the skin.   Considerable work has been done with the creation of nanoparticles of 40 nm or less in diameter to increase absorabability.  While our company has not embraced the use of nanoparticles for a variety of reasons, we nonetheless have achieved better potassium absorption.  Try any one of our mineral skin therpapy creams and the silkiness and superlative hydration speak volumes.   The use of natural potassium chloride, combined with magnesium chloride — both sourced and isolated from the minerals of the Dead Sea, is the hallmark of every one of our products.

Hypokalemia is the condition brought about by low levels of potassium internally.  Excellent dietary sources of potassium are bananas, apricots, and oranges – typically foods with vivid orange and yellow colors.

* * *

Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts.  With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea.  However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, President & Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

First off, a confession:  Your use of the mineral skin care products that we hand craft will notcause Love Handles to melt away all

The type of body cream you use typically sets a tone for overall excellence ....

by themselves.  Rats! — we could make a fortune if Awakening BODY would deflate spare tires that show up around the waist!

But there is indeed a correlation between being svelt and good skin health.

A good training program that includes weight-bearing exercises does two important things:  It strengthens bones and it increases muscle mass.  Increasing muscle mass is important because larger, denser muscles burn calories more efficiently.  The more efficient the calorie burn, the less likely it becomes that you’ll ever be dealing with illnesses such as diabetes (packing around a lot of body weight increases the odds of diabetes, and diabetes can be really rough on the quality of your skin).  Stronger bones mean that you’re less likely to suffer bone fractures and breaks, which means that you don’t need to suspend your health-maintenance program while you wait to heal!

As you continue to exercise, you pay more and more attention to what you eat (or at least you should).  Healthier bodies are less prone to damage from free radicals (check out my

... but not always!

earlier post for a more in-depth discussion about these deranged little molecules).  Less damage from free radicals leads to a slowing down of the aging process.  A benefit from slowing down the aging process is better looking skin.

The concentrated natural magnesium and potassium minerals we utilize to make our silky, hydrating & healing creams provide substantial antioxidant protection.  Antioxidants help to defeat free radicals that accelerate aging.  If you’re focused on skin health, you’re more apt to be concerned about diet & excercise.  One of the fruits from all of this: no love handles!  For those of you who are really interested in losing those handles, here’s a ready resource from the military.com fitness center (not as rigorous as you might think, but you do need to get your act together)!

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Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts.  With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea.  However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

It’s already Friday and the “Awakening Wednesday” post hasn’t yet happened.  Time has the nasty habit of swamping both good

Appreciated by a Most Discerning Sector of the Public

intentions and bloggin’ editorial calendars — though I suppose I could procrastinate another 5 days and we’d be back on the Wednesday timetable again!

Of course, there is a world out there where time — and just about every other conventional expectation — doesn’t matter.  In that world, I could wait another six months for a Wednesday to roll around and still feel good about adhering to a schedule.  This is a world served by Heckler Magazine — a magazine who’s tag line is “We bring nothing to the table“.  A world of profoundly comfortable low expectations!

Heckler writes about the netherworld of snowboarding (and skateboarding).  Having sold my own, beloved 1989 Burton Air 1 many, many moons ago, I have shed my image as a cutting-edge dinosaur of the slopes and, with it, any current understanding of snowboarding beyond what I see every four years during the Winter Olympics.  But what I do understand is this: Peeps who read Hecker typically have skin!  (Other traits of the readership which may or may not always be present might include such things as common sense, acceptable standards of personal hygiene, couth, or simply brains — all of which always can grow in over time).  But as soon as skin becomes involved, my level of personal interest spikes.

When my colleagues and I were developing our early Awakening formulations, we concluded that we wanted products with no-nonense qualities — something we started calling by its technical name: “Non Fru-fru” (also known by the francophile polyglots amongst us as “Non-Foufou“).  There couldn’t be a trace of sliminess.  No scent of English roses or fetid floral concoction.  Moreover, our formulations actually needed to DO something good for health of skin.  Not just hype talk, but true action.  Our packaging needed to be practical — something upon which one might sit accidentally and not soil one’s trousers or whatever apparel one might be wearing (and if one were wearing no apparel, one would have no business sitting upon our containers in the first place).   While our targeted audience for our first formulations ended up being avid gardener and equestrian-oriented females, we eventually found our audiences expanding to include a remarkably diverse cross-section of humanity: outlaw bikers, docs, nurses, rockclimbers, bartenders and massage therapists as very substantial market niches (and, as my previous posting on “Greek Fat Wedding…” mentioned: Belgian Malinois und Dachsunds.

These are all people (and canines) who tend to work in extreme conditions:  Grimy, dirty dirt (maybe ‘soil’ would be less redundant); grimy, dirty stables; grimy, dirty doghouses; grimy, dirty bars; grimy, dirty hospitals [just kidding!] and the like.  Which brings me back to Heckler’s readership — extreme people who want & appreciate non Fru-fru feeling & smelling products that just happen to be “industrial strength”.  In other words, the Awakening products that we so lovingly hand craft!

For those fortunate enough to live in the Lake Tahoe area of California/Nevada… [by the way, according to an official act of the California Legistature back in the 1850's, the lake's real name is "Lake Bigler" after the sodden 3rd governor of California, John Bigler.  Given the good Governor's reputation, this was a most controversial act; in fact, the Nevada Washoe Times editorialized, "If a lake of beer is discovered, Bigler will obviously be more suitable, but until that time arrives the native designation should be accepted", but I digress] … and near Kings Beach, that noted emporium of avante garde apparel, Lakeview Threads, is now carrying a full array of Awakening mineral skin care products for the most discerning of Heckler-reading athletes. bohemians (and sociopaths).

What next for Awakening?  Maybe Tough Mudder!

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Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts.  With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea.  However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

Anyone who was alive in 2002 likely has some fond recollection of the hit movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  One of mine was the

Satisfied Awakening Customers Come in All Shapes & Sizes (and Breeds?)!

use of Windex glass cleaner as the perfect, all-purpose remedy for all ailments.  Have a zit?  Spray it with Windex and it’ll be gone by tomorrow.  Rheumatism?  Tired feet?  Gum on the carpet?  Sunburn?  Night sweats?  No problem!  Just a spritz or two and the problem’s vanquished!

An avid consumer & supporter of Awakening recently caught my attention with her declaration, “Awakening’s my Windex“!   She was worried, however, that I might be upset with her comparing our cherished boutique skin care formulations with a household cleanser.  Far from it!  To me, it was a glowing compliment — our hallmark formulations of natural potassium and magnesium, essential oils, herbs and extracts are the equivalent for her of a panacea!

We know from customer feedback that people are happy with Awakening HANDS to deal with everything from cracked fingers and chapped skin to eczema patches.  They’re happy with Awakening FEET to boost peripheral circulation, soothe sore feet and zero-out even the most vile case of ‘boot aroma’!  Massage therapists love Awakening BODY as an idea massage medium for deep tissue work — high viscosity, won’t clump or cling to body hair, won’t stain sheets or clothing!  Our Awakening MUDFace masque exfoliates dead cells, detoxifies and hydrates, whether it’s applied to the face or the feet — body parts where it indeed is applied by at least one 5-star destination spa.

Yes, our friend was using Awakening as her “Windex” on all of the usual ‘destination’ problems.  But the point she especially wanted to make with me was that Awakening Skin Care also qualified for “gold stars” in the veterinary “Windex” category!

The family pooch had had a history of allergies and  irritations, and the resulting annual vet bill was in excess of a thousand bucks.  Well, now for about $30 in our natural mineral skin care formulations, the dog was leading a serene, itch-free existence — and the vet bill had dropped to nearly zip.  Wow!  We’ve always been proud of our “cruelty-free” status based on the fact that we don’t test our products on animals — and I sure don’t think we’re jeopardizing our bragging rights with the fact that we now have a poodle, Pom or pug as a satisfied ‘patron’!  “‘Hot spots?’ — we use HANDS“, our customer stated.  “Flea bites?” — reach for the FEET!

The truth of the matter is that Mother Nature equipped most of us mammals with skin.  So, what we do here at Awakening with that skin is a really, really good job of combining natural ingredients to make skin healthy and happy — whether it happens to be draped over one of my nephews, the neighbors two ravines removed from our homestead, or a pedigreed Belgian Malinois!

I now can report to Awakening’s shareholders that our natural, mineral skin care products have gone to the dogs!

(And profitably at that)!

Move over, Windex!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care

By Rob Hardwicke, President & Product Master, Awakening Mineral Skin Care

Skin Care Truths

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  I live and work in the world of skin care, and this, sadly, is a world prone to hype and illusion.

There are two, basic polarities of interest: “Beauty/Cosmetic” on the one end and “Natural/Cosmeceutical” on the other.  Up until a decade ago, “Beauty/Cosmetic” was the 800-pound gorilla of the industry — a land of enormous investment and equally enormous return on investment — whose historical sales spanned from the old-time Woolworth and Rexall drug chains (Factoid: Hollywood’s Owl Drug was recognized as the world’s biggest drug store in 1958) to the highest-end haute couture salons and department stores.

Then came the emphasis on ‘natural’, ‘green’, ‘organgic’ — the return to traditional herbs and extracts, homeopathy, and Oriental medicine — and the use of operational practices that eschewed the testing of product ingredients on animals.  Formulators of exceptionally pure products such as Aubrey and Dr. Bronner began to flourish through “health food” stores.

Educational efforts by organizations such as PeTA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, coaxed greater consumer demand for better ingredients and better practices, which brought rise to larger businesses such as Tom’s of Maine, Zerbo’s in Michigan, Mother’s Market & Kitchen in California, and then chains such as the western states’ Apollo/Henry’s/Sprouts grouping, and the merger of Wild Oats into Whole Foods Markets.  Of all the brick & mortar purveyors of natural products, Whole Foods, contrary much urban mythology of the web, has done much to make natural products more affordable.   Quality players within the web arose, such as iHerb.com.   …And, of course, this growth around the Natural/Cosmeceutical pole did not escape the attention of those at the Beauty/Cosmetic end: Companies such as Clorox, Proctor & Gamble and L’Oreal acquired key players on the natural side.

My personal belief is that the hype & illusion at the Natural/Cosmeuceutical end is diminishing.  Most fomulators are making genuine strides towards the concept of never-ending-improvement.  Here at Awakening, we were one of the first to remove paraben ingredients — and potential quasi-parabens such as Japanese Honeysuckle — from our creams and lotions.  Our focus has remained on the therapeutic qualities of mineral skin care products.  Are my own products completely free of hype & illusion?  Probably not, since it is so hard for a small skin care company to thread its way through the maze of governmental, FDA, FTC, EU and UN rules & regulations.

Do we use the word “natural” or the claim that our products “help” improve skin health?  Yup, we do.  But we also are always looking for ways to make our products as kind and helpful to the health of skin as possible.  I turly believe that our heart here at Awakening is in the right place.  We always aim to do the right thing.  That said, I also believe that the efforts of parties such as personalcaretruth.com (“Truth or Scare: Personal Care”) to hold our industry to higher standards are a positive force.  Therefore, I recommend their latest posting, “The 10 Most Misleading Cosmetic Claims“.  Making a donation in support of their efforts — or any donation in support of PeTA’s cause — would seem to me a good use of personal funds.

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Awakening Mineral Skin Care is a boutique formulator of natural, vegan skin care products utilizing concentrated mineral crystals isolated from the Dead Sea, essential oils and botanical extracts.  With only a few exceptions, we call our products by what they do: Awakening HANDS treats hands, Awakening FEET treats feet, Awakening BODY treats bodies, Awakening SCALP treats scalps — you get the idea.  However Awakening MUDFace is mud for the face (and feet!) — so, as with 9th grade English, there are always exceptions to every rule!

Awakening Awakening - Mineral Skin Care