Treatments we love: Resonance facial
This is a facial like no other in Beauty Bible’s long experience. Sarah reports on the Resonance Facial from sisters Emma Coleman and Toni Dicks So… if you expect facials to focus on cleanse, steam, mask, massage etc, think again. Expert beauty therapist Emma Coleman designed the facial side of this with techniques including reflexology, acupressure and lymphatic drainage. So it’s an hour of work on your face and neck, with shoulders at the beginning and feet at the end.
Emma explains that she adapts everything she does to suit clients individual needs so there is really no set routine. Her little gentle movements were wonderfully soothing.
An expert in facial oils – Emma started her company Inner-Soul Holistic Skin five years ago with bespoke oils – she used organic rose-infused oils on my face to create serenity and open the heart chakra (one of the seven chakras or energy centres in the body, more about these below).
She explained that the facial is designed to boost blood flow to the face and also take away toxins, to release tension, clear congestion and puffiness, and tone muscles to lift and smooth skin.
Although there was no immediate significant change, when I looked at my face the morning after I could see lift, clarity, brightness – and a kind of openness across my forehead as if (cliché coming up) I had been on holiday for a week.
Now to younger sister, Toni, who specialises in treating private clients with sound therapy, which she terms ‘sound baths’. Flip back a moment to when they arrived at my door in London. Emma brought the usual paraphernalia of fold-up couch and a bag with oils and so on. Toni was flanked by two large round purple boxes that looked like enormous deep hat-boxes. When she started unpacking, the contents proved to be seven crystal bowls of varying sizes from something you might put a plant in to an enormous black gold one that would take the feed for my big horse.
Toni set up her bowls on my long dining room table, closed the doors and while Emma started to massage my shoulders, Toni started ‘playing’ her Crystal Alchemy Singing Bowls. I should explain here that I have for many years loved the use of sound and vibrations. Way back, I was in a huge hall in Washington DC for an event with the Dalai Lama. Before he appeared, Tibetan Buddhist monks came into clear the air by chanting and playing gongs. The effect was galvanic. From being so tired I thought I would fall off my chair, I felt totally reinvigorated and balanced.
The sound emitted by the bowls varies in tone and intensity from a deep almost grumbling roar to bright light bell-like notes. Within a few minutes, it forms a complex web of chords that fill the room – and yes, it does feel like being bathed in sound. I felt it most noticeably around my tummy and Toni explained that the early sounds are designed to clear the two base chakras before ascending up through the heart to the crown.
