Celebrity Facialist Anastasia Achilleos On Bespoke Treatments, Consciousness and The Power of Beauty Therapy
She’s determined to help her clients change not just their skin, but their lives…
Anastasia Achilleos isn’t your typical facialist. She doesn’t have a soft, sugary voice. A treatment with her isn’t an hour spent listening to whale noises. And perhaps most surprising of all, she’s keen on quantum physics and likens herself to the Nikola Tesla of the beauty world. “One of my favourite quotes comes from Tesla,” says Anastasia. “It says, ‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration’ and that’s at the heart of everything I do.”
But then nothing about Anastasia’s rise to fame has been conventional. For a start, she never intended to become a facialist. “I literally picked beauty therapy out of a catalogue at the local college and then found that I was in love with biology, chemistry and physics, and suddenly human anatomy became everything for me,” she explains. “So my progression into it was definitely not a desire to become one fragment of the beauty industry.”
Anastasia can also pinpoint the exact moment when everything changed in her career. It was 2002 and she’d confided to Michael Boadi, her long-term client at a spa in London’s Notting Hill, and the hairstylist who went on to create Kate Middleton’s wedding perfume, that she could make supermodels even more beautiful than they already were with her signature facial massage. Youthful bravado perhaps, but after proving her metal backstage at London Fashion Week, she was invited to a shoot for W Magazine in an apartment off Old Street. Anastasia had no idea what was going to happen until she arrived.
“I remember saying, ‘Hi, I’m here to do some facial sculpting,’” she recalls. “It was like that moment in the movies when everyone turns around and stares blankly at you,” she continues. “At the time, the term facialist didn’t exist as a job description. You were either a beauty therapist or a manicurist. As if on cue, the photographer finally asked, ‘Can you just do a manicure?’. But when the model walked in a couple of hours later I thought, there’s no way on earth that I’m not going to massage her face. By the time she was called into make-up, I’d lifted her cheekbone up to the sky on one side of her face and all the fatigue and puffiness was gone.”
To put things into perspective, that model was Kate Moss and the make-up artist, Charlotte Tilbury. “As soon as Kate saw herself in the mirror she shouted out loud, ‘Oh my God, look at what this girl has done to my face!’”, says Anastasia. “That was the beginning of never working in a salon or spa again.” An article in the Evening Standard newspaper followed in the same year, listing her as Kate’s facialist and her treatments in the top 100 things to do in London. Characteristically, Anastasia took it all in her stride – in fact, she only saw the article while travelling home on the bus.
Anastasia, already known in London circles for her off-the-menu ‘Anastasia facial’, was suddenly catapulted to one of the most sought-after facialists on set, with editorial work flooding in from all corners of the world for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and The Face. She was snapped up by the iconic fashion photography duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot to work her face-sculpting magic on shoots, movie sets and advertising campaigns for fashion houses such as Fendi, Miu Miu, Stella McCartney and Louis Vuitton. From there followed a residency at top London hairdresser Errol Douglas’ salon and a 12-year relationship with Proctor and Gamble as the company’s beauty expert. “I became an entrepreneur very quickly but I had a burning desire to do something else,” she concedes.
That something involved walking away from big money contracts and overhauling everything she’d ever been taught about the spa industry. In its place? A steely determination to focus on cutting-edge healing techniques and “to raise the vibration of beauty therapy in order to help people to change their lives,” Anastasia says. “There are few industries or professions where you get to see someone with all their garments, their jewellery and status removed,” she adds. “You know nothing about them – whether they own a Skoda or a private jet – because in that space it doesn’t matter. You can see exactly where a human is holding their pain, trauma, happiness or the rigidity to a ligament. You can see it, you can feel it and as a facialist you need to step away from whatever’s going on in your own life to become a conduit for positive, healing energy.”
While a lover of spas and how they allow you to carve out time to relax, Anastasia had become increasingly frustrated with a fundamental flaw in the model. “Spa had become a product-led industry because, at the end of the day, the therapists needed to retail,” she says. “It was all about treatments based on protocol. Somewhere along the line the idea of therapy had become lost, so it was all sort of a front. I’m a Leo and I’m Greek so I decided to break the rules and break away from protocol.”
Subsequently, she launched the Anastasia Achilleos Method in 2016 to go beyond traditional beautification. She combined the usual facial fare – extraction, masking, lymphatic drainage, lifting and sculpting – with holistic emotional release. In particular, the Method harnessed the power of reiki for craniosacral release – something Anastasia had tapped into instinctively in her early spa days. By releasing tension in the connective tissues of the body, she was able to realign the central nervous system for a relaxed, youthful glow. Her Method also focussed on the jaw, which is one of the most used joints in the body; her techniques tackling the tightness and constraints of this bone. Each treatment was tailor-made to attend to the client’s emotional and physical needs, from the techniques to the plant extracts and oils used. In other words, Anastasia was putting the therapy back into beauty therapy, both in London and at the Anassa Hotel in her native Cyprus.
For anyone raising a perfectly groomed eyebrow at the word ‘energy’, Anastasia says: “It’s a fact of our anatomy that we’re made up of chemistry, physics and electrical impulses.” She also believes it’s possible to tap into those vibrations. “When we learn to go deeper into breath work, for example, it sparks chemical exchanges including the release of endorphins, which not only lifts our mood but also combats pain,” she adds. If further proof were needed, Anastasia starts rubbing her hands furiously together on our Zoom call, encouraging me to do the same. “Can you feel how they’re warm and the skin is buzzing?,” she asks excitedly. “You can literally feel the energy. Each of us is energy and I promise you there is more value in doing this to activate your skincare than there is in simply buying the most expensive serum and cream or purely following a facial massage technique. Don’t just activate the product and ingredients but consciously add your energy.”
The idea that the beauty industry is allowing us to learn about the science of anatomy and adopt a mind-over-matter approach are areas that Anastasia is keen to explore. “Healing is happening every single moment of the day in your body, otherwise your kidneys wouldn’t flush out toxins,” she says. “My work isn’t just about facials,” she adds. “It’s about recognising the human on the massage bed. Our anatomy stores the information from traumatic experiences, grief and even the sadness over a break-up. But your memory isn’t the only place where you remember. Connective tissues and organs store the information, too. The focus of my work is trauma release though quality touch and a deep innate understanding of how the mind moves into matter. We have the ability to tell our bodies what we want them to be and to programme their frequency through having a positive mindset.”
In fact, one of Anastasia’s favourite mind-over-matter hacks comes from Louise Hay’s mirror work. “Stand in front of the mirror, smile and really look into your eyes,” Achilleos instructs. “Repeat the affirmation: ‘I love you. I really really love you” every day for 40 days. I promise you will feel different through the power of these thoughts.” Throughout our interview Anastasia frequently refers to the hardware and software of the beauty industry. “The hardware is the products, the software is recognising the body’s vibrations and the mind-skin connection,” she says. “For example, it’s massaging the vagus nerve, that runs from the brain, through the face to the abdomen, so that it communicates with your gut and encourages it to produce the right chemicals to boost your immune system. Or it’s inviting clients to tap into the electrical impulses, the heat and movement inside their bodies through yoga and meditation. That’s the new frontier of spa and of wellness.”
It’s an infectious idea that’s already seen her work with celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Jodie Comer. In fact, Anastasia is famously credited with connecting the Killing Eve actress with the power of bathing to decompress. “My mum taught me to tap into the higher power of bathing and I do the same thing with my own children every day,” says Anastasia. “The minute you get into a bath or shower, the feeling of warm water triggers an instant parasympathetic nervous system response. You’re washing away the day but you’re also warming up your core body temperature and increasing the amount of blood pumping from your heart. Pouring a capsule of pre-blended essential oil over your skin and letting the water massage your spine encourages your brain to secrete all the feel-good chemicals and hormones.”
Now Anastasia is set to bring her unique take on the wellness model to the UAE as she plans to split her time between the Middle East and London. It’s a challenge she’s relishing and a place she feels a strong affinity for when it comes to her energetic work. “Cleansing incense is a big part of the Middle Eastern culture,” she says. “Smells have different frequencies so they can change our frequency and mood.” Some of her fondest memories are also of previous visits to the region. “I remember meeting the power sisters Huda and Mona Kattan at the start of their thriving careers in 2011,” recalls Anastasia. “Huda was pregnant with her daughter at the time and we really connected. In her recent Harvard talk she speaks about knowing your worth, believing in yourself and never giving up. Huda’s the ultimate girl boss.”
At around the same time, Anastasia also started taking clients on private retreats known as The Intelligent Facial. Her first at Huvafen Fushi in the Maldives led to a residency at the Desert Palm resort in Dubai. “Taking people out of their environment and immersing them into a schedule of ‘anything is possible’ excites me deeply,” she says. “I believe in the power of immersion experiences. You arrive one way and leave in another mindset.”
Speaking to Anastasia, it’s hard not to think of her as some kind of time-traveller. While the rest of us are only now tapping into crystal healing and meditation as a hangover from Covid lockdowns, Anastasia has already delved into the past to ground herself in ancient healing practices while also catching a glimpse of the future. “Forget Bitcoin – consciousness is the new currency,” she emphatically declares. “We’re the generation that is seeking soul in everything,” she continues. “That’s why life coach and entrepreneur Tony Robbins is doing huge consciousness-led summits for the world’s most elite CEOs and his idea of not allowing a belief in failure to poison the mind is so popular. Look at Abraham Hicks – she gets millions of likes for every lecture that she gives on the law of attraction. At the end of the day, everybody is looking for a higher state of being and purpose.” And Anastasia is determined to help you achieve both.
Photography: Efraim Evidor. Styling: Seher Khan. Hair & Make-up: Mabs Khakwani. Special Thanks To 25hours Hotel One Central
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s July-August 2022 issue