As a beauty editor who also happens to be a reiki practitioner, energy healing is a huge part of my life. Even so, I never imagined that my two worlds would collide recently in the form of a “vibrational face lift.” I had the privilege of meeting L.A.-based holistic aesthetician Sonia Vargas who’s known for this insanely good treatment. While tweakments and plastic surgery can definitely help achieve the youthful skin, Vargas takes a slightly different road when it comes to aging. She prefers a more holistic and integrative approach, which has its benefits: Botox, filler, and surgery are expensive and not everyone has the budget, while some people just want a noninvasive alternative that yields similar results. Plus, paying attention to the health of your body overall can help your skin stay its healthiest for longer.
I got to experience Vargas’s vibrational face lift and she told me a bit more about her own skin health journey. Early in life, Vargs was inspired by the cultural practices of her holistic-minded family. Both of her grandmothers taught her from a young age to harness her own intuitive gifts to find inner balance and heal her own skin. She suffered from chronic congestion, melasma, and gut issues and she was able to fine-tune her own well-being after working with several alternative healers. Now, she shares this knowledge with others. She’s certified in several modalities that help detoxify and lift the skin including connective tissue manipulation, manual lymphatic massage, intra-oral massage, facial reflexology, and TMJ release.
Personally, I struggle with some of the same issues Vargas did with a side of skin inflammation, barrier damage and acne. She clued me in on a multi-faceted approach I could take to healing, which included seeing a few alternative healers to get to the bottom of my skin issues rather than just treating the skin externally. If you’re curious about what exactly Vargas’s “vibrational face lift” entails and what it can do for your skin, keep reading.
What Is A Vibrational Face Lift?
If you’re in the L.A. area, you can book this treatment on Vargas’s website. Her studio is a gorgeous cottage-like space right in the heart of the city—a peaceful, healing oasis that I felt instantly calmer in. Vargas coined this special treatment a Vibrational Facelift because it combines all the most advanced facial techniques in her toolbox. “I’m able to lift and sculpt the face with deep facial massage, gentle lymphatic work and conscious touch,” she shares. “I work to soften tension in the areas of the face, neck, shoulders, and head that contribute to sagging. I can then properly lift.”
While it’s great on its own and can help you get ahead of the aging process, it can also act as a complement to surgery or tweakments, helping you integrate, optimize, and sustain your results. She uses a technique called fascial rolling, which releases bunched connective tissues—a major thing that can cause skin aging. According to Vargas, once facial tension is released, cells are able to communicate better with one another to repair and regenerate. Intra-oral massage is also a huge part of this treatment, which releases more tension in the jaw—an area where most people hold a lot of stress. Finally, she finishes off with microcurrent, which helps lift and sculpt.
My Experience With A Vibrational Face Lift
After a skin analysis, Vargas made a few tweaks to her treatment that she thought would work better for my specific skin struggles. “With low-level congestion, inflamed or irritated skin, manual work is best,” she explains “I find that a gentle detox approach with the skin and nervous system has the best results. When I assessed your skin, I knew right away the [full] vibrational facial was not a good fit just yet. I also knew I needed to release tension in the face, neck, and oral cavity before I properly moved lymphatic fluid in order to stimulate gentle detoxification in the skin.”
While Vargas didn’t opt for microcurrent in my specific treatment this time around, she said I would still get a lifting effect after gentle manual massage. My facial included intra-oral massage, gentle facial massage, a treatment with tuning forks tuned to 487 Hz, and a calming mask. She was definitely right; my skin not only looked more radiant after the treatment but felt tighter and appeared more lifted. It surprised me how much a little gentle stimulation could perk up my skin. I’m also convinced that Vargas’s work with the tuning forks really took my skin to the next level. I explained to Vargas during my facial that I had a bad experience using tretinoin for years which I later discovered was much too strong for my skin. It left me with some damage that’s still in the process of healing. She used tuning forks on strategic areas of my face to encourage the energy flow, and I could tell my skin perked right up after this—even days later, I noticed a huge difference in clarity and how calm it was.
As someone who has gotten a lot of facials in my life, this was by far one of the best ones I’ve ever had. Even though Vargas altered the treatment slightly to work with my specific skin, I still came out with a level of radiance I haven’t experienced elsewhere. When you have problematic, reactive skin like I do, it can be a struggle to not only find the right products, but an esthetician who understands your skin and knows how to heal it.
Treating solely the surface of the skin is so last year. Incorporating energy modalities into facials is something I hope becomes the norm as the beauty industry continues to evolve.
