Aveda Rituals : A Daily Guide to Natural Health and Beauty

"We promote wellness, longevity, radiance, and bliss when we follow simple, nurturing practices," says Horst Rechelbacher, the founder of Aveda, the natural, aromatherapy-based, hair-, skin-, and body-care products line. In addition to heading Aveda, he is also an environmental activist and a seeker who has studied the world's spiritual and self-healing traditions. He says the key to wellness, inner harmony, and beauty is a process that is eased by returning to nature and to the wisdom of the oldest cultures and rituals.

Rechelbacher offers a selection of rituals based on India's Ayurvedic healing system--"simple, gentle practices"--many of them using essential oils. He presents the philosophies behind the value of nurturing rituals, an explanation of how you can individualize your choices according to your own constitution (based on Ayurvedic principles), then a selection of soothing rituals that you can incorporate into your own life. These include breath, touch, movement, food, herbs, meditation, relaxation, and a variety of cleansing, healing, and body-care practices (including cosmetics) using essential oils and natural products (from Aveda, of course). He encourages you to invent your own daily regimen that nurtures and pleases you. A helpful glossary of essential oils includes a wealth of information about each one. Aveda Rituals is the next best thing to a day at one of the company's gloriously rejuvenating spas. --Joan Price