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All About Acne: Facts and Myths

June 18, 2014 by Wendei Leave a Comment

I’ve been wanting to start a dialogue about acne for a long time now so let’s get started.

First, there are a lot of myths about acne. We’ve all heard that eating greasy fried foods or chocolate causes acne. We’ve heard that we have to “dry out” acne to cure it or that we shouldn’t use moisturizers. Some of us avoid using all moisturizers and sunscreens because we’re afraid it’s going to cause a break out. All the above are false, but do have some merit and I’ll address them soon.

Fact number one:  Acne is a hereditary condition. That’s right. Even if your mom or dad didn’t have acne, someone in your family had it and you can send them a special thank you for passing it down to you.

Fact number two:  Acne is classified as a disease. Not only is it a disease, but it can’t be cured, only controlled, until your body finally clears it and in most cases it will.

Fact number three:  Acne is caused by many different types of bacteria that irritate the pore (aka follicle). Once this follicle is irritated, dead skin cells build up, sticky oil mixes in with those cells and even more bacteria grows. The result can be blackheads, whiteheads (milia) pimples, cysts or nodules.

Fact number four:  Whether you’re a teen, or an adult struggling with breakouts, I can help you get your acne under control. But it takes commitment. You didn’t get your acne overnight and no matter what anyone tells you, it’s not going to go away overnight. You’ll have to use certain products, eat a certain way, come in more often at the beginning for treatments and acne-specific facials, but you WILL clear up.

Let’s talk about a couple of those myths. Greasy foods don’t cause acne, but salt can aggravate acne and make it worse.  To get technical, it’s actually the iodide in salt. Try using small amounts of sea salt instead if you salt your food.  Avoid most fast foods because they contain a ton of iodized salt. The good news is that you don’t have to give up chocolate.  A little bit of dark chocolate is actually good for you. Dark chocolate is much lower in sugar and actually has antioxidants which take down inflammation. Wait a sec, did she actually say chocolate is GOOD for us? Yep! Just don’t abuse it and the higher percentage of cacao the better. It’s the sugar in chocolate that’s bad for us. I’ve found lots of yummy ways to satisfy my chocolate cravings without the sugar. Maybe I’ll even share some of my recipes down the road.

Today I’ll give you one tip if you are one of the people struggling with acne or even the occasional breakout. Don’t pick! I know you want to, but it actually creates more problems. Instead, grab an ice cube and ice your breakouts. In fact, give your entire face a little ice massage. It can not only help lessen current breakouts but also prevent future episodes by taking down inflammation in the skin. You can use a plain ol’ ice cube, a bag of frozen veggies or fill a Dixie cup with water and keep it in the freezer and peel it down a little each time you use it. Icing at least a couple times a day will make a huge difference – I promise.

Please share this with any of your friends and family that may benefit and post any comments or questions below. As always, thanks for reading!!!

Wendei

 

Filed Under: Life Enhancing Tips Tagged With: acne, advanced clinical care, blackheads, comedome extraction, extractions, peace of mind is a quality of life, replenish & renew your skin, salicylic acid, sebaceous glands, skin care regimen

Karen Brodie on Lessons from an Emergency C-Section

April 2, 2014 by Wendei Leave a Comment

Seventeen years ago, while I was going through my first bout of true depression, a therapist introduced me to a new method of dealing with anxiety and panic attacks. It’s called EFT, which stands for Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as Tapping. I was blown away how well this method worked in reducing the intensity of my anxiety and was truly instrumental in getting me through this dark time in my life.

Years later, “tapping” has become quite mainstream with books about EFT on the bestseller lists. EFT involves tapping on specific meridians on the body and saying affirmations. It can be used to deal with trauma, anxiety, weight loss, finances, etc. I have taught both my kids how to tap and my son who has Sensory Processing Disorder can calm himself within a few minutes by tapping.

I am thrilled to introduce EFT practitioner, Karen Brodie, to the Peace of Mind wellness family. If you suffer from anxiety or are stuck in any areas in your life, I strongly encourage you to schedule a session with Karen.

To learn more, please visit Karen’s website at www.karenlbrodie.com.

–Wendei

Karen Brodie EFT practitionerI can’t believe I am sharing this story on the internet, but it is time to come clean. Thirteen years ago, I almost killed my baby.

I didn’t do it out of anger, or neglect, or a moment of carelessness. I did it because I hadn’t learned how to take responsibility for myself, let alone someone else. I hadn’t learned to stand up to authority when authority is wrong or to challenge the status quo when the status quo is all wrong. In short, I was a child lodged in a woman’s body.

My story starts the day I went into labor with my daughter, at about 5:00 on a Thursday afternoon. From the start, my labor was weak; it never really went anywhere. The midwife we had hired showed up with her assistant on Friday afternoon. And no, this is not an article about the dangers of homebirth, because that was not the problem.

By Friday at 5:00 I had put in a solid 24 hours of really painful labor with no food and no sleep. I knew this baby wasn’t going to come on its own, so I told the midwife that I wanted to go to the hospital. Simple, right? My body, my baby, my budding mother’s wisdom. Except that this midwife refused to transport me. She told me that it would be too dangerous because the baby would be here at any minute and we couldn’t risk the baby being born on the road. Later, she defended her actions by saying that she thought I was caving in to the pain and she wanted to make sure I had the home birth I had originally said I wanted.

I knew the baby wouldn’t be coming without medical intervention, but with contractions coming every two minutes (even though they weren’t getting the job done, they really hurt!), it was hard to argue. So after a couple more half-hearted requests to go to the hospital, I sank into the damaged silence that we had perfected in my family of origin. Hours passed. The midwife and her assistant got bored and began to whisper together over People magazines while I writhed and squirmed, trying to get comfortable.

While they were distracted, I quietly told my husband that we really needed to get to the hospital. To my surprise, he refused and insisted that we defer to the midwife. I was in no condition to drive myself, so there I stayed. Around 11:30 that night, everybody but me found a corner of our little apartment to sleep in, while I was left to struggle on my own with a night of pain. And by the time the silence of sleep had descended on our apartment, I had resigned myself to death. I could feel my body running out of energy and I knew that without proper medical care, I would die.

At 6:00 on Saturday morning, the midwife woke up and checked the baby’s vital signs. And, Glory Hallelujah, the baby had joined me in Distress. We were going to the hospital. At the hospital, the midwife argued with the nurse assigned to me about whether she could stay with me during any medical procedures. Their conversation went on for so long that, by the time it was over, the doctor on duty had already passed through the ward. Still no medical care for me. We would have to wait over an hour for him to return. I desperately wanted the midwife to leave, but I was afraid of hurting her feelings or making a scene, so I did not speak up.

The rest of the memory is blurry, because soon thereafter I was rushed into the operating room for an emergency C-section under general anesthetic. I am told that my baby was pulled from my body, limp and blue, her lungs filled with meconium. After the surgery, I went into a code something, where everyone is supposed to drop what they are doing and come help. Thank God for modern medicine, because whatever they did pulled me out of a very bad spot. (All I remember is feeling completely loved and cared for in the midst of great chaos, and that the ministrations of the staff involved a suppository – ew.)

When I woke up, the midwife was finally gone and my new doctor was there in her place. Clearly, after 42 hours of labor, my luck had changed. My doctor was everything the midwife wasn’t – competent, kind, honest and encouraging. I was so thankful for his presence that for a moment I considered naming our daughter after him. Luckily, she just didn’t seem like a Ramon to me!

After a week in the hospital, I returned home with a slit carved into my abdomen, antibiotics for the remains of a raging infection, and PTSD. Lilly, my baby, was fresh out of Neonatal Intensive Care, with 13 tiny scabs on her feet from where they had drawn blood, plus whatever gets injured inside a baby when she spends her first week in an incubator instead of in loving arms. I was the walking wounded and Lilly was the lying-down wounded, but even in our ragged condition, the love between us was divine.

Thirteen years later, I can look back and see the long, winding road I took to recover from this event (and others) and get back to emotional health and wellness. I began that journey the day after my daughter was born. The midwife visited me in the hospital, which completed her contractual obligation to us, and I told her that she had put my daughter and me at risk by refusing to transport us. After a certain amount of conversation, she apologized – in a baby voice. It was a weird moment. A couple of years later, I told my story to a sympathetic group of women online, which helped a bit. My healing took a step backwards when I received a subpoena for my medical records from the District Attorney’s office. This same midwife had lost an unborn baby during another client’s labor, and the D.A. wanted to investigate other medical histories relating to her. The beginning of the end of the trauma, however, was the discovery of my magical, beloved Emotional Freedom Technique. I initially discovered it because of an ear infection that wouldn’t go away, and after the ear infection healed through tapping, I proceeded to tap my way through a lot of old childhood wounding and on through the nightmare of my daughter’s birth experience.

I eventually began sharing the joy of EFT with friends and family, and then branched out to people I didn’t know, and now I am a full-time EFT Practitioner who has had the privilege of helping hundreds of people over the years. However, even with intensive training in EFT and many other modalities as well, each of which has led me back to myself and my history over and over again, the most important piece of this story eluded me until just a few months ago. One day, out of the blue, I had one earth-shattering revelation about this experience, and this is it: When the midwife refused to transport me, I could have called 911, or even just threatened to call. I could have called a friend or a neighbor and told them that I needed a ride to the hospital. There were so many ways I could have gotten help, but none of them entered my mind. I never even had the thoughts that could have coalesced into action. At the time, my deepest beliefs were that I was powerless, that it was up to other people to take care of me (or not), and that I would always be somebody’s victim. I also believed that people who drew attention to themselves for any reason were pathetic and “just trying to get attention.” ( At the time, “just trying to get attention” was the crown jewel of bad things to do in my personal philosophy.) And as always happens, the people around me played out the roles that allowed those beliefs to represent themselves physically as the circumstances of my life.

Yes, my midwife was incompetent. I don’t think she cared much about me or my family or the job she had agreed to do. But her part in the drama was completed before my daughter was one day old. For the next 13 years, I slumbered on in the role of her victim, feeling angry and hurt about her defects and ignoring mine. And because of my laser focus on this woman and her shortcomings, I spent an enormous amount of energy feeling guilty and remorseful about various aspects of the past, which I couldn’t do anything about: that out of all the midwives in Los Angeles, most of whom are competent and caring, my husband and I had chosen this one; that my husband believed her and not me about whether I should go to the hospital; that she never sincerely apologized for the damage she caused. And worst of all, that I had never even thought to lodge a formal complaint against her, perhaps endangering another woman’s baby.

*                       *                       *                       *                       *                       *

When my daughter was about two, we took a few mommy and me yoga classes from a woman in a turban. When I told her that I was struggling to recover from the circumstances of my daughter’s birth, she simply said that each mother and child have the birth experience they were meant to have. After thinking it over for about a decade, I’m ready to say that I disagree with her. I think we all have the experiences that we are manufacturing based on the individual realities that we project out into the world, not that we are necessarily predestined to have. We are not stuck in some calcified cosmic game plan. If we don’t like the experiences we are creating, we can learn to change them. But we have to change our beliefs about who we are and how we must be treated before we can change how those things actually play themselves out. And becoming aware of and changing our belief system is tricky because we humans are plagued with blind spots.

I am finally at peace with my daughter’s birth experience. I have a new understanding of what I was projecting out all those years ago, and it has brought a ripple effect of healing into my life as old memories surface and I explore them through this new lens. In so many situations, as in this one, I was a victim just waiting around for my perpetrator. Time after time, my ignorance brought me, not bliss, but relationships that stalled and then turned on me, precisely following the blueprint of my internal world.

In the end, the two things I learned sound like cliches because I have heard them so many times: There are no victims, there are no accidents. These are empty, even hurtful, words if there is no real understanding; but they are life-changing words once we really see how these universal laws work. Once we are able to apply these truths 100 percent in any situation, we are free of it. All that remains is the love.

Karen Brodie is a top EFT Practitioner is Los Angeles, California. In her private practice, she helps people who are struggling in any of the areas of health, finances, spirituality, career, and relationships. For more information, please visit www.KarenLBrodie.com.

Filed Under: Case Studies, Healthful Tips, Life Enhancing Tips, Peaceful Referrals, Professional Techniques Tagged With: peace of mind is a quality of life, peaceful offerings

The Importance of Self Care and How I Learned the Hard Way

March 19, 2014 by Wendei Leave a Comment

I know what you’re thinking… “Self care? I’m working 60 hours a week, I have to take my kids to all their activities, I have to get my taxes done, take my mom to her doctor’s appointment, I don’t even have time to eat, let alone take CARE of myself!”

But here’s the deal… just like the old adage about putting on your oxygen mask first on an airplane, the same applies to every day life. If you don’t take care of yourself first, I promise you there will come a day where you won’t be able to get out of bed, let alone take care of anyone else in your world.

How do I know this? Because it’s happened to me more than once. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you think that when I don’t have clients, I’m laying on my comfy massage bed with my face under the steamer taking a nice little nap. I wish! The truth is I’m doing inventory, booking appointments, ordering products, doing my taxes, making doctor’s appointments for my kids and a myriad of other things that would make your head spin. The ONLY way I’m able to survive my very over scheduled life is to TAKE CARE OF ME!

These days, taking care of me looks like this. Pilates twice a week with the fabulous Jamie Rutt. Yoga twice a week with the amazing Julie Buckner or at her studio InYoga. Eating healthy (for me this meant giving up gluten and sugar), getting enough sleep, and committing to a spa visit (not my own) once a month. It also means committing to my home skin care program: Washing my face twice a day and apply my layers of serums so that I can keep looking younger than the 50 years my body has been on this earth.

I’ve heard from people that they consider getting massages and facials a luxury. “My birthday is in June so I’ll treat myself then.” These are the same people who are getting in car accidents, getting sick all the time, suffering from back and joint pain, and not being able to sleep at night.

I’ve gone through periods in my life where I didn’t take care of myself, and boy, did I suffer. The most recent time was this past six months. I literally took care of everyone in my life except me. As a result, my fibromyalgia symptoms came back, I couldn’t fall asleep at night and worse, I got chronic daily migraine headaches. I even got in a little car accident because my brain was going a million miles a minute and caused $3600 worth of damage to my very patient husband’s car. But the headaches were what finally got my attention.

I knew what it was. I preach self care to my clients every day that I’m in the spa. But I wasn’t taking care of ME. I’m proud to say that after getting back to my own commitment to self care, I’m now headache free, sleeping well, not hitting cars and am so much more productive at work. I’m also a better and more loving wife and mom.

I challenge you to start putting yourself first. One of my favorite quotes is by the Jewish scholar Rabbi Hillel who wrote, “If I am not for myself then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

So call us or book an appointment online today to take care of yourself.

Because if not now, when?

 

With peace & gratitude,

Wendei

peace of mind studio city spa owner wendei smith

Filed Under: Life Enhancing Tips Tagged With: natural beauty, peace of mind is a quality of life, replenish & renew your skin

Cate’s Cosmos: Have a Powerhouse Valentine’s Day

February 11, 2014 by Wendei Leave a Comment

Intuitive Readings by CateMercury will be retrograde starting February 6th and stay that way until February 28th.  Those born under the sign of Aquarius might feel the most affected as Mercury is retrograde in Aquarius. Remember that this retrograde usually deals with delays of all kinds especially with contracts or electrical trickeries.  It is best to wait to buy your electronics at times when Mercury is direct. Mercury (messenger god) in Aquarius represents our looking outside ourselves in an effort to affect the world in a positive way.  We are now in the Age of Aquarius when the greatest good for the greatest number really has meaning. We may be called upon to be of service and that can feel extremely soul satisfying. We may be called upon to act globally and hopefully as the great man said, “see the world live as one.” IMAGINE!

Our seemingly constant companion of late The Grand Cardinal Cross will be dominant again on Wednesday February 12th. Those born under the Cardinal Signs of Aries, Capricorn, Cancer and Libra may feel the energy this exerts more than other signs. When we look deep inside and tell ourselves the truth these T Squares as they are also called may represent growth without the pain. It may be  a time for soul searching. With Jupiter in the mix it may also represent a time of tremendously positive growth. Pluto (also in the mix) demands transformation – let it be elegant.

Friday sees our Full Moon in Leo. As we are in Aquarius the full moon will be in its opposite sign, Leo. Leo likes to shine so this may be an especially auspicious full moon for anything or anyone whose time has come to be front and center in the spotlight. It is Valentine’s Day so it is energetically a powerhouse time for everyone to see our best side.  Let it be fun (red sequins might be a nice touch)!

From somewhere wishing upon a Star with a box of  dark chocolate truffles,

-Cate

Want to know more about what’s in store for you? Book a reading with Cate today for greater insight into your personal and professional well-being.

Filed Under: Life Enhancing Tips Tagged With: Cate's Cosmos, peace of mind is a quality of life

Cate’s Cosmos: Welcome to the Year of the Horse

February 4, 2014 by Wendei Leave a Comment

Intuitive Readings by CateFriday January 31st marked the 4711 Chinese New Year. We are leaving behind 2 years of the Chinese element of Water – Dragon (2012), Snake (2013) and entering the all consuming Year of the Wood Horse. Every 60 years the cycle is repeated therefore the last year of the Wood Horse was 1954. It started on February 3rd and ended on January 23rd 1955. If you were born in that period you are specifically a Wood Horse.  2026 will be the Fire Horse. Even though we are in a Wood Horse Year the natural element of the Horse is fire. It is about letting go in order to leap forward.  What no longer fits was washed away in the past 2 years of subconcious exploration and what remains that we cling to so desperately may be burned away permanently if it does not serve us well. Left to their own devices a horse in the wild travels 140 miles per day. We mean hang on, giddy yup, tally ho.  The caveat emptor remains don’t trample others along the way. Ancient China was known to eliminate women born in the Year of the Horse (most especially the Fire Horse) because of the extreme drive and masculine power they exhibited. The Horse men were encouraged (forced) to join the military. The Horse is Yang (masculine). Modern times we hopefully know better.

The Wood Horse color is Green. Look for harvest in all areas of your life. Wood fuels fire. Fire is the passion to recognize hopes and dreams. It represents new beginnings, heart’s desires manifested, dreams fulfilled. We are leaving the watery dream state of the past 2 years. Those were in preparation for what is coming. Get ready for the merry go round ride of a lifetime.  Think in terms of unbridled enthusiasm, energy and clearing  obstacles in our path. Unless we live to be 120 we only enter our element 2x in a lifetime (year we are born and our 6oth birth year) so a special KUNG HEI FAT CHOY  (HAPPY NEW YEAR)  FOR THOSE OF YOU BORN IN 1954 and THE VERY BEGINNING OF  1955.

From somewhere wishing upon a Star (while sitting with Secretariat and Man O War),

Cate

Want to know more about what’s in store for you? Book a reading with Cate today for greater insight into your personal and professional well-being.

 

Filed Under: Life Enhancing Tips, Peaceful Referrals Tagged With: Cate's Cosmos, peace of mind is a quality of life

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