We're on a mission

Two beauty junkies. One a hot-yoga obsessed Indian expat, who now realises she should have listened to her herb-mixing granny. The other as English as tea and cricket, but with a passion for green juice and a weakness for gulab jamuns. We’re friends, mothers, and busy professionals, who love travel and are passionate about embracing life in all its vivid, seductive intensity.

A few years ago, we found ourselves burning-out. Frequently. Overwhelmed and stressed, we’d splurge on chemical-laden ‘quick-fixes’ and end up feeling worse. We were aware of the incredible benefits of Ayurveda’s beauty and wellness traditions but hadn’t found anything that suited our lifestyles or captured our imaginations. So, we decided to figure it out ourselves and after five years of research and development with British organic chemists, French aromatherapists and Ayurvedic ritual experts, Malavara was born.

Ayurveda is the centuries-old Indian 'knowledge of life' that delivers beauty through wellbeing. But it's vast, complex and esoteric -- where and how do you start? While most begin with the elements and the philosophy, we're focused on finding Ayurveda's simplest and most powerful rituals for hair and body and making them easy and accessible -- so the insanely busy can take a crack at deeper wellbeing.

Think of it as turning regular yoga into hot yoga. Hot yoga gives you a deeper, faster workout, and you feel the results the very next day. Malavara is similar. Our product + massage combo is based on ancient principles, but it's working harder and delivering faster due to its 'hot' natural ingredients and easy to follow, targeted techniques. It exists because we don't have the time they had in India 5,000 years ago. We want results. Yesterday

"Oiling" or oil + massage is a key Ayurvedic principle and the Sanskrit word 'sneha' means both 'oil' and 'love'. Massage improves circulation, relaxes the muscles and stimulates the glands under the skin to produce hormones, including serotonin, that calm your mind and help balance your emotions. It also leaves the skin radiantly supple.

The good news is you don't need to devote hours at an Ayurvedic retreat. Just Malavara, in minutes, in your bathroom.

When we inhale, we’re inhaling the life force of the plant, while stimulating the endocrine system and hormone production. The effect is immediate. Ayurveda regards the nose to be the gateway to consciousness, and every scent we inhale exerts a direct influence on our mind and emotions, to balance, to uplift and to reduce stress. While Pranayama, or breathing yoga, is well-known, Ayurveda considers both how we breathe and what we breathe.

All fragrances have three notes - top, middle and base. Having always wondered where our perfume has gone after about an hour of wearing it, we were determined to create one that had amazing base notes, which are always the longest lasting and least volatile, as they are the last to evaporate from the skin. Base notes give our products depth and richness, citrus top notes are energising, and our middle notes are there to spice things up. Read more about our long-lasting Lime Vetiver fragrance here.