Blair Breitenstein
Facials with a side of reiki? Healing crystal massage tools? Talking wrinkles away? If you thought beauty treatments were about delivering a pretty complexion or loosening up muscles, then you, quite frankly, are not getting your money’s worth. The best practitioners are delving much deeper, to deliver maximum benefits to skin, body and soul from the inside out. Mindfulness and meditation have become wellness normcore, and when it comes to personal introspection, smart women are now seeking assistance from the experts to restore and renew on a whole new level. Sure, such treatments are unapologetic in demanding that you leave your cynicism at the door, but with nothing to lose, why would you not opt for this spiritual bolt-on?
“Being healthy for most people means ‘not being sick’, but I prefer the World Health Organisation definition: ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,'” says osteopath Boniface Verney-Carron, who is often described as having “healing powers” that go beyond the usual crack and manipulation. “I am constantly reminding myself that the person before me has a mind, a body, a wife and kids – in other words, a whole life. It’s only when, as a practitioner, you grasp all of this that you find a point of resonance that enables you to treat them.”
Instinct and intuition are key. “When you feel that connection between your client and yourself, then you are doing so much more than just touching their skin,” says facialist and healer Anastasia Achilleos, whose Method of Excellence treatment at the Lanesborough Club & Spa takes facials to another level. “It’s not a facial by numbers, it’s more like, `Hello, I can feel these knots in your stomach, let me try to release your sacrum because that’s where we hold fear.'” To Achilleos, it’s bizarre and outdated that facials should generally only focus on the surface of the face. Quite right, too.
A treatment with facialist and massage therapist Beata Aleksandrowicz starts by looking into the eyes before opening up a conversation, often adding elements of Theta healing (a type of intuitive energy work) to spot internal stresses. “You have to look at body, mind and soul,” she says. “Our body tells us to release the shoulders, but our mind will tell us we need to be ready to face challenges and so to keep them tense. Body muscle work will make a change, but if I approach it also from a mental stage the results can be amazing.”
Facial reflexologist Paolo Lai has other tools at his disposal – namely crystals – to amplify energy that claims to help cleanse the mind and soul. He also has a full-moon Tibetan singing bowl to add an element of sound healing to his Crystal Facial at Neville in London’s Pont Street. “I have clients coming for weekly sessions over a period of 12 weeks or so,” he says. “It’s not just the face that is lifted, it’s their spirits, because I am not just working on the surface of the skin but at a deep level in the nervous system.” He gently pinches my face, working across the top of the eyebrows before moving into smoother, pressing gestures from the top of the nose to the cheekbones. It brings instant relief to the sinuses, and is so relaxing that I drift in and out of a light sleep. My face looks lifted and rested, but he also picks up on a blockage around my kidneys and ovaries. Facial reflexology is a hypochondriac’s dream, your every pressure point a direct line to a potentially out-of-sync internal organ.
Of course, with all these treatments it’s hard to quantify what is doing the hard work – tools, touch or talk. Hypnotherapist Marisa Peer doesn’t massage the skin or apply unctuous creams, but nonetheless she is often told she has made her clients look 10 years younger. She advocates positivity, optimism and happiness as the best beauty therapies. “When people come in you can see the pain and tension etched in their face. When they’ve released that trauma, they look instantly younger.”
Although the simple act of talking to someone empathetic is helpful, it’s unlikely that holistic therapies can provide an adequate substitute for psychoanalysis. While Verney-Carron has two psychotherapists at his clinic in case patients need more specialised help, most wellbeing practitioners have little formal training in psychology. Is that irresponsible? “Holistic therapists are helpful in some respects in that they are allowing people to unload their problems in a safe, contained environment,” says Micheline Hogan of the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists. “The element of touch allows a client to relax, which relaxes the mind, and they feel the need to talk.” The downside is that nothing is challenged – when was the last time your beauty therapist pushed you to consider anything deeper than surface feelings? “A good psychoanalyst, on the other hand, will establish a trust with their patient and explore what they are experiencing.”
I visit Toby Aspin, whose light-energy facial is a hands-free technique based on Pranic energy healing that is loved for its wrinkle-smoothing effect – albeit a temporary one. As his hands hover a foot away from my body I feel a slight breeze and some occasional heat, “all of which means your brain is translating the vibes that are coming in,” he explains, before warning me that “75 per cent of people get a splitting headache afterwards”. When I still have the headache – and glow – he promised 48 hours later, I’m willing to believe that something is at work.
Not willing to leave it to the Nurofen, I book in for a follow-up osteopathy consultation with Verney-Carron. We talk for about 20 minutes, then there’s some gentle prodding and poking as I lie on the couch. My kidneys and ovaries are a little out of whack, he says, echoing Lai’s assessment. And my emotional wellbeing? “I’ve worked on your gall bladder, where you were storing a lot of frustration.” (He actually uses the word anger, but I’m slightly uncomfortable thinking of myself as an angry person.) “This will release the tension in your shoulders, which were very tight.” By the way, that headache is gone. That’s not something my psychotherapist could do. Although she might want to challenge me to explore my, ahem, “frustration”.