What I've had done...
Yes, I mean exactly what it sounds like. Today I want to talk about what I've had "done" as an esthetician as well as what I haven't and why. People ask me this all the time because they want to know if I have a big secret to my skin's success. I've been taking care of my skin for a long time and given the perks of being in the industry I've been able to try a lot of things. There are things I also haven't tried but performed on others. It's sort of a mixed bag but I'm very excited to share this once and for all.
Understanding your value and worth.
One of the hardest parts of owning a business for me is the financial side of it. As you may all know by now I’m not a business major who has had a set plan from the start of my business. I was literally left with no other option but to start my own business after leaving my last spa job when I had shingles. Everyone has an opinion when it comes to how much my services are worth but at the end of the day it came down to how much I value myself. Starting this at 27 out of fear of going broke there were many times when I undervalued myself just to get people in the door. What never dawned on me was that when I worked in other offices I was doing $300 services and my clientele never blinked on the cost. So why was it hard for me to recognize that I’m worth the industry standard (and much more).
Spiritual Awakening.
When coming up with the title to this week’s post I honestly attempted to find synonyms for the word “spiritual”. Nothing seemed to fit the essence of what I wanted to write about so I decided to stick with it however I had a visual of my readers immediately clicking past an article of this subject. What would spirituality have to do with skincare? If you hear me out you will make the connection I promise. The mind, body and spirit approach is necessary for a full recovery for any sort of imbalance going on in our lives. I believe that we all have a strong intuitive sense of what we need. Whether it’s our basic human instincts to choose foods that are will nourish us to who are the people we want to spend our days with. A lot of my daily decisions and practices are based on my intuition. I try to help my clients tap into their intuition by giving them the power to choose what’s best for them and creating connections between mind, body and spirit. Whether it’s by asking the right questions that lead them to the answer they had in them all along, or it’s by honoring them if something is not resonating with them. I don’t force upon a practice that doesn’t work but I also help you breakthrough the blocks when nothing seems to be progressing. It’s taken a long time for me to tap into my own sense of intuition and release some of the blocks that hold me back from living my most abundance life, but it all started with my acceptance of my spiritual path and the awakening it lead me to.
Love.
What I’ve learned over the last decade of skin therapy work is that I’m one incredibly empathic human. I feel everything. I’ve learned just about everything I can know about marriage, divorce, heartbreak, childbirth, miscarriage and grief from my clients. Little did my clients throughout the years know, they helped me tune into my heart to make some of the most difficult decisions I ever had to when it comes to love and loss. I continuously find myself holding space for people in some of the most tumultuous times. The therapeutic skin coach approach was to help you get to the root of the emotional issue just as much as the physical, so naturally your life events come up in conversation because it's all connected. You can't have glowing skin if you're disconnected from your experience. I wanted to share some of the most valuable lessons in love that I picked up along the way.
When the roles reversed...
Last week I had my first session with a health coach and within 10 minutes I was a sobbing mess. Many people may not make the connection of emotion and nutrition but for me the two go hand in hand. I have never really had a beautiful connection with my food even though I love food, cooking and everything about social dining. When you pretty much always feel shitty, are bloated and followed by a case of nausea or diarrhea - you start to dread your next meal. Over the last 5 or 6 years that started to change, and I thank my husband for that. James introduced me to a new style of cooking and meal prepping that I began looking forward to eating together and it’s one of our greatest past times. I finally felt a connection to food unlike I have before. And if you’ve ever eaten with me, you know that I eat well. I’m healthy and gravitate towards options that are balanced and not too heavy. It never mattered to me that my new relationship with food meant that there would be weight gain because I finally felt like I could eat and not suffer.
Sun Care SOS part 2
To follow up from last week’s post I wanted to discuss the most positive thing I noticed over Memorial Day weekend. Over the years I have heavily influenced my husband’s relationship with sunscreen. This is a man who grew up in Texas and can tolerate sun and heat unlike many other auburn haired, Irish descendants. Reason being is that his skin has been trained to tolerate heat because of where he grew up as well as having other heritage factors that make him more tolerant of heavy heat levels. So regardless of all these factors, James has unfortunately experienced some gnarly burns over the years and after enough wife nagging, he has shifted many of his old habits. During our camping trip he was the first person to apply sunscreen prior to heavy sun exposure and to reapply throughout the course of our time in the sun. He turned to me at one point and said “I think I just have to apply every 30 minutes in order to not burn”. I almost cried tears of joy in that very moment. YES! HE GETS IT! This type of attitude can infectiously spreads because once you see someone caring for their skin it triggers the thought that maybe you should do the same. As soon as the sunscreen was out, others would start asking for a round of cover up. When I talk about sun care, I don’t necessarily only mean sunscreen. Sun care to me means how you are caring for your skin from the sun. Sunscreen is a huge and non-negotiable factor but I am talking about extra preventative steps such as the following:
I'm so not a salesperson...
My husband and I realized something about me recently. If you get a chance to sit with me for a lunch, facial or just a brief encounter in the grocery store - you may end up indulging me with your life story. The name “therapeutic skin coach” is not 100% based on my experience as an esthetician. For as long as I can remember I have the type of personality that immediately comforts someone to have them share their life with me. It makes sense that when I first signed up for college I simply put “psychology” down as my option for a major since I have sort of always felt like a bit of a therapist. That being said it hasn’t always been easy to be an esthetician. Estheticians wear many, many hats that unless you walk in our shoes, you may not realize how much we have to do. First, we need to be able to analyze just about any skin condition. There are many party conversations that turn to “you should take a look at this thing on my back” or a text with attached photo that says “what do you think this might be?”. Secondly, we need to be able to run our businesses. I have to place orders, manage my business accounts, set up projections for myself and have to keep my permits, licenses and insurances all up to date. Things I never thought I’d have to worry about or rather even know anything about. Probably one of the most important parts of the job however is sales. I have to sell myself, sell you on my service, sell you on my products, sell you on everything. And you know what, I’m so not a sales person.
Stop Picking Your Skin!
I think we can all agree that one of the worst skin habits to have is picking at one’s skin. Actually, it’s THE worst habit to have. I can live with a “I forgot to wash my makeup off” every once in awhile or even a “I use cetaphil to wash my face”, but there is no good reason to pick your skin. Trust me I’ve heard it all; “It was ready” - How do you know? Are you a licensed esthetician? “I did it mindlessly” - Perhaps in your sleep but most scabs indicate to me that it wasn’t just a mindless attack. I’ve fallen victim to picking at my skin from an early age and since I obviously made a career out of it, I understand the urge to do it. The truth is that it comes down to two theories:
A - You actually think you are an esthetician and after watching enough Dr. Pimple Popper youtube videos so you feel confident you can extract your skin flawlessly.
Or
B - There is an emotional connection to why you are attacking your face. It may be anxiety or the need to control something when your life feels out of sorts however there is an underlying issue that your face doesn’t deserve to feel the retaliation from.
So what can you do? There are so many ways to transition out of this habit and I’ve broken it down into 3 simple steps.
Retrograde Madness...
Ever feel like the universe is working against you? The answer is most likely yes and if not, I want to know your secret. No matter how zen we try to be sometimes it feels like no matter what is going on it can just feel extra difficult. For the last two months we have been experiencing some universal pulls because a couple of our planets have been in retrograde. If you are wondering what a planet being in retrograde means, it is when a planet decides to reverse its direction or simply move backwards. This universal pull messes with our typical flow and can mess with communication, relationships and tons of other important aspects of your day to day. Retrogrades are a concept that I was introduced to my very first month of working as an esthetician. I don’t know why folks in my industry are hyper aware of the shifts in our universe, but we are. I blame the fact that we need a reason for late cancellations, clients forgetting appointments or technology blunders. I admittedly have always been one of those typical retrograde weirdos that try to avoid certain behaviors during these shifts.
WRKSPC Oasis Launch and what I learned
Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to participate in the launch of WRKSPC Oasis, A women's coworking + wellness popup at the Parachute Hotel in Venice with Skin Food Talk. WRKSPC Oasis was founded by two bad ass entrepreneurs bosses that I’m so grateful to have met. Kristine Lo, who was also my wedding videographer and SFT’s ebook photographer and Mikayla Mitchell, whom I had met previously through conscious city guide. These ladies were paired together at a meditation workshop (how cosmic!) and manifested their creation together so flawlessly. All day Tara and I got to sit outside on the rooftop and meet with women who were either self employed, in between careers or attracted to a women run wellness popup. When I get to meet with people all day long and talk about their health there are a few themes that consistently come up; we tend to overwork, under eat/sleep and lose track of that little voice within that says “slow down”. Women led companies are changing the world right now and it’s incredible to be apart of it while we are seeing a lot of darkness rise. We bring the light to all aspects of life - our friendships, family dynamics and our workspace. Many of us are empaths or sensitives that feel a lot of what’s going on and start to notice the physical and emotional symptoms that don’t seem to have a root cause. The reason the launch of WRKSPC Oasis was so successful was because they found the root which is how to care for ourselves and each other while balancing our super woman responsibilities. I wanted to take the chance to share the practices I learned from the event and how they have immediately impacted my life.
What constitutes an expert?
Over the last few years I have seen an incredible growth in the wellness community. We have evolved our hippie, woowoo reputation to a reliable source of transparency and natural health care. Since I’ve been in the game for over a decade, and that may just be long enough to recognize patterns, I’ve realized the most extreme pattern is how sick people are getting. With the amount of knowledge I’ve acquired over the years, I feel as though I constantly have to research and ask questions. I’m lucky to have a great group of wellness practitioners that I collaborate with so we can create a whole health wellness plan for just about any case. If a case gets a little tricky for me to solve on my own I have many estheticians who I can reach out to for advice. The collaborative effort creates a safe space to explore endless possibilities and potentially help catch something I would have normally missed in an assessment. So if it takes a village and a decade of experience among the leaders of this community for me to find success, than how come everyone is all of a sudden an expert?
Sometimes, I'm just off...
Sometimes, I'm just off and this weekend was a reminder of how incredibly uncomfortable that feels. The moon in Virgo and daylight savings reminded me of how even just a simple change to our environment can throw us off in our energy fields. Luckily the solution usually presents itself and we just have to be willing to listen. So instead of spinning with my head cut off I made a few choices to change and I wanted to share them with you for it might inspire you to do the same or just understand where I'm coming from.
Happy Self Love Day!
having to do something extravagant on a random Tuesday. However, even when I was single I realized how Valentine's day was a time to give back to ourselves no matter what our relationship status is. Especially since it was one of the few days in the year that some of the spas I worked at would extend their hours. For a business to project ahead of time that more people would be taking care of themselves on a particular day was genius in my opinion. And they were never wrong, for 12+ hours straight at several locations each hour on the hour was booked up with people who were taking the time to care for themselves or someone they loved. A simple shift in perspective can remind you that this day is bigger than a fancy dinner and chocolate, it's simply about love. Love for yourself and others if you so choose. So instead of feeling low or irritated here are my top 5 ways to enjoy Valentine's Day whether you are solo or paired up:
Roots: Why where you are from matters to your skin
If you know me you know that I moved around a lot as a kid. Both my parents worked in different cities and about every 2-3 years we would pick up and move according to their work. The biggest move was from New Brunswick, Canada to Wisconsin, USA when I was 10 years old. Shortly after the big, across the border move I started experiencing advanced puberty symptoms that I later became to understand was triggered due to stress and trauma from the environmental change.