Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners
Designing Your Perfect Career in Skin Care …The Holistic Way

After receiving basic skin care skills at beauty school and passing a state board, every “newborn” aesthetician needs to take a deep breath. Why? Because, whether they know it or not, they have to make a major career decision: to go the medical spa, or wellness spa route.

Medical spas offer short corrective treatments: acid peels, laser, injections. Personally I am not very comfortable performing skin care services which come together with FDA warning labels about potential side effects.

Then there is the wellness spa which is typically very relaxing. Moreover, they offer healthy treatments, but they aren’t always effective. Personally, I think each client is entitled to see some skin improvement after a single service.

As a holistic aesthetician I strongly believe in a healthy corrective approach and integration of the best of both worlds: traditional holistic wisdom with modern, cutting edge technologies.

For example, “chemical peels” do not have to contain man-made chemicals to be effective. Acids and enzymes from natural sources can have an even more positive effect on the skin. In fact, phyto-masks, free of solvents and preservatives, freshly prepared before application, are especially powerful right after a Microdermabrasion treatment. I also firmly believe that a skin care office is not a department store, and each client should receive personalized skin care treatments and products that meet the specific needs of their unique skin profile.

In order to do this while keeping up with all of the wonderful discoveries the medical world is making about the human body and the skin that covers it, I advise aestheticians to never stop learning!

To provide educational opportunities for aestheticians who wish to integrate holistic corrective procedures into their practices, I founded the Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners (AHSCP), a non-profit, educational organization in 2007.

Based upon the motto “Healthy, Beautiful Skin Starts from Within," members practice healthy, corrective skin care techniques, use organic skin care products and consider the nutritional, emotional and lifestyle choices of each client. Every day more and more aestheticians are contacting us to participate in different workshops. Now more than ever, it seems that a growing number of skin care professionals are hungry for information about the latest clinical holistic skin care techniques.

Perhaps this is because more and more skin care professionals realize that beautiful skin is healthy skin, which can only be found on a healthy body.

The Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners offers aestheticians a wide variety of educational workshops from an array of health care traditions.

For example:

• Inside & Out Skin Care: Biochemistry and Bioenergy of Healthy Skin presented by Linda Hegstrand, M.D. This workshop offered skin care professionals the ABC’s of why internal skin care is essential in order to obtain maximum benefit from healthy skin care products.
• Toxicity from Chemicals in Your Everyday Environment by Dr. Chuck Ide. Director of Western Michigan University’s Environmental Research Center and Environmental Institute. Dr. Ide explained how pollution exposure impacts the health of the skin and what can be done to mitigate the damage of daily exposure.
• Therapeutic Facial for Feet, by Keeley Bruce, Licensed Aesthetician, Massage Therapist and Medical Foot Care Specialist. Bruce gave a live demonstration of a “foot facial” with specific details about health benefits of proper foot skin care.

• Anti-aging and Hyper-pigmentation Corrective Treatments
• The Importance of the Skin to the Body’s Energetic System by Yuri Kronn, Ph.D.
• Accupressure Points that Specifically Support Facial Rejuvenation, by Shannon Plummer, Doctor of Oriental Medicine, L.Ac.