Earlier this year, I was fortunate to cross paths with Samantha Schneider, the founder of Show Me What You Love. I was captivated by Samantha's dedication and passion for skincare. She is a wealth of knowledge, influenced by her memorable facial experiences and guided by her pursuit of an impressive depth of training in holistic skin therapies. We bonded over a shared vision for a more sustainable, quality driven and honest approach to skincare. One that emphasizes a slow, intentional approach, and reconnecting with ourselves.

Join me in learning more about Samantha's offering at Show Me What You Love and her intentional approach to skincare.

You have created such a special offering with your thoughtful, beautifully orchestrated holistic facial treatment at Show Me What You Love. Tell us about your journey and the inspiration behind your studio.

I have always been interested in beauty and skincare and coming into my 40’s I became frustrated with the illusion of care that the current beauty industry offered. I went the usual route of too much exfoliation, painful laser treatments and I even tried Botox a couple of times and nothing resonated with me at all. I found ingredients and formulations confusing with their over promising and under performance.

I was diagnosed with Adrenal Fatigue during the time that I was enrolled in my first esthetic class and it was a real “aha” moment for me. I was being taught how to inflame, strip, peel and wound the skin as a way to take care of it but yet I was asked to slow down my life, supplement my body with beautiful whole ingredients that supported my weak adrenals and to rest whenever I could. It was such a disconnect for me as the skin is an organ and I wondered why that same level of nurturing support didn’t apply to taking care of our faces?

I dove deep into researching alternative ways of caring for our skin and I found that there was indeed another way. I took several Gua Sha courses, travelled to LA to learn advanced Buccal massage, learned about facial reflexology, studied our lymphatic system and found education that taught me about the cellular functionality of our skin. Anything to teach me how to actually support our skin as an organ. I mean our skin is our skin right? Why would we think that it behaves in a different way just because it’s North of our neck?

The name Show Me What You Love came from my love of the exchange of information that happens between women. I wanted to create a safe space where women didn’t have to feel afraid of aging, where they could learn about holistic ways to support their skin.

To empower them with knowledge about how their skin actually works so that they could navigate the confusing and very overwhelming marketing machines of the beauty industry. A place where they could come and be taken care of that was rooted in love and kindness.

We have chatted in great length around the importance of slow beauty rituals and a more holistic approach to self-care. Can you explain how dedicating an intentional moment to slow down and reconnect can impact the health of our skin?

Our skin and our nervous system develop from the same embryonic tissue and are intimately connected. You could say that our skin is our nervous system turned inside out. We all live such busy lives these days and our stress levels can very easily overwhelm us. 

The power of touch is profound and is an integral part of the human experience. It connects us to ourselves,

makes us feel safe and secure and helps our nervous system come down out of our fight and flight. This all has a tremendous positive impact on our skin. Coming back into our breath, using beautiful oils to massage lovingly into our skin, taking just a few minutes every day to let our fingers connect to our tissue, to massage out some of the tension they find are all wonderful rituals to take care of ourselves. Every parent knows the importance of bedtime rituals for our children yet we forgot to create them for ourselves. Slow, intentional rituals can sometimes be the only calm we get in a day. It only takes a few minutes but the mental health benefits are far reaching.

What are some of the most common challenges your clients face in their skincare journey? 

Most of the time I find clients confused on what to use to take care of their skin because they don’t actually know how it works. They feel  overwhelmed by choices in the beauty industry, have had some bad experiences with products or services they received elsewhere and a lot of the time they think what is the point? They all want to take care of their skin, but they don’t like their choices because most of the time, the only treatments that are offered involve wounding the skin, causing inflammation or needles and injections. Once they have come to see me and experience facial massage, they understand the immense benefit it has for their skin but also for their nervous system. They can see the physical changes in their face after only 1 massage but more importantly they can FEEL the changes. Their faces feel like they have had a workout because they have! We all know the importance of moving and stretching the muscles in our body, why does this same concept not apply to our face?

I believe in keeping things as simple as possible, using quality sourced ingredients that actually feed our skin ample nutrition, releasing tension from our facial muscles and doing our best to keep our lymph and circulation at optimal levels as that’s what our skin needs to do it’s job. The quality of our skin depends 100% on the health of the tissues that support it.

What is the best piece of advice you have for your clients in regards to caring for their skin and supporting their skin barrier. 

Protect and nurture the collagen you do have. Everyone is taught to be obsessive about ways to build collagen because our skin’s production of it starts to decrease  in our early 20’s. I get it that the concept sounds scary but our skin wants to do it’s job. It’s our protector from the outside world and it’s going to do it’s job to the best of it’s ability with the resources it’s provided with. And all these “preventative” modalities and ingredients that want to force and wound our skin really just keep it in a low level, chronic state of inflammation and we all understand the insidious effect of inflammation in our bodies over time so why do we think that this is how to take care of our face? 

Eat your antioxidants and apply your antioxidants with whole plant nutrition. Properly hydrate your skin with a hydrosol. Hydration of the skin is probably one of the most misunderstood steps in your skin ritual. In order for the top layer of our skin to effectively desquamate, it needs an adequate percentage of hydration to activate the enzymes that control this process. Most of the time, it’s very lacking in hydration as the water we drink doesn’t make it as far as our epidermis. Offer your skin the protection from UV rays with a daily application of SPF as UV rays are the #1 source of premature aging in the skin. UV rays amplify the accumulation of oxidative stress in our skin cells and it happens earlier than you think. I understand the important relationship humans have with the sun and how necessary it is for many of it’s functions, however, our poor little face bears the brunt of our environment and need a little extra TLC.

Your beautiful facial massage treatments at Show Me What You Love completely transcend me to another level of relaxation…not just that there is a visible shift in tone and depuffing. Can you share with us some of the benefits of a daily facial massage ritual?

Human faces are capable of making over 10,000 unique facial expressions. The muscles in our face are also very unique in that most of them only have one hard attachment to bone on the periphery of our faces. The other ends are inserted and woven into our skin which make all of these expression happen. 

But the craziest thing is the fact that every thought and emotion our brain records from birth is a precursor to muscle movement in our faces. And our brain records EVERYTHING. So we start accumulating tension in our facial muscles from a very young age. And when you add onto that the fact that modern life takes a toll on our posture with too much sitting, looking down at our phones, too much tension in our upper trapezius and the forward head carrying position we all carry our head in, there ends up being a lot of compensation in our circulation of blood and nutrients and the proper drainage of our lymph from our face and neck. 

Like I said earlier, our skin depends on the health of the tissues underneath that support it. Massaging our faces is the best way to decrease the tension and to keep the lymph moving. Accumulating tension is the number 1 reason why our faces age (UV ages our skin, facial tension ages our faces) . It can give us an awareness of how much tension we are holding that we didn’t realize and it connects us to our breath, our nervous system and can be a great sense of calm at the end of the day. Or a wonderful start to the day to de puff from our sleep and wake up our skin for the day. 

What do you hope people experience when they come to see you?

I hope that they are reminded that they are worthy of receiving. Women tend to take care of everyone else first before themselves. It’s supposed to be a joy to take care of ourselves and when we do, we make it easier to take care of others around us. Like putting on your own oxygen mask first.

I hope that they gain clarity on how their skin works so that it makes it easier to make decisions on how to care for themselves that are in alignment with their values. 

I hope that they take away that they are allowed to make decisions out of love for themselves instead of fear. There is far too much fear based marketing out there, and it is all directed at a women's right to age, or not age as is the reality. 

Tell me about your first experience with .eluo.

I first loved the beautiful packaging of Eluo. I am a total nerd about ingredients and their effect on the skin cells but I’d be remiss if I didn't mention the experience of unpacking the Forma Rosea. I love things to be a beautiful experience, it adds to the ritual for me, it’s part of the slow joy. I have vintage china bowls that I mix my masks in and I loved opening the apothecary style bottle to gentle tap some into my bowl. Drizzling in some water with my fingers to get the right consistency…..mmmm it’s so good! 

I love that this mask is so customizable for the individual. A lot of people find it cumbersome to have to mix something up themselves. They just want to open a jar and slap something on their face but that doesn't speak to the bio individuality of each person using the product. Part of taking care of your skin is getting to know your skin, getting to know it’s ins and outs. When it’s happy or trying to tell you something that’s off with it. 

Having a product that allows you to customize how you use it, every single time you use it, is incredibly versatile. And when so many things are taking a toll on our skin these days, it’s beneficial to have an elevated choice in how to care for it. Whether you mix it with a hydrosol, organic Greek yogurt, a drop or 2 or facial oil or manuka honey, the choice is always yours and you know your skin best.

Thank you so much to Samantha for sharing with us, for more about her services at Show Me What You Love follow her journey on Instagram.