Stella – Sunday Telegraph

27 November 2005

The face saver

Who do you see when you look in the mirror? A tired, stressed stranger? Time to book in with the best-kept secret in beauty... a Polish facial masseur who claims to be able to give you your face back. By Anna Murphy

I once met a beauty editor who had tried every treatment on the planet, and was largely unimpressed. 'Does anything really work, then?' I asked. 'A Polish lady in Fulham,' she replied. 'She is the only person I have ever come across who can utterly transform your face.' 'A plastic surgeon?' 'No, a masseur.'

I am more than a little sceptical when - two years on - I finally meet Beata Aleksandrowicz. 'Do you mind if I look at your face?' she asks, smiling. She turns up the light in the small, white therapy room, then studies my features with such an intensity that I feel I have never been properly looked at before. She examines every surface, every crease of my face like a forensic scientist considering a key piece of evidence. 'You hold a lot of tension in your forehead and temples,' she tells me. 'But the main problem is your jawline, which appears heavy, as if it is drawing away from the rest of the face.'

Lying on my back I submit to the first of the six hour-long treatments which make up the Face Therapy programme. This one will treat the face as a whole; the following five will isolate a particular area - the cheeks, say - and concentrate on that alone. What does the treatment feel like? A range of different sensations - kneading, stroking, stretching, circling, gentle pinching - which seem a little peculiar but which enable the face palpably to relax, to 'undo', even as you lie there. By the end of the first session my whole face has visibly lifted and the lines on my forehead have all but disappeared.

What exactly does Beata do? 'I give people their face back, the face that they fear they have lost,' is her simple response. Question her more closely and she explains that she has developed her own system of facial massage, primarily based on connective tissue work and lymphatic drainage, but also drawing on disciplines such as reiki and reflexology. She works with the victims of stroke, of Bell's palsy; with people who have suffered a facial injury. But more usually she works with people who feel, for whatever reason, that the face that looks back at them in the bathroom mirror every morning is no longer their own.

All too easily, Beata tells me, the features of the face can 'set' in a certain way. 'Your face makes a particular response to something at some point - you crease your brow when you are worried, say. The face then remembers this response and repeats it whenever you experience that emotion. Gradually your features begin to fix themselves permanently. I work to unlock this.'

Beata tells me, too, that she can read someone's face as one would a book; that particular patterns of facial tension can be caused by certain experiences (bereavement, for example), or even character traits (a tendency towards stress, say).

Beata, who came to England eight years ago, is virulently anti-plastic surgery and Botox. 'Who wants to look like someone entirely different? Who wants to lose the ability to express themselves with their face?' She tells me how saddened she is when women come to her hoping only to rediscover their youth. 'People can look beautiful at any age if they are happy with themselves and with their face. That is what I help them with.' At the age of 45 she is certainly an advertisement for her own methods: her forehead crinkles prettily when she becomes animated (which is often), but otherwise her face is line-free and her features appear fresh and alive.

The results of my first treatment last for about a day, but with each return visit the changes endure a little longer. Gradually my jaw begins permanently to lift, my forehead and temples to soften and relax, the whole of my face to hang together as a single entity rather than as a collection of semi-detached features.

At some point, Beata tells me, the whole face will suddenly 'snap permanently back into shape. Once the tension in the connective tissues has been fully forgotten it will not return.' For some clients this happens during the initial course, for others it takes a number of further visits every four to six weeks.

A month after my last treatment my jawline remains lifted, though my forehead - still creased - appears to have an irritatingly good memory. Such are the changes, though, that I believe Beata when she assures me that, if I continue my visits, even my stubborn forehead will eventually give in. And in the meantime, the face I see in the mirror is one that I remember.