“You might scream during the process” is not what you want to hear from your facialist when you’ve just been cocooned in towels on a heated bed thinking you’re in for a relaxing massage. Definitely a first for me, that’s for sure. The facialist in question is Daiva Kamysova who recently opened a new salon, Skin Loft, in west London where she specialises in the non-invasive, face sculpting buccal massage technique, also known as the yoga facial. The facial concentrates on stretching muscles in your forehead, cheeks and neck to increase blood flow, encourage lymphatic drainage, release tension and smooth lines. It’s billed as a natural alternative to Botox, no needles needed.
The facial is spilt into two phases. Phase one the sculpting phrase, which is an anti-gravity method and involved some rather painful pulls on of the neck muscles but on the whole it wasn’t too bad. Phase two, the deep tissue phase, involves the facialist donning some gloves and going inside the mouth to massage muscles that I didn’t even know existed. Reminiscent of being at the dentist, this is the part that’ll make you squirm and perhaps even scream, though my noise was more of a pathetic moan. Apparently it gets less painful the more you do it, a lot like a deep tissue full body massage or waxing down below – which, let’s face it, never gets less painful. Daiva helpfully counts down the number of pulls as she does them, which lets you know there’s an end in sight at least.
The massage focuses on three different areas of the face; the cheekbones, jaw line and eyebrow line, and whilst it’s painful in places, I have to say I’m a convert. My skin never looked so good and the results are instantaneous; the only downside is that the effects only last a couple of days, unless you have a course of six weekly treatments. Guess I better get myself back in that cocoon then….
Unit A, York House, 2 Avonmore Rd, London W14 8RW
skinloft.uk