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Create your free business website! www.ascpskincare.com 11 your niche Holistic Estheticians Embracing the European approach to skin care by Rebecca Jones Briana Richardson thought she knew a lot: microdermabrasion, peels, and other chemical procedures. Then, she went through advanced, whole-body esthetics training of the type that is common in Europe and learned how much more of an impact the holistic esthetician can have. "It was life-changing. To me, it was like putting all the puzzle pieces together," says Richardson, who is lead esthetician at the luxury Spa Montage in Laguna Beach, California. "Being able to understand the body at an in-depth level has allowed me to take my esthetics to a whole new place. Now, I'm the most important tool in my toolbox. I'm not dependent on specific products or machines." Richardson learned to read the skin as a road map to potential underlying systemic problems that might require medical diagnosis and treatment, and to consider clients' answers to lifestyle questions: how they are sleeping, their stress levels, and even their elimination habits. As part of the curriculum offered by the Advanced Spa Therapy Education Certification Council (ASTECC), she also learned treatment techniques like acupressure and manual lymph drainage, as well as many others. More American estheticians are embracing this comprehensive European approach to skin care. Anne Bramham, ASTECC founder, acknowledges that it's easier in some states than others, since scope of practice and education requirements vary dramatically. "But any esthetician can gain the ability to recognize skin patterns that might be related to digestive or circulation issues," she says. Estheticians who already have training in anatomy and physiology can learn even more advanced techniques. Bramham loves to teach estheticians to stop simply categorizing a client's skin as dry, normal, or oily, and instead ask why it is dry or oily. "Something in the body is creating this," she says. "Something isn't happening efficiently. Is it the environment? Or something else? We are too quick to label things without understanding their relationship to the whole body." Even a quick weekend class can plant the seeds of knowledge for estheticians wishing to move their careers in a more holistic direction, though complete training takes more of a commitment; ASTECC's advanced spa therapy curriculum takes 264 hours. Tamara Miller, owner of Organic Elements Spa in Medford, Oregon, found that the training opened doors for her career in ways she could not have foreseen. "It has changed everything," Miller says. "I incorporate everything I learned into our everyday practices here, and we really stand out." Miller says she's willing to take on new estheticians without much training in holistic techniques if she's certain they have the mind-set required. "If you want to be a holistic esthetician, you have to want to take your clients all the way until medicine has to kick in," she says. "I'll do everything I can for my clients to avoid Botox, to avoid injections. If they still want to go down that road, that's their choice. But you have to decide what's right for you." Rebecca Jones is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado. Contact her at killarneyrose@comcast.net. "Being able to understand the body at an in-depth level has allowed me to take my esthetics to a whole new place." —Briana Richardson