A few days later I try the no-frills version to alleviate some persistent tension and fatigue at Oakland Foot Health Center, a walk-in storefront not dissimilar to the medical-massage clinics in China serving working-class men on their lunch breaks, aunties, grandmas, and, once upon a time, me. Gua sha has saved many peasants lives, my masseuse tells me in Mandarin as she scrapes my back during an hour of body acupressure with gua sha, which goes for a modest $60. When I ask what her tool is made of, she chuckles. Its supposed to be ox horn, but it looks like plastic to me. I leave with the same drained lightness coursing throughout my body that I felt after my experience at Ritual SF.

So why, I wonder, would I pay $285 to visit Crystal Cave LA, a healing hut in Santa Monica where Julie Civiello Polier performs her much-blogged about shamanic gua sha facials three days a week? Described as a meditative journey and intuitive reading, the whole concept makes me laugh before I even arrive. I love how gua sha gives us a tool that is charged by the person using it and the person receiving it, Civiello Poliera petite blonde former actortells me of her popular treatments purported energy exchange. At least Ill get a nice nap out of this, I think to myself as I close my eyes.

But when Civiello Polier places crystals on my various chakrasincluding an amethyst at my feet that she claims wants to go home with meI do feel something, a deep radiating warmth that allows my overthinking mind to let go. As she performs the facial gua sha, at one point even sticking her fingers inside my mouth for a deep, tension-relieving buccal massage, she takes long audible breaths that lull me into an ASMR-like trance. Afterward, my skin does not look totally transformed. Theres a limitation to the results you can get with gua sha, confirms Julia Tzu, M.D., a clinical assistant professor at NYUs Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology, who recommends fillers, such as Restylane Lyft, for longer-lasting tightening. But a superficial result seems besides the point; I feel like Ive been lifted from the inside out.

I step out of Civiello Poliers studio into the bright Southern California sun, conflicted by the commodification of Chinese folk medicine and home remedies. But the craving for a more holistic conception of beauty feels real. I remember something Huntzinger told me when describing her work. These days, society is so yang, so active. With the advent of social media, the yang has been overstimulated to such a degree, and the yin has not been nourished, she explains. Maybe, in a paradoxical twist, #guasha has risen precisely from our innate desire to restore focus on the yinthe darker, interior, reflective parts of ourselves.

People are not just getting a skin-deep treatment, Zhang confirms of what she sees as the techniques actual rejuvenating benefits. She slips into Chinese for a moment for emphasis, and I notice that in place of antiaging she uses the words yang shenga phrase Ive heard often from my aunts and grandmothers when telling me to take care. Remembering how the Chinese women in my life have always emphasized that to be healthy is to be beautiful, Zhangs message suddenly makes sense. After all, Id never thought of yang sheng as simply utilitarian: It translates more directly to nourishing life.

Read the rest here:
Why Gua Sha Is the Original Form of At-Home Self-Care - Vogue