Meet the Ayurvedic Facialist With a Massage Technique So Good, You May Cry - Vogue.com

[massage]

There is a wide-eyed Reiki master who gives facial massages out of the back room of the cultish Brooklyn boutique Shen Beauty—her blue gaze noticeably brighter and bigger than the average New Yorker. Bubbly and blonde, with a halo of curls and two sleeves of tattoos, rumor has it she can make me younger while I nap. And so, finding myself too tired to cope in the midst of a hectic New York Fashion Week, I decide to skip a show and find out if the magic is real.

Candice Forness’s name was first passed to me by a stylish friend who always has the answer to everything on speed dial. “You come out looking fresher and feeling like you’ve had a full-body detox, even though she only works on your face and neck,” she said of her uniquely transformative touch, one that has worked on such high-profile clients as the makeup artist Dick Page, designer Michael Kors, photographer Inez van Lamsweerde, and stylist George Cortina (“my fairy godfather—George knows what he likes,” she says of the celebrated fashion editor). Even fellow skin-care experts such as celebrity dermatologist Dr. Barbara Sturm and Uma Oils founder Shrankhla Holecek are fans.

And as I settle onto Forness’s table on a rainy Monday night, I can see why. “Oxygen is underrated,” she says before asking me to take a deep breath, cradling my head in the palm of her hands, which is meant to relieve the spine of significant weight, and in turn help the body to relax—the first step in total recalibration. “This is an easy read to see what’s happening with your system.”

What’s happening with my system is that it’s exhausted, says Forness, who is a fourth-generation healer (“I grew up with healing hands who grew up with healing hands,” she says of her mother, a nurse), after a good few minutes of contemplation. I start to explain that it’s New York Fashion Week and I have just embarked on what will ultimately be a four-week marathon sprint of late nights, early mornings, and nonstop adrenaline, before I realize she knows. After all, her clients include some of the biggest names in the business.

Forness urges me to relax. “Consider this a super-luxurious nap while I manipulate your muscles, lower your heart rate, increase blood flow, promote collagen regrowth, increase circulation . . .” her voice trails off as she turns to pump some May Lindstrom face cream (the only product that will be used in the session) into the palm of her hand. “Because sometimes we all just need a second to get our shit together.”

What follows is her simple, holistic approach to the kind of anti-aging treatment one might find at a medical aesthetician’s office, where Botox injections, LED lasers, microdermabrasion tools, or cryotherapy chambers more typically abound. Based in Ayurveda, an ancient Indian practice that translates into “the science of life,” a technique Forness honed while training under a Tibetan Buddhist monk who is also a naturopath healer, she begins with acupressure on my face and neck so to stimulate blood flow beneath the surface. Then, she massages my entire face—first horizontally, then vertically, so to manipulate each tissue thoroughly—spending time in my trouble areas: the palpebral and orbital muscles, which frame my eyelids (“I’ve seen some really tired eyeballs,” she says of this Internet-heavy generation), and the masseter, one of the strongest muscles in the body that runs from the cheekbone to the lower jaw, and is bulging and tough from grinding my teeth due to stress. “If we can physically resculpt the body with muscle work we do at the gym,” she says, pulling on my zygomatic major and minor muscles, which help form the cheeks, “why not the face?”

She throws a mirror up to me so I can compare the right side of my face to the left, which she has yet to touch. Do I see a difference? Sure, I lie, interested only in how soon my head can hit the pillow again. She giggles, and then tends to the rest of me before embarking on a dreamy scalp massage. “You’re going to have some serious sex hair after this session,” she warns.

Then, something incredible happens. Forness puts her fingers beneath my left shoulder blade and subtly lifts my chest and holds it up off the table. “Now, I’m cradling your heart,” she says. After a few minutes, her fingers begin to dig into the back of my rib cage, releasing pressure points that surround my heart muscle—it kind of hurts, but in a good way. “You know when you hear bad news and you can feel your chest tighten?” she asks. “That’s your heart muscles constricting, which can be [fixed] by simple communication.” By the time her fingers head over to my right side, I feel my upper body fan open like a heavy antique chest of drawers that’s been slammed shut for years. My heart begins to race, due to the increase in blood flow, at which point I announce, “I think I am about to cry now—is that okay?”

I don’t know what’s more telling, that I actually have tears streaming down my face from a facial—a facial!—or that I, an adult woman, feel a need to ask permission to cry. But Forness doesn’t overanalyze it—a rush of dopamine will do that to you, she says—and so neither should I.

She returns her hands to the back of my head so to check in with my system. My cerebrospinal fluid, a watery liquid made up of special cells that brings nutrients from the blood to the brain, while simultaneously removing waste, is on a race, she says. “Let’s go! Look at your coloring! Your body is like, ‘Oh yes!’ ”

If I might ordinarily be tempted to roll my eyes, the image that is staring back at me at the end of my 90-minute session leaves no room for skepticism. My cheeks appear higher, my jawline sharper, my eyes clearer; flushes of color beam from the tops of my cheeks, temples, the crown of my forehead—as if I just spent hours in the sun instead of a cool dark room. I do, in fact, look younger, in that I look rejuvenated and happy—with, it’s true, some of the best sex hair of my life.


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