Photo credit: Mary Knippel

by Mary Knippel

The path of a modern-day healer has many roads and for Antoinette Cresci de la Torre, owner of Bella Luce Skin Care and Healing Arts her new Pacifica salon at 2014 Palmetto Ave., the rhythms of dance combined with the theatre of ice skating have led her to use her talented hands to make life a little more beautiful and comfortable for others. “I’ve always been interested in helping people,” she said as we toured her new Pacifica salon. “My goal is to help my clients achieve healthy skin from the inside out through my skills and services which include skin care, massage, waxing, and soon acupressure. I’m a perpetual student. I always feel there is something else to learn and I want to be better at what I’m already doing. I am a licensed esthetician and certified licensed massage therapist. I am adding acupressure into the practice as well so that I can better serve my clients.”

“I bring a dance and figure skating background to the table,” Cresci de la Torre said. “I believe in order to have a healthy life with longevity we need to take care of ourselves. Skin care and massage are a way to accomplish this on-going process. It’s not just for special occasions like your birthday. It’s something we deserve. We as women deserve it on a regular basis because we’re the givers. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re not going to have anything left to give.”

“I stayed home with my kids,” Cresci de la Torre said, “but then I decided I had to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. I took a career and life skills course and everything came up that I should be helping people.” The college’s cosmetology department happened to be right next door and it became her next course of study. About halfway through esthetician training, she decided she needed to learn massage as well. “I realized I couldn’t do this without learning massage because I felt I was chopping someone’s head off,” she said. “A licensed esthetician is only supposed to touch the body from the décolleté on up. I wanted to be able to do more. I was a very busy lady doing both!”

Now she is mastering acupressure, which is based on the same principles as acupuncture but uses pressure instead of needles. “You can do a lot for the skin through the meridians,” Cresci de la Torre said, “and my feeling was why would I only want to work on the outside of somebody when I had the ability to help them work their skin from the inside? Acupressure gives me the ability to do deep work in my massage, also, without having to go deep physically.”

Massage has many health benefits. It can help you maintain physical, mental and emotional well-being, especially when it is part of your wellness routine. According to the American Massage Therapy Association, “An increasing number of research studies show massage reduces heart rate, lowers blood pressure, increases blood circulation and lymph flow, relaxes muscles, improves range of motion, and increases endorphins (enhancing medical treatment).”

“The skin is the largest detoxifying organ in the body,” Cresci de la Torre said. “What our liver and our intestines don’t do, our skin does. When skin conditions occur, it is often because our organs are over-taxed and it will show up on our skin. With proper skin care, your skin will be more radiant because you won’t have all those toxins coming out through the skin. Eliminating the toxins from the skin also gives you the benefit of preventing premature aging.”

“My years of training as a dancer and figure skater have taught me to respect the wisdom of our outer shell,” Cresci de la Torre said. “I like reading a person’s body. Often, I hear better with my body because I can tell more by touching someone than by having them talk to me. Do you know what your skin is telling you?”

For more information contact Antoinette Cresci de la Torre of Bella Luce Skin Care and Healing Arts at 650-238-4901, or on the Web at www.bellalucepacifica.com.