Stress manifests itself in different ways for different people, and can be part of everyday life or something much more challenging. We at Fox & Rae have favourite ways to tackle the everyday feeling of stress, that all relate to how one takes care of themselves, as we believe that self-care isn’t selfish, it is a necessity.

Check your fuel.

How you fuel your body is key to managing our stress levels. According to BBC Good Food, eating a balanced and healthy diet helps to stabilise our blood sugar levels, which are affected by stress hormones. The advice includes the classic minimum of five-a-day fruit and veg rule, ensuring you are ‘eating a rainbow’ of colours. Don’t skip meals, particularly breakfast, and avoid highly refined foods such as white bread, pasta, chocolate, biscuits, sugary cereals, and sweets or foods with added sugars. Finally, ensure you are eating plenty of lean meat, chicken, fish, eggs, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds for protein, as when chronically stressed the body has an increased demand for protein, which helps to slow the release of sugar into the blood stream.

Have a massage.

As advised in the book ‘Self-care for the Real World’, “being touched physically helps release the stress from your body. Treat yourself at least every couple of months.” Once considered an indulgent luxury, massage has increasingly been known as a powerful tool to help you take charge of your health and well-being, whether you have a specific health condition or are just looking for another stress reliever. Massage has been proven to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and create more oxytocin, the feel-good hormone.

Get moving.

According to the NHS, “exercise won’t make your stress disappear, but it will reduce some of the emotional intensity that you’re feeling, clearing your thoughts and letting you deal with your problems more calmly.” Being active is not only great for your physical health and fitness, NHS.uk goes on to state: “evidence also shows it can also improve your mental wellbeing by raising your self-esteem, helping you to set goals or challenges and achieve them and causing chemical changes in your brain which can help to positively change your mood.”

Nature.

The mental health charity Mind are big advocates of spending time outdoors in nature and bringing nature into your everyday life for many positive reasons, including reducing stress and improving mood. Mind suggests, “doing things like growing food or flowers, exercising outdoors or being around animals can have lots of positive effects, and can benefit both your mental and physical wellbeing.”

Me time.

Can you take an honest look at your diary and schedule in some non-negotiable time just for you? The day might run away once you get stuck into work for example, so you may need to allocate some ‘space’ for yourself before starting. Or ‘book in’ self-care activities like a yoga class, walk with a friend (or dog!), a cup of tea with your favourite programme or a relaxing treatment as appointments, so you are committed.

This article shares Fox & Rae’s thoughts and ideas for reducing stress and leading a healthy lifestyle. However, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, depressed or struggling to cope, help is available – visit the NHS website or speak to your GP.

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Many moons ago whilst at school, I decided I wanted to work in the beauty industry. Beauty was my personal passion and something I was naturally good at. I was was particularly obsessed with skincare and skin types and loved learning about how to look after one’s skin from inside and out.

So, I trained in beauty as soon as I left school, however, I didn’t properly use my beauty to earn a living until a few year’s later, rather preferring to advise my friends and family, experiment on my own skin, and indulge my passion for skincare as a hobby.

It was when I became very fascinated by the science of skincare that I knew I wanted to make a career out of it, so I trained further in scientifically proven skin care products and methods, and studied the many combinations of skin types there are, and they are endless types as every individual is just that, individual!

After working in a salon, gaining valuable experience, meeting people with different skin and beauty concerns, seeing my clients’ skin improve, and their glow return thanks to all that I’d learned, I was hooked. It was so motivating to see people’s progress, seeing their self-esteem and mental wellbeing strengthen as their appearance changed. I realised that beauty and skincare, traditionally thought of as simply vanity and focused on aesthetics, was as much about how my clients felt on the inside as how they felt on the outside. And so it became my mission to start Fox & Rae Beauty and Skin Clinic, to share this ethos with more people and position beauty and skincare as essential selfcare.

And so Fox & Rae was born, and since launch just over a year ago, my wonderful team and I have been supporting our client’s wellbeing through our positivity and our ‘open inbox’ policy, ready to chat, advise and help, as well as carrying out the treatments we offer (when COVID didn’t get in the way).

Fox & Rae has been built on the following principles:

– Selfcare is not selfish, it is essential for wellbeing. We believe taking time out to look after yourself should not be considered a luxury.

– Visiting Fox & Rae is an experience, not just an appointment. It is time for you whether your treatment is hair removal or a back massage.

– Beauty and skincare are as much about how you feel on the inside, as how you feel on the outside, if not more.

And our mission is to share this ethos with as many clients as possible and leave them feeling balanced and good about themselves.

If you would like to receive updates and offers from us at Fox & Rae, please sign-up for our email newsletter here.

The phrase ‘self-care’ has become quite the buzzword in 2020, and unsurprisingly search engines like Google saw a big spike in searches for the term in May of this year. But at Fox & Rae, we believe self-care is here to stay, and actually, our business was built on the following principles, all with self-care at the heart:

– Self-care is not selfish, it is essential for wellbeing. We believe taking time out to look after yourself should not be considered a luxury.

– Visiting Fox & Rae is an experience, not just an appointment. It is time for you whether your treatment is hair removal or a back massage.

– Beauty and skincare are as much about how you feel on the inside, as how you feel on the outside, if not more.

And when we talk of ‘wellbeing’ we mean the many dimensions that contribute towards wellbeing, including the obvious physical dimension, but also emotional and social connection.

So, in addition to our core values, we take pride in our close relationships with our clients and endeavor to support our customers’ wellbeing as much as possible. We aim for every person who visits the salon or is part of our community on social media, to feel like they are interacting with a trusted old friend, and we place the utmost importance on confidentiality. As the business founder, I maintain that an integral part of the Fox & Rae experience for our clients is the ‘chin wag’! Whether that be to share good news, talk about your day, to confide in us, or for a good old fashioned rant, we have an open-door policy and strict confidentially. Despite lockdown meaning we’ve been closed for most of this year, we are there for our clients and want to be even more so during this stressful time.

Put simply, we believe that Fox & Rae is more than a skincare and beauty clinic to our clients. We feel we make a difference in people’s lives, promoting good mental and physical health and wellbeing, and tapping into the many dimensions of wellbeing, including not just the obvious physical, but the emotional and social dimensions too.

And our mission is to share this ethos with as many clients as possible and leave them feeling balanced and good about themselves, even when our doors aren’t open due to the pandemic, our other forms of communication are and we encourage our clients to get in touch to check in.

Please take care of yourselves.

Love Lucie x

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