Lucy Vincent from Sans Ceuticals

When I was twelve years old, my mum gave me a book by Arabella Boxer called The Herb book. It was a four-part book about growing herbs, cooking with herbs, healing with herbs and making skincare with herbs — toners, face masques etc. For me, this book represents everything I love and has informed my life path to this day.

Cooking, gardening and walking in nature.

The sound of waves rolling when you’re lying in bed at night or little kids giggling, chuckling away.

Investing in personal development. I saw an incredible Jungian analyst for fifteen years which was totally transformational.

Choose to be curious, not defensive.

I was reading The Book of Life by Krishna Murti, a 365 page book, each page dedicated to a daily meditation to read and think about. In one of the meditations he talks about how we use screens every day—not computer screens, but inbuilt filters, however I found both concepts strikingly similar. It reminded me that our minds, similar to google, filter information based on our experiences and beliefs, meaning we therefore unconsciously choose certain people, read particular things that keep reinforcing those ideas/beliefs. It’s trying to look at things through various lenses, different perspectives, and being conscious of the biases we inherently have.

Doing hot oil treatments and for most part, using a lot of hair styling products, is something I’m not a big fan of. Professionally, when I used to work as a stylist, I worked with only one or two styling products. Mostly I would use treatment based products to style and gets results.

I love bright, early mornings, especially when the sun is shining (and I’ve slept well). I’ll walk up the road for a coffee, take in the day and use this time to think about life stuff.

When I’m tired and not looking after myself properly, my inbox and to-do list can swell in size and feel insurmountable. Sleep, good eating and an early rise gives space to reset and re organise my load. Doing this before the rest of the world stirs somehow intensifies my focus, that feeling of calmness and solitude. Also, weirdly enough, I find a good spring clean be massively helpful in terms of creating a sense of order.

When I tidy, all objects have to line up, possess a certain spatial composition, sort of parallel and aligned—but then my work space is truly chaotic!