Saturday Times Magazine

7 February 2004

'The Moment I wake up'

By Hannah Betts

Beata's gaze is so penetrating that she could identify the side of my face on which i sleep

I begin this week's column with the slightly queasy feeling I get when I write about something I have adored. Will I do it justice? Will I sound like a loony tune? Will I get another one of those letters saying: "Come, come, Ms Betts, how does this compare to the situation in the Middle East?" I get, a kick out of most of this stuff - what's not to like? But occasionally something will render me slavish, slavering, and this is one of those weeks.

Like all life-changing experiences, I didn't go looking for it. Indeed, I turned up for Face Therapy at Pure Massage in deepest Fulham profoundly disgruntled having had about as much beauty guff as I could take. From the moment I encountered Beata Aleksandrowicz all obstreperousness subsided. Never was an individual more appropriately named. She is, in a word, beatific.

B and her partner Jean-Marc are responsible for the purity of Pure. The duo put as much thought into its environment, as its treatments, launching their exquisitely designed, cedar-scented haven back in 2002 after two years' research. Pure offers serious massage without additional frivolities of the wax and nail variety. Even the music played eschews the usual panpipey ghastliness in favour of baroque lute sonatas. It enjoys a 50/50 male/female following, making it a refuge for chaps otherwise restricted to options too dodgy or girly, or rather, dodgy and girly. Operation Pure has plans to sprout more outlets and I am doing everything in my power by way of emotional blackmail to lure them to SW1.

Beata has sourced methods from teachers and practices across the globe to develop her own unique treatment working with connective tissue, acupuncture points, manual lymphatic drainage and holding techniques. After an initial session to determine whether face therapy is right for an individual (for a few people, less elaborate face massage may be more appropriate), Beata gives you the option of signing up for a five-session once-weekly course, which can be adapted for those who live outside the capital, or indeed the country (£70 per session: £420 per course, 020-7381 8100).

After strenuous investigation into diet and lifestyle, Beata asks you to look in the mirror and tell her what you observe. So often we look past our faces, seeing only skin deep. Rarely do we undergo the scrutiny of being properly looked at. B's gaze is so penetrating that: she could identify the side on which I sleep. My face, we concluded, was not so much aged as frozen, blank, wooden, stiff as the proverbial board.

From here we fell into a debate about the rhetoric of expression. We are, it would seem, linguistically programmed to make the face the focus of our stress. We face up to things, face the world, face the music, lose face, save face, face down, face out, face off, take things at face value, face facts, go face to face, put a brave face on things, fly in the face of, and set our faces against. Even putting one's face on - an action I heartily endorse - is suggestive of the bullish, gestural bravado behind so much of this language, as if faces were banners, shields beneath which true characters cower. And yet we understand each countenance to be a manifestation of personality, maintaining a Neo-Platonic superstition that there exists some link between the beauty in someone's face and the beauty of their soul. Small wonder then that this brunt-bearing causes our faces to ache under the strain like tragedy and comedy masks compressed schizophrenically into one.

It is difficult to describe how the process feels as it differs from week to week. Moreover, it is so supernaturally relaxing that one immediately loses all track of self and time. But the moment when one looks at one's reflection in the wake of each session is a moment of pure fairy-tale revelation. After my last appointment I realised that my face was the image of a picture I have of myself at 18: the same plump cheekbones, precision to the jaw, untrammelled reach of brow and minxish slant to the eye. And how much more satisfying for the customer who used the technique to overcome facial palsy? The feel of one's face is still more incredible. Best of all, the effects remain, so that the state of collapse is never quite the same again. Beata describes the process as making your face more "your own". Superficial me describes it as not ending up with the face one deserves.