www.gratefulbody.com

Why I make skin care
   Greetings to our long-time faithful customers and to our yet-to-be customers. My name is Shannon and I am the Founder and Formulator for Grateful Body Skin Care. This is a personal letter from me to you. But first, please forgive a bit of nostalgic rambling. . . I remember my sixth-grade teacher letting us create a terrarium - it was a rather large glass case where we planted and tended lots of little enchanting plants. We were probably learning about botany. It was a magical little world and I would gaze into it, transfixed for long periods of time. I also remember being very fond of helping my Mom care for the many plants in our yard. Just two small experiences, but I guess from a very early age, I loved to get my hands in the soil and work with plants.

   This love led to more than three decades of studying plants. I've tried to understand plants and healing through several different systems, including traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic, Tibetan and Old World medicine and most interesting to me, Native American approaches. My first business in this field was called Middle Path Herbals, created in Seattle in 1982. It was here that I learned the pleasure of being surrounded by powerful healing plants and using them to make effective, therapeutic products. At this time I saw it was necessary to make sure the plants were grown in such a way to keep their vitality and integrity. This concern is still one of my main priorities.

   Grateful Body was created in 1998. The name of the company is a reflection of my desire to be more grateful. Over the years I had started to see what an incredible and mysterious thing this body was, and how many phenomenal things it could do. How it healed itself, how it was a part of gaia, how full of life it was. And I had one! I was grateful to have a body! To eat with, to travel with, to love with, to understand with, to serve with - I became a grateful body (and no, the name had nothing to do with the Grateful Dead, even if we are based in Berkeley!).

   Why do I make skin care? Something in my personal life called me to the field, even though at the time the beauty industry seemed like such an empty, insubstantial field; permeated with fluff and wild claims. Two of my sisters, young and beautiful, had died of cancer within a year of each other while I was in college. It was after many years of musing on the possible causes of this that it occurred to me that everyday, every morning, millions of woman were applying dangerous chemicals to their faces! Skin care! It seemed that Darth Vader couldn't have come up with a more effective method of spreading harm and suffering. But I knew that plants could help. Over the years I learned to make healing botanical preparations that were designed to be absorbed through the skin. Mushrooms, fruit, veggies from our garden, herbs in the meadows, finding lichens and roots in the forests, the possibilities were grand. The Grateful Body team found women who had small gardens to grow our comfrey, yarrow and sage; we found intrepid wayfarers to ethically wildcraft echinacea from Montana, chaparral from New Mexico, st. john's wort from the wine country in Northern California and witch hazel beside the forest paths in Vermont. We considered ourselves plant ambassadors and emissaries, servants of the magical botanical realm.

   The other day, I was holding a burdock root in my hand, studying it. It looked so exquisite, it smelled so exotic, it felt more magical than anything Harry Potter would come across. It was right then that I knew exactly why we're a small company serving a small, select group of people. This root is special, it is incredible, but it does not lend itself to efficient, cost-effective mass production. You've got to love this root, grow it, nurture it, choose the right harvest time, then wash and chop it, gently tincture or infuse it - goodness, what a nightmare for a company looking for every avenue to cut costs in order to compete! And then, there are only so many people, so far, who really appreciate the efficacy of true burdock root!

   Over the years, I have watched other companies that originated with the desire to offer effective, natural products. Many of them grew beyond a point that was sustainable for their original aim, beyond the point where they could actually use a real burdock root. I learned of the methods that were developed to help them solve the problems of large scale production. Technologies such as "folding," where a small amount of a botanical becomes a much larger amount of a different substance with the same name. Technologies that copy the molecular structure of an active constituent of a botanical, and then synthetically manufacture it. And because of lack of meaningful regulation, these man-made ingredients can be called organic and natural.

   Hopefully, as people learn the necessity of respecting Mother Nature, demand for truly botanical skin care will grow. Meanwhile, please know that even when mischief is afoot and companies misbehave, Grateful Body is there for you, and there is comfort in that. And if you know that products made with integrity and authenticity can truly help keep your skin healthy and radiant, there is a comfort in that also. We invest in vitality and healing, and let word-of-mouth do most of our marketing. So, I close with a sincere thank you to all of you who, like me, love the natural world, are grateful for your miraculous body, and cherish having access to vital botanical magic. Let's keep in touch!
   [back to top]

My friend Helichrysum
   One of my first mentors gave me some good advice almost thirty years ago. He was what one might call a 'barefoot healer' and he had some very unique qualities. When we started spending time together, I noticed he always wore this exquisitely beautiful and mysterious pendant around his neck. I felt that it must carry some very deep meaning for him. One day, I expressed admiration for it and without a moment's hesitation, he took it off and slipped it modestly over my head. 'It's yours now' he said quietly and walked away as if nothing had happened. So you had to be careful not to admire anything he had, for he would simply give it to you - right then and there. It was a powerful lesson, to see that people can be incredibly giving and unattached.

   We spent a lot of time in the wild - Mt. Shasta, Big Sur, exploring Maui's volcanoes, the San Juan Islands and Cascades, wandering through forest, dunes and upcountry - he had a puzzling knack for knowing where the hidden places of power were. 'Dale and glade' he would say, and as we walked he would grab my arm, ssshhh me and vigorously whisper, 'listen!' Sure enough, something there, some plant, some magic had passed under my radar, but not his. So, with his patience and understanding for my apparently endless ignorance, I started on my path of listening.

   Well, back to his good advice, which, by the way, I still hold dear to my heart. I had observed that he knew plants and was familiar with much of their medicinal and healing qualities. Yet, he wasn't interested in any sort of classifying mentality, he didn't exhibit what one might call a 'trained scientist' attitude towards plants. His attitude was more in the direction of 'hey, meet some of my good friends!' This touched my heart - for I had never bought into the 'dominion over all things' nonsense. When I asked how could I learn this relationship, this benevolent rapport with plants, here was his advice . . . 'Always have 10 good friends.' That was it.

   So, from then on, I began to look for plants to befriend, always knowing that his advice gave me a simple way to start my study. I'll always remember my first one - watercress! For years, I would look for her wherever I went (actually, I still do!). She was my secret lover and taught me the wily ways of the semi-aquatic, peppery-tasting, bio-indicator of clean water. Gratefully, over the decades, I've befriended a fair amount of incredible, awesome, mysterious plants and this has helped me in the delightful job of formulating Grateful Body products. But as in our human relationships, there always seems to be a handful of old friends who never fade passively into the past. St. John's, Clary Sage and Yarrow come to mind, but I do want to briefly mention my good and kind companion who always stays in my heart and mind - Helichrysum.

   There's an interesting thing Helichrysum has in common with the enigmatic mentor I've been telling you about. He went by a few different names; now in his 90's, I heard recently that he has a new one - I don't know why. My mystical plant friend is no different. Call her Helichrysum, Everlasting or Immortelle, or even 'super-magic healing flower.' (personally, I call her Heli-Girl - I think she likes it!). Well, I could go on and on about her, but I know without a doubt that Helichrysum's very presence in our lives reveals a great loving passion for us poor, reckless bipeds. She is so healing, so giving, so dexterous, I mean this girl is all over the map. Anti-inflammatory yet heals emotional aches; regenerating skin cells while opening the heart; reducing pain while sending subtle hints about our connectedness; for her it's natural to be simultaneously healing the skin and the spirit. Talk about multi-talented!

   With all sincerity, I say it in as many ways as I can . . . this is a gift. And trying not to sound like I'm preaching, I will also say this . . . nothing man-made from the laboratory could possibly match this. Nature is intelligent and magnanimous and we are not separate from her. By the way, I try to slip Helichrysum into as many products as I can. But her biggest presence is in our moisturizers. Perhaps you already use them. If not, give one a try and meet my best friend! Let's keep in touch!

   [back to top]

Thomas and the Virgin Cedar Grove
      I think of Thomas from time to time . . my image of him is walking on the trail in front of me, his battered bean bucket hanging down from the back of his pack, swinging back and forth in cadence to his stride. Thomas went and died when a freak mudslide swept him off a mountain. Sometimes, I wonder if he planned it that way, wandering around alone in the wild and then . . . boom, in the warm and dark embrace. He was a solitary man, and it was just a bit of luck that I was able to hang out with him for the short time I did. He was my friend and mentor - another from my father's generation - and I tagged along with him as he explored the remote forests way up in the northern end of British Columbia.

   A little previously, I had been spending time alone in the Appalachians - it was winter and I was learning how to sleep with my boots in my sleeping bag to keep them from freezing. But my solitude was for no better reason than to recover from a relationship gone sour. Somehow it seemed appropriate to be surrounded by ice and a biting, clarifying wind. But it also seemed appropriate that I was learning, in the midst of this apparent desolateness, that I could be warm and safe. One night, on the top of Mt LeConte in Tennessee, thanks to a cool poster I had seen in town (or possibly hypothermia?), I suddenly decided to go to Santa Cruz. A long story short, within a month I had met Thomas and was packing my backpack for the long trek north with him - along with a half dozen other nature junkies interested in his naturalist teachings.

   Always careful about pack weight, I cut my toothbrush in half and calculated the lightest trail mix. Thomas watched my obsessiveness from the corner of his eye while he piled - old school style - a stack of books, a sack of beans and a couple bottles of whiskey into his pack. Every day, we hiked with the rhythm of the sun and somehow I ended up carrying his books. I'm not sure how this came about - he was part naturalist, part trickster - but I'm glad for it, for it was a tactful introduction to Muir and Emerson and those who were looking deep into the hidden heart of nature, those who seemed to share my long-standing bewilderment and disorientation with things as they seemed. At dark, with an exhilarating tiredness and a slow fire that competed with the canopy of stars for my gaze, Thomas would casually mention some topic he had been pondering on his day's walk and informally jump-start that evening's class. I benefited so much from this time shared with like minds, I still remember the effect those nightly readings from 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' had on me. Our discussions would bubble along for hours, but it was always the silences between that carried the most substance. When I asked Thomas about this, slightly vexed, he asked me back, 'how can you understand words, if you can't understand silence?'

   It was in this contemplative, questioning frame of mind, that I walked into the virgin Cedar Grove.

   For a couple of weeks, we had threaded so deep into the woods that either you watched carefully for the trail or you lost it. But now that I had entered this Cedar Grove, the path was unmistakable, it was as if I had crossed some mythical threshold. This was the deep forest of fairy tales, a dark and powerful presence, where an ancient canopy of braided branches shaded huge swells of gnarled roots that cradled lichens and mushrooms the size of my head; and everywhere, the air was heavy and moist with the dense smell of cedar. Here and there frisbee-sized shafts of sunlight would penetrate the shadows and light up the thick, velvety carpet of green moss like a spotlight . . . infusing these luminous beams was an abundance of swirling pollen and flying sparkly things. The atmosphere was thick with an otherworldly fusion of magic and menace; I was in the place of faerie and wolves; I thought Oz's monkeys would live here. A virgin Cedar Grove . . . never seen the saw, probably filled with druid bones and little whispering voices that would get you lost for a century or two. I had entered a primordial cathedral that demanded some form of reverence but at the same time the hairs on my arms were at full alert. One whispered here.

   A few years later the Grove was leveled - cut down to the ground. Death is no stranger to me, but this hit me hard - I felt some deep part of me torn out by the sinews. I actually believe that everyone of us died a little that day. And like my bond to Thomas, I think of this grove from time to time . . . and I have a question. Undeniably, I had had a transforming experience, one that planted a seed of respect and kinship within me, but close to this was a shadow of remembered fear. I had felt it in the depths of this dark, dense forest. It wasn't my individual fear, my personal phobias; it was deeper than that. This was deep-rooted . . . an ancient-dread-in-the-very-flesh-of-humanity fear. How did I get this fear? Where did it come from? Was it passed at the cellular level from my ancestors - so sorely troubled with matters of safety and survival? Does it keep us from remembering our connection with the many different beings in this life? Did this old fear blanket the heart of the chain-saw crew so that they wouldn't fall to their knees weeping?

   But these issues are too big for me, too disappointing, for my understanding is so inadequate. I do what I can, in little ways, and make efforts to wrench this blanket from my own bruised and sleeping heart. So I have become friends with Cedar. I have burned her during sweats and I used to put little bags of chips in my children's crib. I brush a Cedar concoction into my cat's fur and make Cedar oil for a medicine-man friend of mine. I once made a flute from a straight Cedar branch. And of course, I use her in a few Grateful Body products. We use both the oil and hydrosol of Cedar - which can be found in Midnight Oil, Men's Moisturizer and in the ClearSkin Toner. I'm partial to the oil from the Lebanon Cedars (Cedrus atlantica) - this is sustainably harvested from the very old cedar groves of Morocco. Sometimes, we use oil from the Himalayan Cedar (Cedrus deodora) which has a wonderful amber color and deep resonant scent. An oil from the Alaskan Cedar (Thuja plicata) is available but since I don't how they harvest it, we don't use it.

   There is another thing I learned on my walks with Thomas. In a rather shocking moment, I found out that the top of my head is about level with the shoulder of a moose!

   [back to top]

A different perspective on Wrinkles
      My first Chinese Medicine teacher was little, not even 5 feet in his sandals, and exceedingly old, I would guess he was pushing 100 - but who knows with these taoist dudes - maybe he was 2 or 3 hundred years old. This guy was an old-world, transplanted Chinese doctor and he was contrary and eccentric - when I first met him I went to shake his hand, but he stood there and stared at my outstretched arm like it was E.T. Perhaps he was impatient with all the odd ways of this culture, but Lee always scrambled my head and had no qualms about reminding me that I was an incurable idiot. I remember daydreaming about saying really clever things to him or getting in the last word or actually being right about something; but that wasn't going to happen. Even though we spent almost 2 years together, I'm not sure he ever knew my name - or at least he pretended not to. He did have a special Chinese name for me when it came to my needling technique; I later learned that it roughly translated to 'thumbless neanderthal' or 'barbarian hordes' or something like that. But he did make me follow him everywhere, and I suppose that was a good sign.

   Often we would sit on a bench down by the waterfront in Seattle while he ate his lunch and chain smoked. Busy people, immersed in their concerns, glided by us just like the ferries and tugs gliding through the fog and drizzle that floated out on the bay. Here were people of all class, order and genus; a cosmopolitan soup of humanity, and Lee would be intensely studying them as they walked by. Frequently, he would lean forward, point his chopsticks at them and say things like 'super bad digestion' or 'kidney fire first-rate' or 'many liver worries'. This was old-school diagnosis, and he excelled at it. I'd watch him as he would he would study people's faces, checking out the color and carefully scrutinizing all the lines of their face. These lines could be barely perceivable or heavily carved - it didn't matter, he could decode their story . . . tales of organs and meridians, signs of vitality and deficiency. In his understanding, these lines, folds, creases on our face were neither good nor bad, it wasn't better to have or not have them, they just revealed patterns of flow and habit. He would say, "Lines everywhere, on hands, on feet, in ears, on face, all reveal life story."

   Of course, another name for these lines is wrinkles. For whatever reason, I didn't want to pay much attention to the notion of wrinkles. But being a child of the advertising age, I certainly knew they were considered a bad thing; and I do suppose that we all have been influenced by centuries of desperate efforts - by Cleopatra, by Nefertiti, Galen the Roman, Lillie Langtry, Cindy Crawford and a billion other hapless mortals - to thwart these distressing signs slowly being branded into our faces. Yet I was picking up mixed signals. On one hand, here is Lee describing great rivers of chi and energy indicated by the remarkable, branching lines on our face . . . but then, on the other hand, everywhere I turn, I'm surrounded by a world of anti-wrinkle nostrums, all screaming a much different interpretation.

   The paradox is profound, the pressure intense. These lines on our face . . . are they merit badges of our journey, sculpted runes of experience, a hieroglyphic narrative of our brief and shining moment under the sun? Or are they just stupid, embarrassing wrinkles, a wretched insult to our self-image, a pitiless defilement destined to humiliate us? Certainly our values and what we hold to be important will shape our response to this fierce cultural pressure about aging and wrinkles, but I do think that if we don't take time to consider these issues carefully, then our attention will be simply grabbed by the highest bidder. The situation reminds me of a passage from Frost, ". . . two roads diverged in a wood, and I - took the one less traveled by - and that has made all the difference." But who knows? Perhaps Lee, sipping tea with his ancestors by now, is studying my face as I write this, grumpily declaring, "too much wind blow through head."

   [back to top]

Three Little Skin Care Stories
      Our bank scheduled a rep to come and talk to us about maybe setting up a new account. Right on the dot, the young man breezed in. "What do you do here?" he asked, looking around at the many racks of drying herbs and long shelves of tinctures and extracts. I looked at him carefully before I answered - early twenties, fresh out of college, his suit looked new and he had peach fuzz on his chin. He didn't look like a corporate guy, he looked more like he belonged on the high school debate team. "We make skin care," I answered. "Cool!" he exclaimed, but then his manner unexpectedly grew serious. He looked at me gravely. "I need some skin care," he whispered, "some anti-aging products." He was pointing to his face as if there was something horribly wrong. It was my turn to suddenly grow serious. I turned to hide my reaction, went to the window and stared out for a very long time.

   When I make papaya extract, it's a fun but messy operation. Mostly, it involves getting a dozen or so whole papayas mashed down into our Texas-sized blender. I choose them on a spectrum of ripeness. Some are a little hard and green, some are very ripe and squishy and the others range between - this gets a good assortment of all the gooey goodness that madam papaya offers. I grind the whole fruit, seeds and skin included, and end up with a thick, yellowy puree with tiny black speckles of seeds all mixed in. I usually had to do this on the sly 'cause everyone here wanted some - eating it like ice cream, spreading in on toast. Sarah would stir it into her tea (funny, people didn't come running when I was boiling down and mashing the seaweed!) One day this guy from a popular ingredient supplier calls me, says he's got organic papaya extract, says he's going to send me a sample. When it arrives, I open the package and I'm a little perplexed. It's a dry and dusty gray powder that smells like superglue. The accompanying paperwork was a warning to keep away from children and pets, don't get in eyes, keep from contact with skin. I wondered what to do with it. I finally settled with flushing it down the toilet. But later, thinking about fishes and plankton, I didn't feel so good about that.

   A lady called on the phone, "I need to return all the products I ordered." "OK," I said, was there a problem?" "Yes," she said, "I can tell they're not very effective." Hmmm, I wondered, checking the order date - she only had the products for a day or two. I was a little puzzled. "I just don't see any changes," she said. "What changes were you looking for?" I inquired. "Well, it's skin care . . . it's supposed to be tightening, lifting - you know, fixing my skin!" she exclaimed, more than a little peeved at having to deal with an ignoramus. I was quite familiar with this expectation of sudden results and explained, "Real skin care is food, so the improvements may take a little while to become obvious - same as when a person starts eating a healthier diet." But then I opened my mouth a little wider to make it easier to get my foot in and said, "for instance when you eat your steamed chard, you don't expect to feel immediate changes." "I don't use chard as skin care," she snapped in an impatient tone. "We do!" I said brightly. "In fact, there might be some chard in the product you ordered." "You're kidding," she cried, now genuinely horrified. Later, before she hung up, she said in a very stern voice, "This isn't the dark ages, you know!"

   [back to top]

Anti-Aging Strategies
   I have a most excellent friend who lives near the bay in Rio. Once a day, like clockwork, the long shadow from a church steeple in Ipanema passes slowly over her house. It's the sort of timepiece I like, regular and soft-edged, like the wake-up birds singing in the trees at dawn or the break and roll, break and roll, of the ocean waves that coax my breathing to let go of the load it's been carrying. Because there is so much external pressure in the rapidly increasing swirl of daily events, my internal mechanisms constantly need these reminders that there is indeed a gentle, relaxed rhythm that I can sway back into.

   As my grown children, eyes forward, embark on their own lives, I find myself looking more closely at the aging processes that effect me. Indeed, I see there is a natural aging process, where all form - sycamore and sparrow, my grandfather and my father, mountains and suns - conforming to veiled and enigmatic mandates, dance only briefly with the stuff of existence, first becoming, then forming and growing, followed all too soon by a diminishing ebb and finally, transformation. Me - or better - what I think is me, ceases to be. The wise ones among us have said that this process is a holy mystery, an ideal opportunity infused throughout with hidden love and guidance.

   I can surely see that there are other aging influences that aren't natural; they aren't normal and are behind what might be called premature aging. War, violence, injustice and other such peculiarities of this planet are undeniably unnatural, and all these aberrant forces age me in some obscure way. And, of course, there are the daily stresses and anxieties pummeling down on everybody's head like a hard rain. What's my responsibility in all of this? How do I handle the story of my life? My form body, the cells constantly re-organizing themselves into this thing I recognize in the mirror, flows effortlessly down this river of life and death as natural as laughter and thunderstorms. But there's another part of me (my unseen body, if you will) that struggles uselessly - in other words, my reactions, my attitudes, my opinions, my postures towards life. I'm finding that these are the real culprits behind premature aging. If I'm brutally honest, I can only conclude that I am responsible for a certain amount of my unnatural aging . . . . I age myself.

   It was in Rio, looking down a side street in Copacabana, that I got my first big shock regarding unnatural aging. All I did was look down the street. An indelible snapshot sketched itself on my nerves; the tempo, the rhythm, the sensual beat of people walking, shopping, talking, eating. Here was visceral proof that the pace of American life - my life - is relentless and furious. I mean these people, all of them, were moving through their day at about half our speed. My friend was patient with me, she had seen this before with Americans, she knew it would take several days for this unmindful velocity to drain out my feet.

   Later, back home in California, I approached my Capoeira mestre with my current worries. I had studied this Brazilian martial art for many years and was at the time feeling low and dejected. Mestre, a decade older than me, is kind but resolute, a fighter raised in the raw back alleys of Bahia, tempered by the healing music and rhythm of Capoeira. A master musician, his heart is as big as his country. "I'm old and slow," I moaned, "these young people are leaping over my head like fleas! I don't know if I can continue my study." Mestre chuckled and put his bear arm around my shoulders. "Let's take a walk," he said. He said there was a secret and that it was simple. "Young people are strong and quick, so us old ones must be sneaky!" His face was one big contagious grin as he said this.

   Given all this background, Grateful Body has advice for natural and unnatural aging.
For the former: use our products. For the second one, for unnatural aging, here is our counsel:
- If you have dry skin, you must sing. You can start in the bathroom but eventually must graduate to other rooms of the house. Dancing in the rain is a plus, so is writing poetry with your eyes closed. Every now and then, make a mess, then go outside and giggle.
- If you have oily skin, pretend that birds are calling specifically to you. Answer them. Reach your arms to the sky and spin around 3 times before doing the dishes. If there are dust bunnies under your bed, count them carefully, then make yourself some tea. Make wishes. Keep flowers in your bedroom.
- If you have sensitive skin, skipping is excellent, so is telling a good joke. Throw things indiscriminately out the window - you can retrieve them later. In the morning, alone in your bedroom, close the door and dance in your underwear, OMG, Ginger Rodgers!! Wave merrily to the neighbor you've been avoiding. And, every other Tuesday, wear mismatched clothes.
- For all skin types, give a few of your neighborhood trees names (you can use your favorite Beatles songs as a guide). When the wind blows, realize that it is trying to play with you. Have a room where spiders are allowed. Take baths with candles. Keep a certain type of smile on your face so that people think that you're up to something. And finally, look in the mirror, take a pinch full of your cheek, and say, "Thank you, old friend!"

   [back to top]