What Kind of Esthetician Do You Want To Be?
It all started when I went hunting for something better. Something that aligns with the kind of esthetician I want to be. This thought was a question inspired by my esthetics instructor, Erika from the Euro Institute of Skin Care in Renton, WA. She would ask this question at least a couple dozen times while I was in school. Each time she would ask I would think, frustrated, “I don’t know!!!”
I’m one of those people who loves to have data with which to make a decision. (In my corporate career, spreadsheets and data were my driving force….) I can function in a vacuum. I can guess and move forward without all of the facts but when it comes to deeper questions that have a meaning to me, I want to know, with some level of certainty that I’ve put some time, research and internal focus on the answers.
I was with a client in a treatment and we were talking about my master esthetics program. This client asked, “What’s the most important or impactful thing you learned by continuing your education?” It was such a compelling thought, to narrow 450 hours down to one idea. My answer came out of the blue. It actually jolted me awake at a new level when the thought landed on me - landing hard. I said, “If I had to pick one thing, it’s how disturbed I was to find out how many of the modern aesthetic procedures exploit the skin’s self-healing and self-regeneration capacity.” This one question and my uncomfortable awareness that came from it, helped to refine that first basic question about what kind of esthetician I want to be- directive only at the point of this awareness but it was simply; not that kind.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing inherently wrong with modern esthetics. As someone who is in love with the industry, it fascinates me. I love to learn about it. But as someone who spent five years reading tarot, learning to be a Reiki master and working with energy medicine techniques, exploitation - of anything - isn’t in my DNA.
Let me try to explain my discomfort. At the most basic level, your skin, when broken, (think an injury, like a cut or abrasion) goes immediately to work. There’s a process called an inflammation cascade. It’s the body’s coping mechanism for “breakage” or disruption of any sort. The skin goes to work repairing the damage. There’s a ton of fascinating stuff here but I told you I’d keep it high level so I’ll try my best. One of the first things it does is assess whether or not there’s a break in the skin. A break allows bacteria to flow in which can be even more dangerous and harmful so it has a few special techniques to block that from happening. The intelligence of skin astounds me! I’m such a geek - I love it!
Ok, focusing. So the inflammatory cascade is a series of choreographed steps the body utilizes to protect itself and repair the damage done as quickly and perfectly as possible. It involves your circulatory system and your immune system to name a few. The inflammatory reaction brings in white blood cells called phagocytic cells that engulf the entering bacteria to kill it and limit damage. The goal is to clear up the debris from the injury and clear the area for wound repair to begin. Also note, this same process happens if there’s a bump vs. a cut - any sort of rupture.
The inflammatory response (including vasodilation) is where redness, swelling and pain comes from. All of which are the body’s ways of protecting itself. Part of this response is the activation of a cell called the fibroblast which is a cell that resides in the dermal layer of the skin (the middle of three layers) and acts as the major support layer of the skin. It’s where the structural thickness, and stretchiness or “elasticity” comes from. Fibroblasts are the star of the show because they produce both collagen and elastin.
Collagen is the major structural protein in the skin. Think of collagen as scaffolding, holding up the structure of your skin. Elastin is what makes your skin flex around you as you move. Wound healing activates the production of collagen and elastin (and other things like melanosomes which is what discolors scar tissue) in the skin, for “remodeling” purposes, when there’s an injury. If you’re still with me here, THIS is how modern esthetic procedures take advantage.
Procedures like microneedling, radio frequency microneedling (RFMN), nanoneedling, and a majority of lasers all utilize some level of this kind of skin disruption to bring about collagen remodeling in an effort to rebuild skin. While successful for things like acne scaring (think pock marks and indentations), I have to believe there’s a price to pay. When skin is remodeled it only comes back at 80% of its original strength. (Keep in mind 1g of collagen has more tensile strength than 1g of steel). It’s still strong, but I have to ask myself, how long would it take before that 80% drops after repeated abuse? Each strike of the needle is causing a mini (or greater) inflammatory response, causing the body to go into repair mode - intentionally and repeatedly.
This realization got me on the hunt…How do I find another way?
Someone’s got to have found one right?
That someone is a woman named Kathy Pedersen out of Gold Coast, Australia. She’s incredible. I’m proud to say she’s my mentor / teacher for her incredible body of work she calls Qi Beauty. Qi (pronounced chee), as in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is the vital energy in your body. Qi flows throughout the entire body but is concentrated in predictable, distinct paths through major and vital organs. These paths are referred to as meridians. Meridians weave throughout, connecting everything inside and out. Practitioners of energy medicine, including fields like acupressure and acupuncture can access or tap into these meridians using access points on various parts of the body, including the face. You can read more about Kathy’s story here.
Why this is so exciting for me might get a bit technical but please, hang in- I promise it’s worth it. Qi Beauty creates a static magnetic field, through the use of magnetic, 24K gold-coated, earth-mineral filled beads, and something called the Piezo-Electric Effect. These beads, patterned on the skin, utilizing acupuncture points on the face, flood the skin with oxygen and nutrients, the same way it would in an inflammatory response, WITHOUT the trauma. And, depending on how you build the pattern, it can build fluid and fullness in the skin, or it can reduce inflammation, revive damaged skin and rebuild the skin’s microbiome. Regardless of your skin goals, Qi Beauty is a game changer. The thing I love most about this whole technique is that regardless of the excess or deficiency in your skin, not only will I be able to use the Qi Beauty treatment to address your immediate concerns, every treatment, regardless of goals is inherently anti-aging and skin rejuvenating allowing skin to age more gracefully. That’s a beautiful deep breath in my body. How about yours?
