I am currently 20 years into my career as a hairdresser. Five years ago, I began to have significant questions about the role energy played in my everyday work. I was at a crossroads. Feeling unengaged with burnout looming, I did not feel the meaning I had once felt as a young hairdresser. How could I reconcile the woman I had become with the career I chose at age 19?
I really had to look at why I was not fulfilled working as a senior stylist and lead educator for one of the largest, most influential hair companies out there. I was traveling the world, educating top-tier hairdressers, working backstage at Fashion Week in New York and Paris, working with famous photographers, hair stylists, makeup artists, fashion brands, models and celebrities. Shouldn’t this equal hairdresser bliss? What am I really doing, when doing hair? Why do I not feel happy? These questions were the beginning of my search to find meaning in my work, or abandon it all together.
I started asking myself a series of questions that led me to delve deeply into the reasons I enjoy being a hairdresser. I really love working with people. I love when clients light up after a service because they love their hair. I love feeling like I make a difference in people’s lives, even if it is superficial. I also love other hairdressers—all their creativity, quirkiness and unconventionality.
I began to examine my own relationship to the actual hair service. This is where things began to shift for me. When I began to practice mindfulness in my own life, I began to open up to the vast world of energy and how big a role it plays in the hairdresser/client dance. I became very aware of my clients’ energy and the state of my own energy during and after the service. I had SO MANY QUESTIONS and no one person to go to for answers.
So, I asked who everyone else asks these days. . . Google. This is when I found Healing Touch Program. I embarked on my first class in June of 2013. That class changed everything for me. It was like I had received a secret ancient text that right then and there answered what I am really doing, when doing hair. It also immediately created meaning in the work I do as a hairdresser, especially learning that we work in and around the sacred landscape of the upper chakras. It does not get more spiritual than that! I had been working with energy and in energy for as long as I had been doing hair—I just did not have a language for it or know how to navigate it. The Healing Touch Level 1 class gave me an energy language and some basics on navigation and ethics.
Once I began to implement my new-found knowledge while working in the salon, some major things began to unfold. It is important to note that at the time, I was working in an environment where I could not openly introduce Healing Touch and get permission from clients to work with them energetically. What I began to implement had everything to do with how I was holding and maintaining my own energy. I stopped feeling drained at the end of the day. I realized that before the Healing Touch class, I had NO energy boundaries and I had not been grounded.
Now that I was consciously standing in a heart-centered state of being, I felt compassion. I started having more meaningful conversations with clients, and the clients that had always been slightly challenging to me suddenly were not as challenging anymore. Then the most shocking, yet not so shocking, part is that my numbers increased. My new-client retention went up, product sales went up and my overall income went up. My jaw pretty much hit the floor when this happened. This is when I knew I needed to share this information with other hairdressers. And that is what I began doing.
Being involved in my company’s education department, I decided to write a class on energy for hairdressers. The department trusted me enough to go out on a limb and launch a class like this. It had not been done before. I was terrified at the thought of being laughed off the stage and exhilarated at the thought of offering a new perspective on our work as hairdressers. According to the written and verbal feedback taken from the class, the content deeply resonated with my fellow stylists. The class was quickly requested for the following company-wide sales gathering, executive education meeting and in-salon event. I began to see that the topic of energy was not only resonating with hairdressers, but also with sales reps and executives alike. Perhaps it is because we are all energy beings, and when we acknowledge this and have tools to navigate our energy, everything changes.
Since that first Healing Touch class, I went through all five levels and completed my certification. I am also a certified Positive Psychology Practitioner and Coach. I left that company in the spring of 2016 to follow my dream of starting my own company, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, where I incorporate Healing Touch energy therapy into my hair services. It brings me such joy to share Healing Touch with my clientele. Many of them would never have sought out energy therapy. I have been so moved by their openness, receptivity and the positive response that they have reported. I also love that I receive the benefits of the session. It has helped me approach my work behind the chair with more presence of mind and a more open heart. I feel I am a better listener and far more creative. For each service I offer, I now get to blend in my Healing Touch experience to hold the intention for their highest good, remain curious and assist in awakening their highest expression of beauty.
It is the mission of my company to begin a revolution to improve the state of the beauty industry so that engaging with it results in positive outcomes. I also want to empower hairdressers and other beauty service professionals through education and coaching to live lives that are flourishing. I want to inspire them to have businesses that are thriving as they support every client they touch to move closer to a state of balance and wellbeing. It is time that this connection between wellness and beauty be made. If you love your hairdresser, please share this with him or her. I promise you, they already speak energy—they (like me) just may not have a language for it . . . yet
Reprint from Energy Magazine Issue: May/June 2017