Tag: soap

#8. Shampoo

Shampoos are, they say, liquid soap. Did you know that 99.5% of liquid soaps are not real soaps?

“99,5% are cocktails of synthetic detergents that have many undesirable long-term effects on the body. This is denied worldwide due to the billion-dollar revenues of large multinational corporations. Sodium Lauryl (Laureth) Sulfate (SLS) is currently Western Civilization’s leading foaming agent. SLS is found in shampoos, bath gels, car washes, dishwashing detergents, soap bars, laundry detergents, etc. It is a wetting and dispersing agent, emulsifier, degreaser and foam booster. It also increases the permeability of the skin by about 100 times and is used in lotions to increase the absorption of micronutrients into the skin. And there is a big danger there!!” Source

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Shampoos, all sorts of shampoos and all sorts of brands are claiming to be the best for your hair, offering for every hair type another shampoo, another conditioner, another hair mask. I have used pH-neutral shampoos, hair conditioners, and hair masks, for as long as they became available, but my hair was, despite the neutral pH of the shampoos, and the beautiful natural conditioners and masks, never really okay. My hair is thick, curly, dry, fluffy, and my hair is becoming dryer because of becoming grey as well. I have tried everything. Because of the mentioned characteristics of my hair, it is impossible to have it long. Not even half long.

Herbal olive oil soap as a shampoo bar

I have started lately to use my own herbal olive soap for hair washing, to see what happens. It looks better and better. . The most significant difference is that I do not need to wash my hair more than once per week. My hair looks and feels normal, it is so much easier to be dressed. I was wondering why. 

Though pH-neutral shampoos can be used every day, the question is if washing your hair every day is really okay for hair and scalp. My thoughts go far back in time when hair was washed just once per week. That had a reason: the skin on the scalp is not the same skin as on the rest of your body. Every single piece of hair grows out of the scalp-skin, and it is the skin that keeps the hair in good condition. We indeed need hair conditioners and hair masks when we wash our hair daily. But if we offer the skin of the scalp the time to do their work in their own natural way, and if we do not immediately destroy their work, by daily taking away what the skin itself produces, namely sebum, we do not need hair conditioners as we do now. Daily washing the hair is maybe okay according to shampoo manufacturers, but it is a matter of logic that the natural resistance of the skin and the hair will decrease because of exhaustion, or will become overactive at the very beginning, when the daily shampoo attacks start, even when the shampoo is pH neutral. Using a neutral shampoo once per week was for me not the solution. Reason to use it more. And that did not work either.

A natural conditioner: olive oil or cocos oil

My own experiences with my oily cold process herbal olive soaps are that washing my hair with it once per week is really enough. After making my hair well dry, I use some drops of pure olive oil or cocos oil, or a mix of both, and spread it over and through the towel-dry hair and massage it into the scalp and hair. I let my hair dry naturally. My fluffy, dry hair is gone, but I expect that the condition of my hair will improve more. [Update July 20, 2025: my hair is curling again, shining, and looking healthy.] 

To make it more personal, I added about 20 drops of essential oil to a small re-used 50 ml bottle with pump, filled with olive oil, and stirred it very well.

Additional information

  1. What ages hair? – PubMed
  2. Hairloss due to electromagnetic radiation from overuse of cellphone – ResearchGate

My personal experiences with EMF and hair loss: during the time that I was not aware of the impact of EMF on my health, not informed about symptoms of overradiation, I was indeed losing so much hair that I was wondering what was going on. I have written about this on my blog Multerland, in several posts[Archives 2017-2018]. It was the start of a private study on EMF. The consultation of an osteopath was helpful in stopping my bad physical condition: she worked on my scalp and neck, and it felt as if a layer of glass had broken and my scalp was back to normal again. After several treatments, my hair was growing again. The new hair looked like baby hair, but after some months it was back to normal. The only way to get rid of the effects if wireless radiation is to live in an EMF-free environment. I bought the Acousticom2. This calibrated device is able to measure EMF. In this way, I could find the rooms where the radiation is almost zero, or at least the less, where to put the bed, where the desk with computer. Of course, all the wireless is turned off, the smart meter is turned off, the Wi-Fi is turned off, also in the computer and printer. All is Ethernet cabled. I do not have the internet on my cellphone and mostly the cellphone is on Flymodus.

#6. The Minoan Lady

In September 2015, I was for a week on the island of Crete, Greece, and visited Knossos, and the Minoan Palace, the largest Bronze Age archaeological site 1. I had already seen many pictures of the palace on the web, but when there I was touched by the atmosphere in a surprising way. Because thousands of tourists visit this site day after day, and so many tourist buses and cars fill the parking spaces, I expected that it would become a noisy, stressful experience, but the visitors were silent, calm, and did not even talk with each other. The atmosphere was so intensely peaceful that it is justified to compare the site with a sacred place. I remember what I once read about powerful energy spots on earth, in the magnetic field of the earth, in the soils, and all the layers beneath the surface.

Monasteries were also built on these special spots. Stonehenge 2  is another example. The Minoans who lived in the palace of Knossos were highly civilised, not only rationally, but also spiritually. Priestesses were also living in the palace of Knossos, an enormous complexity of buildings with even four storeys. The Minoan Lady, also named La Parisienne, was a priestess 3 . The text continues below the picture.

The Camp Stool fresco (reconstruction), c. 1350 B.C.E., from west wing of the palace of Knossos (Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete) – Source: Smart History – Copyrights: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cretan Garden

Cretan-Garden

When I decided to start a webshop to sell soaps made out of Cretan olive oil4, herbs and essential oils, and searching for a picture that could be used for the logo, the icon in the media and blog, my thoughts went almost immediately to that one picture 5 that I made in the Archaeological Museum in Heraklion, in 2015. It was an intuitive choice. For me, the Minoan Lady was and is what I would like to represent in my products: ethics, values, respect, dignity, aesthetics, beauty.

It is a pity that I lost the article that I once read about Minoan priestesses in Knossos and their role in the herbal garden: only priestesses were allowed to pick the herb salvia fruticosa, or Greek sage. For that sage ritual, they had to wear a white dress, because that herb was holy. When I smelled dried Greek sage some years ago -for the first time in my life- I understood. Because of that intense aroma, I also understand why it is used in rituals to clean the atmosphere in rooms, in buildings with negative energies, graveyards, in a diversity of cultures, worldwide 6.

The use of soap in the Minoan Civilization

It is not certain if the Minoan Lady used soap herself. There is nothing written about the use of soap in the palace of Knossos, though the first soaps seem to have been made in Greece, during the Minoan times. Here are some articles with information that explain, for instance, the use of salt in bathing rituals:

“Before modern medicine, salt water treated patients as a healing remedy. Before the modern spa day, firm believers in its healing created the concept of therapeutic bathing. In order to cleanse the body, they infused salt with herbal blends, lavender and bay laurel leaves that extracted daily toxins. Another contribution salt progressed into was basic soap making. Dated around 2800 BC, the Greeks were one of the first soap makers who created mixtures of alkaline salts with local vegetable oils, animal fats and wood ashes to form soaps and detergents. By contrast, today an individual uses soap for bathing or personal hygiene. In ancient times, it was produced for cleaning cooking utensils, goods and medicinal purposes.” 7

“The oldest archaeological findings in Europe related to bathing habits date from the Bronze Age (2,400–800 BC). In the palaces of Knossos and Phaistos in Crete, the population of the Aegean Minoan civilisation left traces of special chambers devoted to bathing. Alabaster bathtubs excavated in Akrotiri (on Santorini Island), as well as washing basins and feet baths, showed how people from the Minoan civilisation maintained their personal hygiene.” 8

“Lustral Basins were first identified by Arthur Evans 9 at Knossos and consist of a sunken rectangular room reached by an L-shaped or dog-legged stairway. There is often a balustrade running alongside the stairway, normally ending with a pilaster supporting a column. All the examples at Knossos, like the one at Mallia (above), were lined with gypsum and so Evans thought they were used for bathing—a clay tub was even found in one of them. However, a few of them were found in areas of the palace; the Throne Room, for example, where relaxing in the tub seems unlikely. In those cases, Evans believed they were used for ritual purification through lustration—hence the name” 10

Additional information

  1. Minoan woman or goddess from the palace of Knossos (“La Parisienne”) – Khan Academy
  2. Appendix Two, La Parisienne – Erenow, Biographies and Memoires
  3. Journal article – Water, Fertility and Purification in Minoan Religion – Oxford University Press
  4. How ‘ritual’ were the Palaces? – The Secret of Civilization
  5. Minoan Religion, Ritual, Image and Symbol – Nanno Marinatos, Academia
  6. Hydro-technologies in the Minoan Era – IWA
  7. Minoan civilization – YouTube playlist
  8. Archaeological Museum Heraklion – Photo album Flickr
  9. Minoan Art, Archaeological Museum Heraklion – Photo album Flickr
  10. Herbs for health and beauty in Minoan Crete – Explore Crete
  11. The Minoan Harem : the Role of Eminent Women and the Knossos Frescoes [article] – Nanno Marinatos
  12. Cretan-Garden olive oil soaps – Webshop

Footnotes

  1. The archaeological site of Knossos, Crete – Photo album Flickr ↩︎
  2. Stonehenge – Wikipedia ↩︎
  3. Knossos and the Minoan Civilization – World History ↩︎
  4. Cretan-Garden olive oil soaps – Webshop ↩︎
  5. Picture Minoan Lady – Flickr ↩︎
  6. Salvia fruticosa and rituals – Scholarly articles ↩︎
  7. Importance of salt in Ancient Greece – Greek Boston ↩︎
  8. Ancient Greek and Roman bathing – Blog Stella ↩︎
  9. Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete – Nanno Marinatos ↩︎
  10. Lustral Basins in Knossos – Odyssey ↩︎

#1. The Skin

The skin is an extremely sensitive organ that is kept healthy due to a constantly regenerating, ingenious circulatory system of water, lymph, blood and fat. Due to the complexity of the skin, to understand how the skin is built up and how this organ works, it is useful to watch one or more educational videos about it. I have compiled these in a video list.

Photo by cottonbro 

How to maintain healthy skin?

Since the skin is nourished in the skin itself via the body’s systems and not on the surface, it is important to eat healthy food and drink enough water (1-2 litres per day) in addition to other liquids such as coffee, tea, soup, juice, etc. Coffee and black tea dehydrate the body. Breathing fresh air, while being physically active, contributes to optimal digestion and thus also to healthy skin. Daylight is also part of natural skin care. Daylight creates a natural vitamin D that is absorbed and transported by the skin into the body. Maintaining the skin from the outside is part of daily hygiene to keep bad odours, bacteria, viruses and fungi away, to avoid diseases. Skin-friendly body oils moisturise the skin, and, together with exfoliation and massage, they are a way to keep it vital, elastic and shiny.

1. Soap

It is astonishing that soap manufacturers of, for example, the very popular Aleppo soap Savon de Marseille and Castile soap do not provide information about the pH value. The pH value of all natural soaps is 9. Cretan Garden soaps are natural soaps, comparable to Aleppo soaps, and also have a pH value of 9. This pH level is related to the formula of handmade natural soaps according to ancient traditions. There are manufacturers of the so-called neutral soaps, or so-called ecologically degradable soaps, who also do not provide any information about them. There are natural soap manufacturers who add natural acidic substances from, for example, aloe vera to lower the pH level. For me, it has been a conscious choice to follow the old traditional methods and formulas. Although the Cretan-Garden olive soap is alkaline, the skin only needs 15 minutes to return to its own pH. The benefits of olive oil, herbs and essential oils in the soap are still present in the thin film that remains on the skin, nourishing, protecting and keeping the skin elastic.

*Advice. If the soap is used for scalp and hair washing: use rosemary soap, and argan oil after washing, on towel-dried hair if you have dry and/or curly hair. Grey hair can also be very dry. Argan oil is also used in the so-called Moroccan oil, but argan oil is pure oil and does not contain perfume or other chemicals. To make argan oil more yours, you can mix a drop of essential oil with argan oil in the palm of your hand before spreading it over your hair, and rub it into the hair and scalp for about a minute.

*Advice for using soap on the skin on the face: Do not use soap too often. Use lukewarm water and dry the facial skin.

2. A skin friendly body oil

Cretan-Garden: Recipes for a skin conditioner

Note: the recommended amount of drops of essential oil per 200 ml of olive oil for a body oil is a safe total. On the Aroma Therapy Foundation website it is written that the total depends on the power of each individual essential oil: they are all different in weight, which means that a drop of lavender is lighter than a drop of oregano, for example. They recommend 20 – 40 drops per 100 ml of olive oil. I recommend a maximum of 20 drops per 200 ml of olive oil, for use on the body and face. Your skin may react to it anyway. Advice: test your homemade body oil on a small spot on your arm, and wait to see how your skin reacts before using it on your entire body. 

Do not use body oil as a sun oil. You can use it as an after-sun treatment. Protect your skin from the sun with a cream with a high protection factor. However, the best protection is to avoid direct sunlight, by wearing a sun hat or sitting in the shade.

3. Exfoliation of the skin

Exfoliation is the process of removing dead skin cells from the outer layer of your skin. If done well, in a way that suits your skin type, it creates a bright, healthy complexion because the circulation in the skin has improved. The correct way to exfoliate allows for better absorption of body oils and creams. See also the Cretan-Garden blog post: Exfoliating the Skin.

*Tip: the skin on your face should not be exfoliated in the same way as the skin on your body. Because the skin on your face is constantly exposed, dealing with temperature variations, air pollution, an overdose of aggressive sunlight, dry indoor air in the winter, air conditioning in the summer and winter, the skin on your face needs gentle care. No form of exfoliation is gentle, unless you use a washcloth carefully.

4. Therapeutical massage

Since Wikipedia offers a very excellent article on massage, types of massage, massage in history and massage therapies, I will just add a few notes.

Massage stimulates muscles, blood circulation, organs, metabolism in the cells, balances the body systems, removes blockages of chakras, creates a bridge between your mind and body, and also activates the skin, because the skin is the medium between the hands of the therapist and the body under the skin. To get used to a therapeutic massage, one can start with a foot massage. Videos: playlist 1, playlist 2

A professional and therapeutic Thai massage is a possible next step: you wear comfortable clothes. Videos: playlist.

The professional and therapeutic Abhyanga (“oil massage”) is a form of Ayurvedic therapy that involves massaging the whole body from head to toe with Dosha-specific warm herbal oil. Self-massage is also possible. Abhyanga massage improves skin health. Healthline published an article about it. Video: Abhyanga self-massage. Video: Abhyanga massage India

5. Fresh air

The skin is our natural boundary between our inner physical body, our inner world, our Self and the outside world. Human development, linked to so-called civilisation, led to changes in habits, and in clothing. Our ancestors did not wear clothes, they used the skin and fur of the animals they killed for food, to protect against the cold. They did not live in closed houses, but in caves, huts or tents. Fresh air was a constant factor. The air was not polluted at that time. The skin could bathe day and night in clean air. Fresh air and oxygen are necessary to keep the skin in good condition. Opening windows, at least an hour or two per day, is a must to keep air hygiene optimal. 

Going for a daily walk, also in winter, in an environmentally friendly area, creates healthy blood circulation. The blood is enriched by breathing in pure oxygen. The blood system also transports oxygen to the skin.

6. Daylight

We are the descendants of humans who lived in the open air, with an abundance of daylight. We must realise that our skin did not change as much during evolution as our habits in clothing and life. We live almost constantly in a closed house, office, workplace, car or any form of public transport, with artificial light. Natural light, daylight, is essential for our well-being, and for maintaining healthy skin. Note: daylight is created by the sun, but being in the full heat of a scorching sun is not healthy. The shade also provides natural daylight.

7. Water and healthy food

What you eat and drink can significantly affect your skin’s health. Drink at least a litre of water per day, in addition to any other liquids like coffee, tea, juice, or soup. Healthline has excellent information on good foods for healthy skin.

Photo by Arnie Watkins

Related information

More:

  • Cretan Garden: Scientific research on olive oil, the use of olive oil on the skin, essential oils, cold-processed olive soap and herbs.
  • Medical News Today: Benefits of olive oil for skin and face.
  • Mayo Clinic – a non-profit American academic medical center focused on integrated healthcare, education, and research – Does drinking water give hydrated skin?
  • Healthfully: The effects of sunlight[daylight, admin] and fresh air on the body
  • Healthfully: Vitamin D & Extreme Sweating

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