Beauty Culture (Woodbury)/Chapter 20

Massage should be given regularly and for a given period of time at each sitting. A single massage treatment a week does little good. The best results are attained by giving at least three treatments a week for two or three months. A half hour's work includes preparation, washing, massaging and the application of the necessary creams and lotions.

Massage, if properly applied, improves the skin greatly by increasing the sluggish circulation, emptying out the occluded pores of harmful secretions, gives tone to the skin itself through the agency of proper exercise so commonly neglected by many persons, and finally builds up the lazy, tired and unused or wrongly used muscles of the face. Merely by improving the circulation many skin troubles can be overcome because the pores are forced in this way to receive better blood and by the movement of the skin to throw off poisonous secretions not removed by ordinary means of cleansing.

To prepare a patron for massage, begin by presenting yourself as cleanly and attractive as possible in simple dress and protective apron of white material. The hands should be hygienically clean, the nails manicured and their edges slightly shorter than for social purposes, as they are apt to scratch the skin. There should be a reclin​ing chair so placed that the light will fall upon the patron's face from over the forehead down, yet not so that the operator will stand in her own light. A side light is always satisfactory. A direct light into the face of the patron is objectionable.

The proper chair is one with leather cushions, adjustable from a sitting to a reclining position with a headrest if possible. This latter fixes the head and is particularly useful, when slight pain is caused in opening pimples, etc., in preventing the patron from pulling her head away.

Fresh laundered towels of soft texture should lie within easy reach. Satisfactory porcelain or movable wash-basins of white agateware are needed. The fixed basin should be supplied with hot and cold water. Two movable basins are necessary if the fixed basin is not supplied with hot and cold water. A small table should stand to the right of the head of the chair upon which the towels, bottles of lotions, cream jars, absorbent cotton and other needed things are placed. The patron is now laid into the chair with her head about the height of the operator's elbows. A clean towel is pinned around her hair, the pin in front just at the hair line of the forehead. This prevents the wetting and greasing of the hair. Another towel is placed over the chest; closely tuck this about the neck to prevent soiling of clothing, and have plenty of hot and cold water handy.

Immerse two towels in the hot water just hot enough not to feel uncomfortable to the hands. One is wrung out fairly dry and is placed upon the face of the patron, giving space for the nose to allow breathing. Let this remain on a minute while preparing the second towel as the first. Remove the first and apply the second. Repeat this until ten or twelve towels have been used on the ​face, using, of course, only two towels, the one taking the place of the other.

This softens the cuticle, brings the blood to the skin and softens the oily or fatty plugs in the pores. Then dry off the face with a soft towel, mopping or gently rubbing upward, or lay the towel on the face and rub the towel.

The operator is now ready to massage. To have the fingers glide easily over the skin a little pure almond oil or pure white vaseline is smeared on the skin or over the inner side of the fingers and palms of the operator. Too much oil or cream spoils the effect, since it makes the fingers slip too easily.

Now stand back of the patron, place the fingers of both hands upon her cheeks with the tips of the fingers a little beyond the chin and draw your hand upward, using gentle pressure with the tips only.

Make this movement an upward and backward one, so that at the end of the stroke the finger tips will be at the hair line over the temples. Repeat this movement with the fingers of both hands at once for about twenty strokes.

Then begin another series of strokes in the same position, but now make the finger tips form circles about as big as a half dollar, upward and around one line of circles above the other until the forehead is again reached. Repeat these movements five or ten minutes, always using gentle upward pressure.

This finished, take up the forehead. Place the tips of the fingers so that they meet at the centre above the eyebrows and move them outward and upward to the temples for a given number of strokes. The circular movement is then taken up as before described. Always remember that in this method the tips must press most as ​they pass upward. Never rub downward toward the eyebrows or inward from the temples toward the middle of the forehead; and remember that only after the direct rub should the light, rapid, rotary movement be used. This can begin at the corners of the nose on the cheek, or at the chin, and the massage should be upward and outward as far as the corners of the eyes, repeated several times. Then above the eyes between the eye and

Fig. 105.DIAGRAM OF MASSAGE PRESSURE

eyebrow, placing one thumb on lower lid and the other just below the brow. Avoid the eyeball. The above circle (Figure 105) will give the idea best perhaps. Where the curved line is thick most pressure is used; that is, going upward; and when thin, the least possible pressure; that is, downward.

Then, before massage of the chin, place the hands so that the finger tips meet in front under the chin, and draw them backward and upward toward the back of the ear. On the neck the fingers are drawn backward until they meet at the middle of the neck. Better to ​accomplish this, the patron may be allowed to sit up. Repeat these movements as on the face; follow with the circular movements. Now a word as to the force to be given to the finger tips. Never press hard, never hurt the patron. Use force enough to stimulate the skin, to exercise it and not to bruise it. Hard pressure drives away the fat from the face, thus spoiling the contour or smooth outline so much desired. Instead, hard massage hardens the muscles and makes them stick out like cords, stretches the skin and produces wrinkles—the very things you want to overcome.

If the patron's face be sallow and thin or sunken, a slight pinching with thumb and first finger, or thumb and first two fingers, when the operator's fingers are very tapering, will help much to stimulate circulation and bring the cheeks out. Do not do this more than two minutes the first time and work up gradually to five or six. The same delicate pinching process under the chin, if well done, helps to remove or to prevent that unsightly accumulation called a double chin. In this, massage from the neck upward toward the chin and outward toward the base of the ears. Never downward. That would tend to increase the deformity.

The face now having been massaged in the manner described in a gencral way, it is again cleansed with several hot towels, followed by several wrung out in cooler water, softly dried and a proper cream thinly applied. A pure cream is necessary and the following is satisfactory with healthy skins:

​Gently melt the wax, spermaceti and almond oil together in an earthen pot until every sign of the wax has disappeared. Then stir with a glass rod, mixing the three parts thoroughly. Stirring quickly, now pour the elderflower water into it in a fine stream. Continue to stir to get the creamy appearance and finally add the tincture of benzoin. Allow to cool gradually; put up in wide-mouth porcelain jars and cork tightly. Screwcaps on the jars are best.

Use only enough cream to moisten the skin or so it will hold the powder next applied. One of the powders described on page 239 is satisfactory. Remove the towels from the head and about neck, concluding the treatment.

Other recipes for massage creams will be found on page 238.

Vacuum Massage. As an assistant to massage by the hand an instrument embodying the principle of vacuum massage may be employed, especially when treating sunken or shrunken parts of the face. There are a number of forms of this mechanism, but all are based on the cupping idea.

In Figure 106 one of these is illustrated.

Fig. 106.VACUUM MASSAGE ROLLER

It is a soft-rubber roller whose surface is indented ​with rectangular depressions. Rolled over the skin, firmly and slowly, it stimulates the circulation by suction.

In Figure 107 another form of machine is illustrated.

Fig. 107.VACUUM MASSAGE CUP

This consists of a glass cup inverted and surmounted by a soft-rubber bulb with which it is connected by an air passage. By squeezing the bulb, placing the mouth of the cup on the skin and releasing, the bulb, the skin is sucked up in a circular section, and the blood drawn to it. The cup is then slowly pulled from off the skin in an upward direction. This is repeated over the entire surface needing massage. The action is more constant and prolonged than in the rolling process. Neither of these machines should be employed exclusively or without a controlling conjunction of hand massage. In other words, they should be adjuncts, not principals.

Used in alternation with the delicate pinching and striking processes by hand, vacuum massage helps to round out the contour of some faces more rapidly than simple hand massage alone—and to do this more evenly, for the reason that the force is more evenly applied and distributed.

For exceedingly delicate "rose-leaf" skins it is not recommended, as it might tend to make them too ruddy, but for sallow or muddy skins this drawing of the blood supply to the surface is beneficially effective.

​The cheeks and neck furnish its chief field for operation, and it should not be employed if there happen to be any hard sore spots or lumps or sores of any sort.

Used in moderation, it aids in cleansing a skin that has been washed in warm water and pure soap, by drawing foreign matter out of the pores, in addition to its stimulation of the circulation which makes the cleansed skin perform its natural excretory functions more freely.

Vacuum massage is also employed for bust development (see page 360).

Cautions. In giving massage, the trained operator will finally come to know the muscles and nerve network of the face as an expert pianist knows the keyboard of a piano, and, following out the simile, will understand, by that familiarity the operations of which are like those of instinct, just when and where to give pianissimo touches and fortissimo strokes.

But as for the latter, always bear this point clearly in mind: While massage in some cases and places may properly be vigorous, it must never be rigorous. The proof of its beneficence is a sense of refreshment on the part of the patient. Soreness or weariness is a wrong result.

Pay no heed to those blind leaders of the blind who confidently tell you in the newspapers that over-fat cheeks, pendulous chins, or thick and flabby necks must he pounded by lead balls or cannonaded away, as it were.

These violent methods are fit only for barbarians, True artists attain their objects by gentle means in the beginning, increasing in vigor by easy gradations, but never rising to severity.

None of the massage motions should be continued so long as to drag the skin or set it at odds with its under​lying muscles. Some of the old-time hit-or-miss operators used to have a jargon about "ironing" the wrinkles out of the skin. They ironed more into it than they ever ironed out.

Wrinkles arc often caused, not alone by years or special worry, but simply by an atrophy of the muscles underneath from lack of sufficient exercise. Never maul these muscles by pounding. Tapping and soft pulling, along the line of tension, not athwart it, is all that should ever he done. For, whatever the cause of the wrinkles, the task is to rebuild their underlying muscles to pristine size and power—not to batter them flatter still. This may require, in some instances, delicate and patient manipulation lay after day and week after week before definite results begin to appear.

Where the wrinkles are not of long standing, the task is generally much easier. Where they are just beginning to show, a few treatments will suffice to convince the patron of your ability to coax them away.

When this has been accomplished, you must impress upon the patron the sensible notion of taking two preventive treatments each week, in order to keep them away. And, besides the preventive treatments, which your scientific skill enables you to give, it is well to make the patron understand that she or he must cooperate with you by avoiding those irregularities which invite a return of the disfigurement, and particularly by cultivating a sunniness of temper, or acquiring the priceless mental habit of looking on the bright side of things,