Meditation applied to skincare What would happen if, before trying to change what we see, we simply learned to observe it?

There's a moment, in front of the mirror, when we're probably all doing it. We approach to apply the cream and in the meantime we check a pore, a wrinkle that seemed less obvious yesterday, the dark circles and the pimple that appeared during the night. We haven't started skincare yet and we've already mentally compiled the list of things to fix. It's curious, because at the same time beauty and wellness have never been so close on social media. We meditate, do breathwork, write in the journal, drink matcha and apply serum while a voice on TikTok reminds us to breathe. Morning routines have become small ecosystems in which it is almost impossible to understand where self-care ends and skin care begins. But perhaps the most interesting question is not what ritual to add to our morning, but what happens if, for a few minutes, we stop adding something and simply start observing.

Looking at yourself and observing yourself are not exactly the same thing: meditation comes into play

“Often when we look in the mirror we are not seeing ourselves with an objective look, but we see what we think of ourselves,” explains Maddalena Mazzoli, founder of Guided Meditations, the largest Italian meditation community. In a few seconds we begin to judge ourselves, to compare ourselves and to identify what we would like to change, often without even realizing that we have formulated that thought. Meditation, according to Maddalena, can help us first of all to recognize this automatism: when a thought emerges, we try to observe it without immediately defining it as positive or negative, just as we can learn to look at our image without immediately transforming it into a list of things to correct.

The Buddhist practice of non-judgment applied to the mirror

It's a small distinction, but it changes a lot. Observing yourself does not mean convincing yourself that you are beautiful. It doesn't mean suddenly loving every wrinkle, nor giving up the desire to change something. In the Buddhist practice of non-judgment, he says, it means rather recognizing the thought “I'm getting old, I don't like it” for what it is: a thought, not reality in its entirety. And maybe that's just what we rarely do in front of the mirror: give ourselves a few seconds between what we see and what we decide it means.

What if we didn't do anything before skincare?

We are used to thinking about beauty through the verbs of action. Cleanse, exfoliate, moisturize, correct, illuminate, plump. Even when we talk about self-care, there is almost always something to do and possibly also with consistency. Meditation introduces an almost opposite logic: don't intervene immediately. “When we meditate and a thought comes, we try not to immediately define it as positive or negative; a feeling emerges and we try to feel it without necessarily having to change it,” explains Maddalena. With constant practice, he adds, techniques such as Vipassana meditation, gratitude meditation and Metta can be used to cultivate acceptance and love for oneself.

Not because a ten-minute meditation can magically resolve the relationship with our image, but because it introduces a possibility that in beauty we tend to forget: not everything we notice must necessarily become something we can intervene on. We can see dark circles without immediately looking for ways to erase it. We can realize that our body has changed without deciding at the same time if we like that change or not. We can even put on the concealer five minutes later. The difference is to have noticed the thought before automatically transforming it into an action.

The beauty routine can also be a small meditation

This is where beauty and meditation can truly meet, without the need to transform skincare into yet another wellness performance to be performed perfectly. For Maddalena Mazzoli, it is enough to start from what we are already doing: “We can breathe slowly and enjoy the beauty routine as a small ritual: feel the temperature of the water, the scent of the cream, the hands that massage our face.” Instead of applying a cream while we think about the email to send, the chat we haven't answered and everything we'll have to do half an hour later, we can stay exactly there for a few minutes. You don't need another ten steps, a new tool or an alarm set half an hour earlier. It may be enough to pay attention to a gesture that we do every day anyway. “Instead of doing something to our body, let's start doing something for our body.” The cream remains a cream, the skincare remains skincare and the mirror continues to show us even what we don't like. But maybe, a few mornings, before looking for what to correct, we'll just be able to look at each other. And for once, the first gesture of our beauty routine may not be to change something, but to be there.