Summer Hair Shape up

If your family is like mine, swimming and sunshine have taken their toll this summer. If your hair is dull, has a coppery shine, or looks a bit green, you may have “swimmer’s” hair. In addition, sunshine can lighten hair, burn your scalp, and cause split ends.

I offer fantastic in-salon services to help restore hair to its natural beauty and protect your hair and scalp from further summer damage.

To start with, you are going to want a Malibu Treatment. This treatment gently removes chlorine, iron, copper and any other buildup you may have from swimming pools and styling products. Since this service can take up to 45 minutes under the dryer alone, be prepared to relax in my comfy dryer chair.

After the Malibu Treatment, a deep conditioning treatment is imperative to restore shine, detangle and improve the all-around condition of your hair. Two that I recommend are Surface's Bassu Hydrating Mask and Moroccan Oil Restorative and/or Hydrating Hair Masks. This service takes up to 1/2 hour under the dryer, longer if needed.

Both of these services can be accomplished in one appointment.

To help protect your hair during the remainder of the summer, I recommend wetting your hair and adding a light conditioner to it before you swim. Then shampoo and condition your hair immediately after swimming. Malibu carries a Swimmer's Shampoo and Conditioner that can really help. Surface carries Trinity Protein Repair Tonic, a spray-in treatment that has natural UV protectants for hair and scalp.

I also highly recommend seeing your stylist regularly for trims to keep split ends under control.

FUNctional wedding hair

During the consultation for Rachael's wedding updo, she expressed she wanted fun hair yet it had to be functional. She didn't want "80's curls," and I could tell from her personality the updo needed to be intricate, intriguing and unique. She also expressed the need to be able to hop on the back of her new husband's Harley, wrap a sparkly bandanna around her head and have it hold whilst riding off 55 plus mph on the motorcycle. Having it look fantastic when she got off was my main concern. Our final creation... I pulled all but a few strands back off her face by braiding it sideways to hold all those hairs tightly in place, then I did knots in the second row and finally did twists on the bottom. Ensuring it would be solid to the wear and tear of a motorcycle ride. It held up magnificently throughout the whole night and there were no touch-up's needed. Thus proving you can have fun and functionality all in one!

Photos by Denise Gagner of Studio D Portraits by Design.

Is that so?

At some point in life, nearly everyone falls victim to slander – false statements that besmirch a personal or business reputation. Many clients have shared with me the pain and humiliation it can cause. How they survived and overcame shows me their true character. These are modern-day heroes!
I have a favorite Zen story that has helped me regain peace when I’ve been the victim of slander. I hope it may help you gain peace in your life too.

Is That So. (From Myrko’s The 10 Very Best Zen Stories)

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.
A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.
This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.
In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.
When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child.
A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth—that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market.
The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.
Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”

What is beauty?

When I started in the beauty industry over 17 years ago, my goal was to do the hair and make-up of super models who would adorn magazine covers. Not that doing this wouldn't be awesome even today, but as John Lennon says, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." I mention John Lennon not only for his fantastic quote but also because he is the perfect example of beauty. His words, his mannerisms, his care for his fellow human beings made him one beautiful man, inside and out.

So what is beauty? What is beauty to you? I ask you to take two minutes and contemplate this question... Is it what someone looks like? Is it the words someone says? Is it someone's demeanor? I remember when I was young seeing a very happy and joyful person and thinking, "Why is that person so happy? She's not that pretty and she's a bit overweight. What is there to be so happy about?"

So I began to investigate happiness and beauty and soon came to believe they go hand in hand. If you are happy on the inside you will radiate beauty on the outside, no matter what your physical appearance. And the opposite is just as true.

But then, what of my role in the beauty industry? I loved my career--I loved making people look beautiful I loved the smiles on their faces at the end of their appointments--not that it was that way all the time, but we'll just chalk that up to learning. The conflict came from this vanity thing: Was I making money off my clients' vanity?

So I asked them and learned from responses such as, "Are you nuts?" that they did not share in this conflict. On the contrary, they said I helped them feel happy and feel better about themselves.

With that information, I began to conceive of a new career goal. If people felt happier because they looked better on the outside after they left my chair, could I do more? Could I somehow help enhance their inner beauty?

I realized that although people looked good on the outside, many had inner struggles. I too had inner struggles. I wanted to help, but how could I help when I suffered too?

As my friend Linda always says, "Put the air mask on you first and then you can help others." Searching for an air mask lead me to Buddhist teachings. What awesome insights into human struggles! And the techniques for alleviating human suffering--so practicable!

Buddhism is teaching me many ways to help myself and others find their inner beauty. This is where my mission statement was founded. "My passion is serving those with a passion for beauty on the inside and out."