How to Lift Your Face With 2 Hands, 30 Needles and No Knives

The weirdest thing about aging’s visible toll is that you can’t really predict how you’re going to react to it. One day you pat on moisturizer and feel the beginnings of a jowl, or look in the mirror of a particularly well-lit bathroom and see crow’s-feet. Some people may shrug and say something about how they’re well-earned badges of a life lived or mention European actresses who look their age. While I respect those people, I am not one of them.

I view aging as a small but personal betrayal. I’m not proud of this, and I wish I could take a more casual, more French approach to acceptance, but it’s not in me. When I stared going gray at 26, I colored my hair. And when fine lines began to collect around and under my eyes at 35, I welcomed Botox into my life.

I do all the normal things you’re supposed to do to keep your face looking good — moisturizing and wearing sunscreen and drinking enough water and exfoliating — but at some point I wanted to try something different from the usual routine. Around that time I was introduced to Amanda Chantal Bacon, the owner of Moon Juice, known for selling expensive herb-based “dusts” that are supposed to inspire better sleep, better concentration, even better sex.

Whatever she is doing, it’s working. Her skin looked as if it were lit from within even though she didn’t appear to be wearing makeup. One of her secrets is facial acupuncture, which works, she said, “for, like, a day and a half.”

I immediately booked an appointment for facial acupuncture rejuvenation at Treatment by Lanshin, a wellness destination in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that promises its treatment “smooths, uplifts and sculpts prematurely aging and dull skin.”

After I settled onto a treatment table, acupuncturist Samantha Story took a look at my skin and said I was dehydrated and needed to “till the soil.” She inserted at least two dozen needles in my face, another 10 or so in my scalp and a few on my décolleté and legs and hands; it was pain free to the point of being imperceptible.

The needles target tension and strain — physical and mental — and promote good circulation to result in, one hopes, a lifting and smoothing and sculpting effect. Story removed the needles after half an hour and performed gua sha, which is a facial massage using a jade tool that looked vaguely like a comb.

I couldn’t afford the eight to 10 regular treatments recommended for best results, so I’ll never know if facial acupuncture really can have lasting effects. But for a few hours I did think I had firmer looking skin and more defined cheekbones.

I did know that I could have sat for several hours of someone massaging my face, so I decided to double-down on my next treatment, with Thuyen Nguyen of FaceXercise, a facialist who has a cultish, word-of-mouth following (Michelle Williams, Uma Thurman, Cindy Crawford, who usually come to him through makeup artists or hairstylists or friends) for his Instant-Lift Facial Ultimate Workout.

Adding to the under-the-radar vibe is that Nguyen works out of a small, dark treatment room in Aqua, an underwater cycling studio in Tribeca. My mind was luxuriously blank for 50 minutes as he washed my face using his own charcoal-based face cleanser; he then rubbed with a facial oil and did lymphatic drainage massage to get rid of water retention and puffiness. He has soft, strong fingers that move quickly and precisely around the eyes and jawline. When he wasn’t massaging me, he was kneading me or doing rolling motions or using tiny facial cups.

Every once in a while he would impart some wisdom, like “every pore is a sphincter,” or note that he was applying a face mask made with manuka honey, and I would make some kind of affirmative noise and then go back to a place of wordless ecstasy as he worked on my skin. At the end he applied his own multivitamin serum and a cream, before massaging my neck and scalp and feet.

My fine lines were no longer visible, and my skin looked so good that a friend later asked me what highlighter I was using when I wasn’t wearing any makeup. But these were mere bonuses after the pleasure of the treatment.

As I was leaving, I told Nguyen I was about to fly to Asia and asked what I could do to preserve my skin during long-haul flights. “When you remember, just squeeze your skin to get the circulation going,” he said. “Massage is the youth serum in a bottle we’re all looking for.” I might believe him.