What is a « healthy » skin ?

So what is healthy skin? It’s just such a big topic. And I mean, like the first thing that I will think about when you raise this question would be : a healthy skin to me is like a balanced skin.

It’s about bringing your skin into a state called homeostasis, where it’s sort of when your skin is in a balanced state of mind and is able to repair itself. So I just feel like we’re doing a lot of treatments nowadays, and a lot of the clients that I’ve seen in my past is just simply doing too much like, your skin is the largest organ in the body, and you just want to nourish it, you want to work with it, you don’t need to strip it using a lot of harsh soaps, or having like this 14 steps protocol for facial cleansing at night. Sometimes a very minimalistic skincare regimen is much more effective than a very sick one.

So we have something called the acid mantle, the skin barrier on the skin. And when you start to disrupt that, you’re going to have sensitized skin, you’re going to have more reactive skin. So it’s all about bringing everything sort of back to zero.

And then it’s also a matter of sort of being mindful about how can we achieve healthy skin, I would say topical application is probably 25% of your skin health. Whereas the rest is from the internal environment. So your skin is literally like a mirror of what’s going on inside. So it’s about you know, having proper nutrition, having sleep. But not only sleep, but having like a good quality of sleep, because you might sleep eight hours per night, but if it’s a really poor quality sleep is not going to benefit.

It’s also a matter of having movement, exercise. And then also genetics and DNA obviously.Even if our parents / grand parents had a completely different life , they were probably not exposed to so much blue light from computers, maybe they were not living in the sun.

Definitely, there’s so many factors that plays into your skin’s health.

How do you proceed a first assessment to customize your treatments?

So before you’re going to visit me, we will send out a very thorough questioner that you need to fill.

And it’s very important for me to sort of know how your sleep is, what are you ingesting? What kind of topicals are you using now?

And what is your skin concern? What is your skin go? It’s kind of very essential for me to know,because maybe me as a professional, I can look at your skin and I can see something that you are not aware of. I also want to know what your end goal is? And what are your concerns?

Because what you see may be different from what I’m seeing, so maybe you will be focus on the only thing that you would see on your skin.

Let’s say that you have like some front loans, right. And what I would see on your skin would be access hyperpigmentation. But your concern is not about that because you don’t see it yourself, then I will sort of customize my treatment around your frontlines.

Alleviating that instead of focusing because, we can work on that later.  By you know, sort of giving you some topical ingredients that can sort of lessen the impairments, hyperpigmentation, but that’s not going to be like the main focus, because I want to know, like, what, what are you not satisfied about?

And then I’m gonna take that as a pillar, and then customize my treatment.

What is your perception of clients having botox or fillers prior to an appointment with you?

So first of all, like I have nothing against Botox or fillers, I believe that everybody you know, should do what resonates for them. And I will never tell anybody what they should do. Like, you need to do what is right for you, right course.

If you have a freshly injected face with Botox, and you have got some, let’s say, dermal fillers and your cheekbones, you know, like your Botox is meant to be where it was injected, like, and your fillers is also meant to be like, you don’t want to have your fillers migrating towards your jaw, and I guess meant to stain your cheekbones.

And that takes a little bit of time to sort of settle it into the tissue. So I’m just being extra precautious when we’re talking about these :

-After Botox Injections, I would say I’m going to see you in three to four weeks because I want to be absolutely sure that there is no microscopic little pocket of Botox. Yeah, but I could potentially, you know, touch when are massaging your skin, or I’m doing a microcurrent treatment or whatever.

– After derma fillers : I would also recommend you to wait three to four weeks and then I wouldn’t go heavy over the areas where you had your facial filler injected I will probably like avoided but once it is settled into the dermal tissue, no problem you can you can do.

– It also a matter of knowing that, for example, like facial massage, facial wash or facial reflexology is a very sort of contrary action to what Botox does. So, Botox numbs, like it puts everything to sleep, like Think of your skin going into like this deep coma.

Facial reflexology, whenever you’re creating circulation and movement, you’re sort of waking everything up. And you don’t really want to do that, because you want your skin to sleep like that was, you know, like to stay in that coma for three months.

So if you’re getting a lot of blood flow, again, not one facial massage is going to do it.

But let’s say that you just did your Botox, you’re going to come in to me, you’re going to visit me very regularly for facial gua sha, I’m going to bring you recommend you to do it at home, then it will fade quicker than was meant to fade. And then you probably going to be upset with me that your Botox did not last that long.

And that’s because it’s like a contraction so what we want to do is like, avoid the areas where you have had Botox, I’m not saying I can still go over it, but I don’t really want to, you know, like focus on these areas.

What is your definition of «  getting old gracefully »

So I think it’s all about sort of embracing, like, who you are. And again, there is a lot of anti aging in our society : we want that kind of aging cream, like, what is anti age? Are we against aging? What is the alternative as being dead?

Why are we so much against aging? Like to me you don’t want to age prematurely. So you don’t want to be 30 looking like you’re 50?. It’s not about stopping aging, that is just part of your life.  I think it’s just a matter of sort of enhancing what you have. Taking care, taking good care of yourself. Wouldn’t you like to be 50? And looking like a really good looking 50 instead of being 50?

And then looking tired? So work with what you got, and what age also come more knowledge and you’re going to be able to settle a little bit more and yourself and feel more comfortable. Maybe in your own skin. I think it’s all about slowing down that premature aging. And so that is what I would like to work on rather than sort of combating aging.

How would you like to be perceived as a holistic therapist ?

So it’s how I would like to be perceived. So again, when I say that I’m a holistic esthetician, it is about taking everything into consideration.

So it’s a matter of being you and how you feel and what is your current state of mind : if you are super stressed out and you haven’t slept for days, have been eating very poorly then your skin is not gonna look good. So how can we address that? So I’m just taking everything into consideration when I address your skin, I’m not only looking for a topical point of view, but taking everything in. I’m also studying to become an integrative nutritionist and a health coach. And that is, you know, how I feel that I can really fuse everything together. And that is what I mean when I’m doing holistic skincare is literally just fusing all of your organs into one like how you feel as a person, and then we’re gonna address your skin from that.

And I’m all about very effective products. I love retinol. I love my my jerseys. I do like chemical peels. You know, I have a lot of technology here in my room. But I also have the other side where I’m gonna do maybe some sound bath therapy. I’m gonna include some meditations into my facials. I’m gonna have a lot of healing modalities, I’m going to do facial reflexology, you know, it’s all of these Fang, but just like combining it in into one because I don’t believe that just doing one thing helps.

Do you plan any additional treatments available for your clients soon ?

Yes as an integrative nutritionist. Coach, so hopefully I’m gonna get my certificate later in September, and yes then I just have a lot of interesting things coming up. But I think that we’re gonna reset them to another interview.