When I formulate anything for Bodhi & Fae, I am always thinking about two things at the same time: what does the skin need, and what does the person living inside that skin need?
Why? Because I really don't think you can completely separate the two.
I see this so often when I am talking to people. Someone will tell me that their skin has suddenly flared up, something that had been settled has started playing up again, or somebody they know has got terrible skin at the moment, and one of the first questions I ask is, "What's going on at the moment? Are you particularly stressed?"
The answer is nearly always a pause where you see the penny drop...and then "yes".
That doesn't mean every skin problem is caused by stress, because of course it isn't. Skin is complicated and there can be all sorts of reasons why something changes. But our skin is part of the body living through everything else with us. Poor sleep, hormones, grief, anxiety, exhaustion, sensory overload, work pressure, family life and those weeks where it feels as though absolutely everything has landed at once.
There is now an entire field looking at the relationship between the mind and the skin, because we know that stress can affect skin through the nervous system, hormones and immune responses, and difficult skin conditions can affect how we feel in return. This is known as psychodermatology.
So when I talk about Skincare for the Nervous System, this is where I am coming from and it's about skincare that remembers there is a whole person attached to it.
Formulating for the skin and for the mind
Every Bodhi & Fae product has to do its physical job first. If I am making a foot balm, it needs to care properly for feet. If I am formulating for dry skin, the oils and butters need to make sense for dry skin. If I am creating something for a newborn, I am not going to add essential oils simply because I like the smell.
Once I know the formulation is right for the skin, I start thinking about the person using it and what they might need from that moment.
Are they reaching for it after a difficult day? Do they need something grounding, comforting or familiar? Do they need courage before walking into a room that feels overwhelming, or do they simply need the day to soften around the edges a little?
That is why I never really feel as though I am formulating for a pair of dry feet, cracked lips or a patch of skin on its own. There is always a person attached.
This is where aromatherapy becomes part of the formulation for me. Essential oils have their own physical properties, but they also carry long traditions of emotional and aromatic use, and humans have worked with scent for centuries because of the way it can change how a moment feels.
Scent has an extraordinary relationship with memory and emotion. One smell can take you somewhere before you have even consciously worked out what you are smelling; back to your grandmother's kitchen, a childhood garden, a holiday, or beside somebody you haven't thought about for years.
So when I build an essential oil blend, I am not only asking what each oil brings to the skin or the formulation. I am also asking, how do I want this person to feel when they use it?
Barefoot Balm explains it better than anything else
Barefoot Balm is probably the easiest way for me to show you what I mean.
Our feet do an unbelievable amount of work:
They carry us when we are happy.
They carry us when we're exhausted.
They carry us through days when we didn't particularly want to get out of bed in the first place and I think they carry far more than our physical weight.
They carry the things we haven't said.
The arguments we're still having in our heads.
The words we swallowed because it wasn't the right time to say them.
The grief we are trying to function around.
The pressure of simply keeping going when we'd quite like everyone to leave us alone for ten minutes.
And they graft. Every single day usually with very little thanks.
So Barefoot Balm was never going to be, for me, simply a cream for dry heels.
Why start with the feet?
Most people have at least heard of reflexology, and if you haven't you have now. At the heart of reflexology is the idea that caring for and applying pressure to the feet can influence our sense of wellbeing as a whole.
Whether you follow the traditional reflex maps closely or simply enjoy foot massage, there is something incredibly powerful about stopping and giving attention to the part of your body that has carried you all day.
You sit down, touch your feet, massage them, apply pressure and, for perhaps the first time that day, you stop moving. You might find yourself letting out a little sigh.
This is already a ritual, of turning your attention back towards your own body and giving thanks.
Then the aromatherapy begins
Barefoot Balm contains Black Spruce, Cypress, Palmarosa, Lavender and Roman Chamomile. This might sound a random combination to you, but they were chosen with intent because not only do they smell beautiful together, they each bring something different to the blend. Let me explain...
Black Spruce and Cypress: coming back to earth
Black Spruce and Cypress form the grounding heart of the blend. They are woody, forest-like oils and they smell like trees, earth and the outdoors (or as some of my lovely customers say...Christmas trees!).
Cypress has long been used in aromatherapy for emotional steadiness, resilience and grounding, particularly during periods of change or emotional strain. It's also associated with calm strength.
Black Spruce has a deep coniferous scent that brings that same sense of earth and forest. It is commonly used in aromatherapy practices when someone feels depleted, flat, mentally tired or a bit disconnected from themselves. It brings strength and grounding - that deep forest quality that helps you come out of your head and back into your body, particularly when you feel depleted, overwhelmed or as though you have simply run out of yourself.
For me, these are the oils that say, come back down, out of your head, out of tomorrow and the conversation you're still replaying, and back into your feet, your body and the ground beneath you.
Palmarosa: tending to the heart
Then there is Palmarosa, the softer emotional part of the blend.
In aromatherapy it is often associated with emotional balance, grief and the heart, particularly during times when we feel emotionally depleted, wounded or simply a little fragile. Aromatherapy references commonly describe it as comforting during grief and emotional strain.
That matters to me because sometimes what we are carrying isn't stress in the obvious sense; it might be grief, disappointment, a relationship changing, somebody leaving, or simply the exhaustion of always being the one who keeps everyone else going, and Palmarosa sits in the middle of the blend like a soft hand over the heart, not fixing it, just tending to it.
Lavender and Roman Chamomile: being held
Finally we come to Lavender and Roman Chamomile, the softer edges, or the hug as I like to call it.
Both have long histories in aromatherapy around rest, reassurance and relaxation. Roman Chamomile is often described as calming and reassuring, while Lavender is one of the best-known aromatic plants used in evening and relaxation rituals.
For me, Lavender and Chamomile bring that feeling of being held at the end of the day, when you don't need any more stimulation, another task or anything else to achieve, and simply need the day to stop asking things of you so your body can hear, you are safe here, you can stop now.
So what is actually happening when you use it?
You take a little Barefoot Balm and massage it into your feet, letting the botanical oils and butters soften and care for the skin while the pressure and warmth of touch help you slow down.
Then the scent comes in. Black Spruce and Cypress ground, Palmarosa tends to the heart, and Lavender and Roman Chamomile soften the edges.
All of it is happening at once: the skin is being cared for, the senses are engaged, the body is being touched and the mind has something familiar to focus on.
For one minute, you have stopped.
That is Skincare for the Nervous System.
Ritual matters more than we give it credit for
We all have rituals, even if we don't call them that. Putting the kettle on first thing, taking your shoes off when you get home, turning the big light off and the lamp on, running a bath, putting pyjamas on, or smelling your child's freshly washed hair are all tiny, familiar cues. Through repetition they begin to mean something, quietly telling the body where it is in the day and what usually comes next.
Skincare can become part of that same language.
If Barefoot Balm lives beside your bed and you massage it into your feet at night, eventually the scent, the touch and the act itself become familiar.
It becomes something that belongs to the end of the day, and when everything else feels chaotic or unpredictable, familiarity can be incredibly comforting.
Ancient wisdom, modern understanding and the person in the middle
Barefoot Balm is the easiest example because you can see all the different parts working together so clearly, but this thinking runs through everything I formulate.
The skin always comes first. Every oil, butter, wax and botanical has to make sense for the product and earn its place in the jar. But I am also thinking about how that product might feel to use, what the scent brings to the moment, and whether the ritual might help somebody feel held, encouraged to exhale, or find a little comfort, strength or courage when they need it.
I love that modern research is increasingly exploring the mind-skin connection through psychodermatology, the way scent is processed in the brain and the relationship between touch and the nervous system. But humans were working with massage, aromatic plants, oils and foot rituals long before we had scientific language for any of it. People watched, noticed and passed down the things that seemed to matter.
Some of those old ideas now have mechanisms we can begin to understand scientifically, while others remain traditional systems or simply rituals that people have found comforting for generations. I don't think we need to force one world to prove the other.
Bodhi & Fae sits somewhere between the two, with ancestral plant knowledge on one side, modern botanical understanding on the other, and a real person in the middle.
Because good skincare, to me, shouldn't only make us ask how our skin looks. It should give us a reason to notice how does my skin feel today, how do I feel today, and what do I actually need?
That is something I want children to learn too. It sits at the heart of Little Wild Spa, where the aim is not to introduce children to adult beauty routines, but to help them notice scent, texture, touch, their own preferences and the way they are feeling. The questions are simple, but they matter: How does my skin feel? How do I feel? What might I need?
If we can learn to ask those questions when we are young, perhaps we carry a little more awareness of ourselves into adulthood too.
Sometimes the answer might be a balm. Sometimes it might be sleep, fresh air, a conversation, medical support or simply five minutes where nobody asks you anything.
If skincare can create one small moment where you stop long enough to notice the answer, I think that matters.
That is Skincare for the Nervous System. We formulate for the skin, and we remember the person living inside it.
