Are you tired of ‘Gua Sha-ing’ too?
Do you know what raising a rash means? What can you ‘read’ in terms of skin colours, Qi, meridians, stagnation, flow? Is the redness caused by the friction of a pretty Gua Sha stone just an erythema or is there a deeper meaning behind the post treatment petechia eruption?
If your answer is no to all the above, then I’m afraid, you should not be practicing Gua Sha, or even worst, teaching and running Masterclasses. There is so much more to Gua Sha then sliding a pretty stone on the face or slightly frictioning over fine lines....and no, you are not practicing modern Gua Sha either, you are most likely performing the act of lymphatic drainage to your face (and hopefully your neck too, and opening the lymphatic pathways, and draining into the terminus region).
I’m all for self-care, I’m all for passing on techniques, I’m all for traditional treatments and tools to be used in modern rituals BUT what we are seeing all over social media right now, is an insult to Chinese Medicine.
Bloggers turned into Gua Sha experts, beauty
therapists turned into Chinese Medicine and Gua Sha gurus, brands suddenly ditching tutorials of how to apply a cream or how to exfoliate in favour of Gua Sha tutorials (rolling of eyes a must here), and every other image on social media is of a heart or feather shape gua sha stone, unless they are buying copies of (sigh) bespoke designs such as our Philosophia Botanica @philosophiabotanica boards or the Wildling team, or Cecily Braden and and and ....
By any means, let’s enjoy self-care, at home beauty rituals, let’s learn how to and how not to, let’s learn how to love ourselves more, let’s attend masterclasses, let’s buy home kit rituals but let’s also and super importantly make sure we are learning from a professional, be it a tutorial or a facial course!
Namaste
Francesca Franklin
