Your daily bathing routine

Dry skin brushing should be part of every detox programme. It feels fantastic and is a great way of sloughing off dead skin cells and toxins excreted in sweat, as well as stimulating the lymphatic system and the blood circulation. Buy a soft, natural-bristle skin brush and use it once a day before you shower or bathe.

It is important when dry skin brushing to avoid any areas with broken skin as you work. The whole routine should take you around five minutes.

1. First, undress completely. Sitting on the edge of the bath, start brushing the sole of the left foot, then the left leg from the foot to the knee, with long, firm strokes.

2. When you have finished with the lower leg, stand up and brush from the knee to the top of the thigh and over the buttocks. Repeat with the right leg.

3. Next brush your left arm from the palm of the hand up to the wrist, and then up to the shoulder. Repeat for the right arm.

4. Brush your stomach, using gentle clockwise movements, then brush your back from the bottom up, and then the top down.

5. Don't brush your face- instead, rub it with a dry face washer.

When you have finished brushing, have your shower or bath, using salts, seaweed or oils, as you wish. Make the water as hot as you can take it to create perspiration, then finish with a cool shower or rinse in increase the circulation and invigorate the lymphatic system. Just one minute under a cool shower or splashing yourself with cold water will make a big difference.

Rub salts over your skin, using gentle, circular movements and then shower off thoroughly.

Bath Salts

Mineral salts encourage perspiration when they are added to the bath or used as an exfoliant scrub. Choose from Epsom salts, Dead Sea salts, Celtic Sea salts, or any other kind of marine salt you can find- but not ordinary table salt.

Dissolve them in the bath water and then lie back and relax in the bath for at least five minutes before using a loofah or a brush to scrub away all the perspiration the salts have drawn out. Alternatively, make a salt scrub by mixing you salt with olive oil and your choice of aromatherapy oil.

Seaweed Baths

Seaweed contains large quantities of minerals, including calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, iodine and sodium. It also contains acids that can draw toxins through the pores of the skin. Therapeutic seaweed is available either in dried or powdered form from good chemists. Steep it in the bathwater in a muslin bag or an infusion ball. Alternatively, you can also buy a seaweed gel that you apply all over your body before a bath. It's much cheaper that the seaweed wraps you are offered in spas but often just as effective.

Aromatherapy Oils

Essential oils from aromatic plants have many therapeutic properties and some of them are ideal for intensifying a detox programme and/or dealing with detox side effects such as headaches and fatigue. There are several ways to use oils- in an aromatherapy burner, in a compress, for a massage, or to inhale in steam from a bowl of hot water- but one of the easiest is to add 5-10 drops of essential oil to a warm bath. Don't apply oils neat to the skin, always mix them with a carrier oil such as sweet almond, sunflower or apricot kernel oil (about 10 drops essential oil to 2 tablespoons carrier oil).