About face

Tucked away in an artists’ loft building that even our favorite Boston cab company had trouble honing in on, Cheryl Ferrari’s South End-based Face Facts Healing Spa (46 Waltham Street, Boston, 617.451.9499) has managed to find a quiet kind of success without “modern essentials” like attention-grabbing signage, a gimmicky marketing plan, or even a web site, for that matter. Instead, Ferrari offers a unique take on skin and body care that stands out amid the crowd of tired seaweed facials and chemical peels. Armed with the philosophies of a single product line — an amalgamation of old Eastern European herbal remedies and ancient Chinese wisdom called Phyto 5 — Ferrari develops individualized treatments for each of her clients based on both the current season and the client’s birth date and year. But don’t be fooled into thinking she’s all energy crystals and questionable logic: Ferrari’s repertoire of hand-selected masks, washes, and creams paired with highly specialized techniques — like cupping, light therapy, and vibration on the body’s acupuncture points — produces some real results (think a fresh glow even a clueless boyfriend would notice).

In honor of the upcoming season of clogged pores and sunburnt noses, we went to Ferrari to get her take on summer skin. Summer, Ferrari explained, leaves us more vulnerable to overheating — which means that skin issues can flare up as a result of trouble with circulation. Ferrari’s warm-weather prescription seems quite intuitive: she says the sunny months call for products that cool the skin. Her focus? “A lot of peppermint, eucalyptus … essential oils that are very cooling to help calm the skin.”

The application of each product or oil is carefully considered too. By utilizing acupuncture points that connect with other areas of the body affected by circulation-related afflictions — in summer, the focus is on the heart and the small intestine — Ferrari treats the body as a whole. In her words, “If you think of circulation as excessive fire, the hydration or the hydrating properties of these treatments would help to re-balance the skin, cooling everything down.” The same holistic methodology is used in treatments that fall within other seasons, too — just swap out the organ names, associated skin concerns, and pressure points.

And while we highly recommend putting yourself in her hands at least once, Ferrari is also quick to tout the benefits of at-home pampering during the summer months. “The best thing, at home, is to make a spa day at least once a week. Go in the tub with a bath product that is for cooling.... Put clay on your face, as well as your scalp, just to keep everything cooled off and bring the circulation away from being so close to the surface. And then [I’d recommend for you] to come out of the tub and [apply] creams that are more cooling.” Well, if we must.

So how exactly does the whole “birthday” thing fit in? It’s all about biorhythms and key chapters in one’s life cycle, Ferrari explains. It’s a tough concept to condense into a couple of a sentences, but she does her best: “The biorhythm that [the Phyto 5 skincare line] uses is a combination of four things about somebody’s life span: it’s your month, day, time, and year, which are charted into a calendar year based on a Chinese calendar.” From her complex set of charts, Ferrari gleans information about her clients’ predispositions and vulnerabilities, data she takes into consideration when concocting her hyper-individualized treatments. We’ll buy that. And even if you don’t, at the end of the day, everyone wants their skin to look healthy and fresh — dragons, tigers, and snakes alike.