How to Master the Fine Art of Soft Living

Taking the time to develop a proper skin-care regimen isn’t just great for your visage. It’s also about carving out quiet time dedicated to you. Alpyn Beauty is one of our favorite brands on the market for self-care. Truly putting the “soft” in soft living, their products are made using ingredients from the wild frontier of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they work with local botanists and farmers, using a process of no-harm harvesting to identify wild plants with the most power to repair and hydrate skin. One bonus is that when you purchase their products, like the luxe Super Peptide & Ghostberry Barrier moisturizer, they give back to the Grand Teton National Park Foundation’s rewilding project.

According to the CDC, one in three Americans is sleep-deprived. This lack of sleep not only makes us groggy, dampens our productivity, and puts us in a foul mood, but has some pretty serious side effects, correlating with obesity and diabetes. Rosewood Hotel Group, Auberge Resorts, Malibu Beach Inn, and the Hotel Figueroa are among the many in the West offering sleep tourism programs that can include everything from collaborations with functional medicine doctors to meditation classes and curated bathtub rituals, all geared toward optimizing recovery. Want to bring the journey into the home? Try integrating an Oura ring, a sleek wearable that tracks resting heart rate, REM sleep, and sleep quality, as well as real-time stress levels, giving the user tangible data to work with.  

A big part of #softlife is living intentionally, and it’s hard to do that without a plan in place. The Mantra Moves journal, created by Los Angeles–based wellness instructor Vanessa Dunn, does just that, guiding you through the steps of manifesting the life you want, first through establishing exactly what fulfillment in each facet of your life would look like—mind, home, social, purpose, love, career—and then meditating daily with mantras and gratitude practices to get you there. I’ve gone through this journal three times, and each time I’m impressed by how the intentions come to fruition. 

There’s something about lighting a great candle that ignites a moment of pause, and rituals that signify a slowing down in the day can help trigger the brain to know it’s time to soften and relax. Enlighten candles are hand-poured, essential-oil-based fragrances inspired by the healing energy of the beautiful Sonoran Desert of Arizona, where the company is based, with scents like the orange blossom, which smells just like Palm Springs when the flowers are in bloom, and saguaro blossom, which evokes memories of the desert rain.

If you’re trying to be everything, everywhere, all at once, burnout is inevitable. That’s why boundary setting and intentional socializing are so important. The social battery can really get depleted after high-energy happy hours and indulgent dinner meetings, making wellness-centered social spaces like Hume, set to open in March in Venice, worth looking into. With a full gym, yoga studio, Pilates room, rooftop lounge, and an area for saunas and cold plunges, this members-only club is exactly the place to network with other health-minded city dwellers.