How We Preserve Our Products
Clean Water is Essential
Beautiful Oils
How we preserve our products
Grateful Body products are preserved with an intricate blend of powerful botanicals. We use various combinations of plant extracts and fermentations of olive leaf, turmeric, neem, tulsi, marigold, radish root, totarol bark, manuka, aspen bark, amalaki berry, black willow, rosemary leaf, camu camu berry, acerola berry, rue and bitter melon; along with apple cider vinegar, various salts (including potassium sorbate, himalayan, red alaea and sicilian sea salt), wasabi and an assortment of organic, anti-bacterial/anti-microbial essential oils.
We do not use parabens, phenoxyethanol, grapefruit/citrus seed extracts, synthetic alcohols, honeysuckle, formaldehyde donors, ureas or other synthetic chemical preservatives.
Our product shelf life is 12 months. Our products do not need to be refrigerated but remember that they are alive and should be treated with common-sense. Keep from high heat, direct sunlight or any compromising conditions. It should be noted that our preservative system gives most of our emulsions a soft, amber color.
Clean Water is Essential
Water is the essential aspect of biological life. So all our formulations start with water that has been purified, rhythmically patterned and then potentized.
First, we run our water through double-paper filters, then we stream it through the five double-vortex channels of our Grateful Body flowform*. Finally, we pour our water into large copper bowls to settle and air. This use of this beneficially-activated water keeps our products incredibly alive and vibrant throughout their life span.
For more information on the science of 'alive' water, check the following:
- Flowforms: The Rhythmic Power of Water by A. John Wilkes
- Dancing with Water: The New Science of Water by MJ Pangman
- Your Body's Many Cries for Water by F. Batmanghelidj
- The Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald Pollack
Beautiful Oils
Genuine, virgin, botanical oils are truly incredible. To see and work with them in their unadulterated state is to be entranced and inspired. They have rich, majestic colors, and when you close your eyes and smell them, it's like suddenly gaining entrance into secret glens of deep nature. They smell powerful and multi-dimensional and seem to scramble the analytical parts of ourselves, allowing us a blessed moment of awe. But honest-to-goodness plant oils are rare and almost never found in commercial skin care. Most of the plant oils used are refined, bleached, deodorized, processed, heated - plundered of their inherent goodness and nourishing value. These are the oils valued by the cosmetic chemist - devoid of smell & color, cheap, common and easy to work with. They can be sticky and comedogenic, result in shine, and feel greasy (you know the feeling!).
Grateful Body loves and is devoted to using beautiful, authentic plant oils. We use them extensively in our products, for we value their contributions to the health and function of the skin. Each oil is like a different person, with a distinct nutritive profile and set of strengths. Oils of avocado, walnut, green tea, borage, meadowfoam, jojoba, primrose, sesame, hemp, olive, pumpkin (to name a few); they all speak a precise, unmistakable language - the vocabulary of nature's profound gift to the cute little bipeds who inhabit this thin strip of Gaia.
True plant oils, with their bountiful nourishment, are versatile in their contributions. They balance both oily and dry skin, provide relief from eczemas, provide excellent hydration, bring life and color to tired skin, and fortify aging skin; for they feed the skin cell with important, essential lipid nutrients. They contain naturally occurring antioxidants, vitamins, carotenoids, tocopherols, linolenic and linoleic acid and certainly the powerful and valuable plant lignans and sterols. They even contribute to balanced emotional and mental states. Grateful Body uses only the finest plant oils that can be found. These carefully selected oils play a crucial part in all our Moisturizers, Cleansers, Serums and Body Oil. That they are expensive and rare does not deter us, because they bring such essential vitality to the skin.