Step Off The Stress Wheel With Gua Sha
Along with everything else a new parent has to manage, stress is both the most
common and the most ignored—primarily because we just assume that along with a new baby comes a lot of adjustments, and adjustments are often stressful.
No matter whether the adjustment is financial demands, lack of sleep, the deep healing required from childbirth, a shift in responsibilities within the parental relationship, extended-family expectations or anything else, finding a way for parents and baby to de-stress is key.
Babies who seem to not have a care in the world beyond food, sleep, and snuggles can carry tension, trauma, or stress from their prenatal growth or their birth.
Your brand-new, sleepy baby is also highly sensitive to your energy.
A mother’s stress level affects the hormone balance in her breastmilk, leaving her little one to ingest cortisol-laden breastmilk that can make them fussier or not sleep well, and which can affect growth, cognitive flexibility, learned response, and lifelong temperament.
A baby who eats formula can still sense their parent’s tension and react to it, having some of the same growth and learned-response issues that form their lifelong temperament.
You’re stressed out so your baby acts out, which increases your stress and your baby’s response to it. That feedback loop can feel like you both are running in a perpetual hamster wheel that spirals ever downward.
It’s not fun—or healthy—for anyone!
Gua Sha helps you and baby escape the stress wheel
Getting off that spinning stress wheel is as simple (and soothing and delightful) as integrating the ancient, yet recently re-discovered and adapted, Chinese Gua Sha techniques for increased health, stress reduction, and immune system boosts.
Gua Sha helps up our rest-and-digest response (parasympathetic response) as it lowers our fight-or-flight response (sympathetic nervous response). This works for both parent and baby. As you give your little one a Gua Sha treatment to help them calm down and relax, you also receive those calming effects. And soon, you have stopped the spinning stress wheel.
Babies with less stress are more flexible, learn faster, have better digestion, remember more, and communicate more effectively with their caregivers and community. All of which leads to increased levels of happiness and cognitive ability for children paired with more contented lives for their parents.
Contentment is the name of the happy-baby game.
Gua Sha is gentle and effective
Gua Sha massage uses a specially carved stone and healthy oil to
lightly stroke the skin and promote healing beneath it. But as you gently stroke the smooth stone over your baby’s oiled body, the benefits of this soothing technique affect more than the tissue immediately below the skin.
Gua Sha increases microcirculation and moves the lymph that detoxifies your baby’s entire body.
Easing discomfort from digestive issues, inflammation, or muscle aches and pains are all primary effects of Gua Sha. As well, it enhances brain function, improves blood oxygenation, and helps regulate breathing.
And, this gentle technique helps babies de-stress by boosting the love hormone, oxytocin and reducing fight-or-flight cortisol.
Truly, what is not to love about this ancient healing technique?!
Babies love routines
Making Gua Sha massage a regular part of your baby’s routine helps teach them to anticipate both feeling good and having the precious eye-to-eye contact with you that makes them feel secure and deepens your bond together.
Our Gua Sha Set gives you just what you need to create this healthy, intimate routine: a smooth, carved rose quartz stone (known for its love energy) and our all-natural Nurturing Oil’s unique blend that promotes moisturizing and healthy skin, while its ever-so-mild scent of fresh-pressed cranberry encourages peace and relaxation.
Our BEB Organic mission is to create a better world by encouraging the strong parent-child bonds that make healthy families. You bring the smiles and hugs; we bring the healthy ingredients, textures, scents, and techniques!
