My guest this week is Dara Kennedy, the founder of Ayla Beauty. Having spent more than 10 years in the retail beauty space, Dara started Ayla because she wanted to combine her expertise as a product developer and curator with her passion for yoga and wellness.

I've known Dara (as her customer!) for years and the mindfulness she brings to her business is notable. Her friend and the founder of Twelve Beauty, Pedro Catala, has said that she treats her customers like her best friends -- and it's true, she does! It's part of the intention that she brings to Ayla.

On this episode, I got to ask Dara my burning questions and move fluidly from the meta to the micro topics about beauty, including:

• How yoga and meditation have influenced Dara's life and the way that she runs her business
• "Hurts so good" beauty and the ways that beauty varies from culture to culture
• Is the skin barrier really as important as social media would have you believe?
• We also talk about navigating beauty during adolescence and menopause -- two extremely challenging time periods in our beauty lives!
• How we can view our beauty identity through the lens of yoga -- with more intuition and curiosity and wholeness.

I put a link to Dara's blog that lists all of the ingredients that her curated product lines avoid, which you can find on the shownotes: www.yogalandpodcast.com/episode293

As always, thanks for listening, commenting, and sharing the podcast!

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