Skin Care Advice

Aurveda Talon Abraxas

The Five Elements of Ayurveda - Ether, Air, Fire, Water & Earth

The Five Elements

Aurveda's core view is the connection between the macrocosm and the microcosm, from the universal to the individual, meaning what cxists outside also exists within us. The five great elements (pancha mahabhuta) that compose the world around us also make up our inner world. These elements-space, air, fire, water, earth-form the building blocks of life and mirror the basic principles in physics of space, energy, transformation, liquid, and matter. Each element is connected to a subtle energy, a tanmatra, that is associated with our senses--sound, touch, vision, taste, and smell.

Let's explore how the elements form our physical body.

Ether/Space (Akasha)

Ether or space, akasha, is the first and subtlest of all the elements. Ether is the space in which everything exists. It is universal, nonmoving, and formless. Its qualities are clear, light, subtle, soft, and immeasurable. This clement is related to the actions of expansion and vibration. The tanmatra of space is sound (shabda), and the ear is the Sensory organ that perceives sound.

Air (Vayu)

The air element, vayu, is the energy of movement. It initiates and directs motion. Its qualities are mobile, dry, light, cold, rough, and subtle. The tanmatra of air is touch (sparsha), and the sensory organ is skin, which helps detect movement. In the body, air expresses itself in the movement of the muscles, lungs, heart, and impulses of the nervous system. Its responsible for breathing, ingestion and elimination, and the flow of thought. Prana is the basic principle of the air element, the vital life force that is primarily taken in through breath and which life cannot exist without.

Fire (Agni)

The fire element, agni, is the energy of transformation. The qualities of fire are hot, sharp, light, dry, and subtle. The tanmatra of fire is vision (rupa), and the eyes are the sensory organ responsible for sight. The fire element governs all metabolic processes, aiding in the digestion of food, transformation of thoughts, and perception of light. Tejas is the subtle essence of fire, the burning flame of pure intelligence that pro-cesses all perception into knowledge.

Water (Apas)

From subtle to gross, the next element is water, called apas. Its main actions are cohesion and adhesion. Its qualities are cool, liquid, dull, soft, oily, and slimy. The tanmatra of water is taste (rasa). The tongue is the sensory organ that plays a large role in our experience of eating and our sense of satisfaction. Water lives in the body as plasma, saliva, mucous, cerebrospinal fuid, urine, and sweat. Ojas is the subtle essence of water, giving vitality and immunity to the bodily tissues.

Earth (Prithvi)

The earth element, prithvi, is the densest of all. It creates shape and structure. It is heavy, dull, dense, hard, and gross. The tanmatra of earth is smell (gandba), and the sensory organ is the nose. The earth element shapes all the body's solid structures and tissues, including the bones, cartilage, nails, teeth, hair, and skin.

Incorporating Ayurvedic principles into massage therapy goes beyond mere relaxation; it offers a holistic approach to harmonizing the mind, body, and spirit, promoting overall well-being. By addressing the elemental balance specific to an individual's constitution, we can tailor massages to effectively target stress and tension, ultimately leading to a more relaxed and grounded nervous system.

Everyone needs to wear sunscreen

SPF 50 is pretty much the best protection you can get, an SPF higher than that will have the same effect

Melanin does not protect you from skin cancer

Tanning is caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation

Spending the majority of your life receiving regular large doses of UV radiation without any skin protection is a good way to get skin cancer

Don't use tanning beds, and don't go sun tanning

Sunburn is an uncomfortable short term problem caused by being out in the sun for too long without sunscreen. Some people are more susceptible to it than others. Melanin does protect you from sunburn, so people with dark skin are less likely to get burned, but also sometimes people just have a natural resistance to sunburn (or lack of resistance) - I’m white as hell, and literally the only time in my life I’ve gotten a sunburn was when I spent a whole day outside in a swimsuit without putting on sunscreen when I was a kid, and all I got was a minor burn across my shoulders. Never experienced that whole ‘peeling’ thing y’all are talking about, sounds super gross and uncomfortable tho. Rip to all the rest of you but i’m different.

Skin cancer is fucking cancer. It has nothing to do with sunburn, apart from both being caused by a lot of unprotected sun exposure. If you have skin, you are at risk of getting skin cancer. I have little to no risk of getting sunburn, but I still wear sunscreen, because I am protecting myself from fucking skin cancer.

If someone is basically immune to sunburn, then that’s awesome, but we still need to use just as much sunscreen as everyone else. Because we can still get skin cancer. Immunity to sunburn is not a sign that you can go easy on the sunscreen. And honestly, if you’ve got dark skin, you should probably be extra paranoid about applying sunscreen, because the majority of information on recognizing skin cancer is meant specifically for recognizing it on white skin. If you’re black/brown, it will probably take you longer to be diagnosed if you get skin cancer. And cancer is one of those things that you want diagnosed and treated very quickly, so you should be extra motivated to not get skin cancer in the first place.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

Bioré markets some of its products in the U.S., but its ultra-popular facial sunscreen contains bemotrizinol, a chemical filter that’s popular overseas but has not yet been approved in the U.S. The substance is on a short list of those that Dobos told me have the strongest case for FDA approval—it’s widely used around the world and very effective at absorbing UV rays. Another ingredient at the top of her list is bisoctrizole, a favorite in Europe, which she said degrades more slowly in sunlight, is less readily absorbed by the wearer’s skin, and helps stabilize other UV filters when mixed with them, potentially improving their efficacy. Wearers don’t need to reapply it as often in order to remain protected, and they may not worry as much about the putative risks of carrying chemical filters in their bloodstream. (

. . .

The FDA hasn’t added a new active ingredient to its sunscreen monograph—the document that details what is legally allowed in products marketed in the U.S.—in decades.

. . .

In 2014, Congress passed a law attempting to speed access to sunscreen ingredients that have been in wide use in other countries for years, but it hasn’t really worked. “The FDA was supposed to be fast-tracking these ingredients for approval, because we have the safety data and safe history of usage from the European Union,” Dobos said. “But it seems to continually be stalled.”

. . .

“In the medical community, there is a significant frustration about the lack of availability of some of the sunscreen active ingredients,” Henry Lim, a dermatologist at Henry Ford Health, in Michigan, told me. The more filters are available to formulators, the more they can be mixed and matched in new ways, which stands to improve not just the efficacy of the final product, but how it feels and looks on your skin, and how easy it is to apply.

I drink a lot less now than I did before I went into medicine. Lot of different reasons, including that I'm older and more settled. But I can't look at it the same way I used to; I can't brush off as a "fun quirk" what I know is alcohol use on a level that risks withdrawal seizures if they were to suddenly stop, like some of my family members do, nervously asking me about their loved one's drinking when we're alone because beneath the jokes they know it's a problem.

If you're having more than one, maybe two drinks a day on average, over a long period of time, you are damaging your body in ways you don't understand. You're setting up a permanent heightened inflammatory state. Your heart cells don't like alcohol; Google "alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy." Your esophagus and stomach respond to incessant bathing in poison by first developing wounds and then cancer. Your liver, of course, doesn't like it. Your liver not only converts poisons to harmless substances you can excrete, it also makes your platelets, so your blood can clot. It makes albumin, a protein that's essentially for keeping water in your blood vessels and not letting it leach into your tissues. So people who are dying of liver failure are in pain and weak and tired and sad the whole fucking time! And the only solution, a liver transplant, will come with a lifetime of medication and specialist check-ups and the knowledge that if you fuck up and kill this liver, too, no one is going to be eager to give you another try.

I don't guilt-trip my alcoholic patients with liver disease. I don't guilt-trip my smokers with COPD. They chose to cope with substances for reasons, even if I disagree with their reasons, even if those reasons are opaque to me. They will suffer the natural consequences of those actions whether I guilt-trip them or not. I want them to continue to see me, I want them to be honest with me. Other people will lay enough guilt on them. And nothing I can say or do would ever compare to the physical and mental suffering that goes with those diseases.

But if you can prevent these diseases in yourself, prevent them. Quit smoking. Do it now. Your lungs are going to look better starting almost immediately, with positive changes continuing for many years. Drink less alcohol. Sure, it's fun, sure, it's a longstanding human tradition, but it is also unfortunately a straight up poison and your body knows that no matter how persuasively you argue about the obvious failure of Prohibition. You can't argue with a cell. You can't convince your kidneys that high blood pressure shouldn't damage them. They are a system; they do what they do; they existed long before prefrontal cortex existed to justify what we want to do but know to be harmful.