Magnesium Rituals
How to use a magnesium body butter in the evening
Six small steps, and the reason for each one. Most of them are about going slower than you think you need to.
Twenty minutes after the house goes quiet, your shoulders come down.
You know the moment. It arrives late, it arrives on its own, and by the time it does, most of the evening has already gone somewhere else. A magnesium butter is a way of marking that moment on purpose, a little earlier, with your own hands.
Below is what a magnesium body butter actually is, how to use one, and what to expect the first few nights.
What a magnesium butter is
Magnesium chloride blended into raw plant butters. In our Gentle Descent, the base is shea, coconut, and mango, whipped until it melts on contact with warm skin. It is thick in the jar and thin in your hands, which is the whole trick of it.
The magnesium is what people come looking for. Gentle Descent carries about 200 mg of magnesium per teaspoon, and we print that number so you can see exactly what you are buying rather than taking a word for it.
The rest of the list is short. Twelve ingredients, every one named in full on the product page. About 1% lavender and chamomile essential oils give it its scent, and there is no synthetic fragrance in it. There is no menthol and no hemp extract either, so nothing in the jar is doing anything bright or sharp at the end of the day.
The ritual, in six steps
None of this is complicated. What it asks of you is a few minutes, which is the part most people skip.
One · Warm it
Take less than you think
A small scoop on clean fingertips, held for a moment before you do anything with it. Body heat softens it, and warm butter spreads much further than cold butter does. Almost everybody uses too much on the first night.
Two · Put your hands down first
One breath before you start
Rest your warm hands on the back of your neck and leave them there for a single breath before you move them.
It is an odd instruction and it is the step people write to us about. The pause is what lets your shoulders drop. Starting straight into the rubbing skips it.
Three · Start at the back of your neck
Up into the base of your skull
Small circles, working slowly upward from the top of your spine into the base of your skull. If you only have two minutes, spend them here. This is the part of the ritual worth protecting.
Four · Use more pressure than feels necessary
Slower and firmer than feels right
Smoothing something on quickly is not the ritual. The ritual is the pressure and the time. Give it longer than seems reasonable, and let it be boring.
Five · Carry on across the shoulders
Out along the tops, then down
From the base of your skull, work outward across the tops of your shoulders and down toward the blades. This is where most people are holding the day, and it is usually the part that takes the longest to let go.
Neck and shoulders are the whole ritual. There is no need to take it anywhere else.
Six · Make it the last thing
After the phone, not before it
The ritual works best as the final soft step of the evening, once everything else is done and there is nothing waiting on the other side of it. Nothing here needs to be rushed, and nothing here needs to be finished.
What to expect the first few nights
Some people notice a light tingle on first use, particularly on freshly shaved skin or anywhere the surface is broken. Magnesium chloride is a salt, and salt on newly opened skin makes itself known.
It settles for most people after the first few uses. Skip freshly shaved areas for a day, keep it away from your eyes, and wash your hands afterward.
A little goes a long way. Used nightly, most people get through a jar in about seven or eight weeks. If you are getting through one much faster than that, you are almost certainly using more than you need, and warming it for longer will fix that on its own.
Patch test first. Formulated for reactive, easily-overwhelmed skin. We suggest a patch test on the inner forearm, left 24 hours, before wider use.
Keep it external. External use only, away from eyes and broken skin.
If essential oils are the problem
The lavender and chamomile in Gentle Descent sit at about 1%, which is low, and for some people low is still too much. Pure Descent is the same butter made completely without essential oils, so the choice stays yours rather than ours.
Both jars carry the full ingredient list on the page, including the parts that give people trouble. You should be able to decide before you buy, not after.
What is left out on purpose
Every ingredient we leave out is one less thing your skin has to respond to. In this jar, that means all of the following are absent by decision rather than by accident.
Synthetic fragrance
Left out
Menthol
Left out
Hemp extract
Left out
Fillers and bulking agents
Left out
Magnesium chloride
≈ 200 mg per tsp
Lavender & chamomile essential oils
About 1%
Total ingredients
Twelve
Magnesium Chloride, *Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, *Cocos Nucifera (Coconut Oil), *Mangifera Indica (Mango) Seed Butter, Cetearyl Olivate, Sorbitan Olivate, **Euphorbia Cerifera (Candelilla) Cera, ***Vitamin E (Tocopherol), ****Dehydroacetic Acid, ****Benzyl Alcohol, *Anthemis Nobilis (Chamomile) Flower Oil, Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender) Oil.
*Organic **Sustainable ***Non-GMO ****ECOCERT-certified
How it is made
Every jar is made by hand in San Diego, in small batches, by the person who wrote this. The ingredient list published on the site is the list on the jar, and when a formula is refined, the page is updated with it.
If your jar and the page ever disagree, the jar is correct, and I would like to hear about it.
The last few minutes of the day, and nothing in them to decide.
Shop Magnesium RitualsIndiefog products are cosmetics, made to cleanse, soften, and comfort skin. They do not treat, cure, or prevent any condition.
Because we prioritise freshness and small-batch production, the list above may occasionally vary from your packaging. The ingredient list printed on your jar always reflects the exact formula inside.