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Suvé Brushing Care

I first learned about dry brushing a few years ago at an onsen in Beppu and Oita. When I noticed women brushing their bodies in methodical motions prior to jumping into the hot springs, I was curious and bought my first palm fiber dry brush. In a nutshell, dry brushing helps to improve the quality of skin by stimulating blood circulation and lymph drainage. Lymph is fluid that circulates around the body releasing toxins through lymph nodes located at specific points in every human body. Basically, lymph drainage is waste removal for your tissues – like a sewer system or a garbage disposal for your body and when the system runs efficiently, so do you. You look better, feel better and feel completely re-energized.

After delving deeper into dry brushing, I realized that this ancient tradition played a central role in Japanese bath rituals and skin care. With it’s long history, there were already a ton of body brushes available in the market in Japan although mostly with only subtle variations and design innovation. Discovering Suvé, was a breath of fresh air! The company is located in Kumano where a long tradition of brush making exists. The finest natural squirrel, goat and badger hair is selected and hand cut into precise shapes ideal for specific parts of the body. Paired with handcrafted walnut wood handles, each brush represents the highest quality of brush making techniques that date back to the Edo period, around 300 years ago.

Suvé’s latest collection offers an entire brushing care system – everything from short and long body brushes to nose, facial and lymph drainage brushes. Plus beautiful caddies, trays and soap dishes as companion accessories.

If you’re unfamiliar with this method of skincare, I highly recommend giving it a try. I usually direct people towards this comprehensive video as an intro on how to use brushes for the ‘body’ specifically, and the following diagrams illustrate basic techniques of how to use the ‘face’, ‘nose’ and ‘lymph drainage’ brushes by Suvé. Keep in mind that although the Face and Nose Cleansing Brushes can be used dry, they can also get wet for gentle exfoliation on the face by dropping cleanser into the white china Suvé Soap Dish to form a foamy lather with the brushes.

With summer around the corner, skin brushing is a great way to remove dead skin cells for smoother texture in general in addition to improving lymphatic circulation. Give it a try to see the benefits.

Note that Suvé Body Brushes are available in both semi-hard and soft. The soft brushes are made from goat hair while the hard is made from badger hair, which is naturally coarser and often found in premium shaving brushes. Suvé Face Cleansing brushes can be used with soap cleansers. The full Suvé brush and accessories collection is available at Nalata Nalata.

Images courtesy of Suvé.