TaiciaBourtakova
I treat skin for a living and I run the practice the treatments happen in. Most of what follows is the thinking behind that: how I trained, what I will and will not do to a face, and why the first appointment is nearly always a conversation rather than a procedure.
Criminologyfirst, skinafter it.
My degree is in criminology, which people tend to hear as a false start. It was not. Three years of it is three years of learning to ask better questions, to distrust the first explanation that presents itself, and to sit with somebody long enough that they tell you the true version rather than the tidy one.
That is most of a consultation. The rest is technique, and technique can be taught, so I went and learned it properly, in order, from the foundations up.
The whole story
Five things,done properly.
This is the whole list. It is short on purpose: a practitioner who offers everything has trained deeply in nothing, and every one of these is something I hold a qualification in and use every week.
Laser and IPL
Hair removal, worked out over a course rather than sold as a single session.
Microneedling
Controlled injury, for texture, scarring and the quality of the surface.
Chemical peels
Resurfacing at a strength chosen for your skin, not for the brochure.
Dermaplaning
The gentlest thing on this list, and the most immediately visible.
Consultation
The appointment everything else is decided in, and the one I care most about.
I foundedTasya Beauty.
It is the room the treatments happen in, and I built it so that the standard would be mine to keep rather than somebody else’s to set. Nobody is upsold, nothing is rushed, and the plan is written for the skin in front of me rather than read off a price list.
Every one ofthese is checkable.
Listed with the body that awarded it, which is the only way a qualification means anything.
Level 4 Certificate in Laser and Intense Pulse Light (IPL) Treatments
VTCTLevel 3 NVQ Diploma in Beauty Therapy General
VTCTLevel 2 NVQ Diploma in Beauty Therapy General
VTCTMelanoma and skin cancer early detection accreditation programme
SkcinDermapen microneedling training course
DermapenWorldEducation and training, Skinbetter Science range
AestheticSourceBSc Criminology and Sociology
Royal Holloway, University of LondonThree thingsshe holds to.
Skin is a long conversation. Nobody has ever won one in a single appointment.
I would rather talk you out of a treatment than take money for one that was never going to work.
Consistency at home beats intensity in the chair. It always has.
Where thework happens.
Everything is done at Tasya Beauty, in a room set up for it: patch tests before a course rather than after, one appointment at a time, and enough of it left for the conversation that decides what is worth doing.
Tell me whatyour skin is doing.
A first message does not have to be organised. What is bothering you, how long it has been going on, and what you have already tried is plenty to work from.