John Coffelt, Editor

Sunshine Heals, Manchester’s newest aesthetics service provider, offers a blend of millennia-old health wisdom and scientific cosmetic treatment.

The expression “beauty from within” encompasses local aesthetician Andrea Northcutt’s approach to beauty care. She recently opened the clinic on Woodbury Highway with the mindset of providing a calming, nurturing environment to address clients’ skin needs with a focus on bringing beauty from inside out. 

“My background is in science. My master’s degree is in biology and my bachelor’s degree is in environmental science,” Northcutt said. “I grew up treating things with herbs and doctors. I have this love of plants.” 

This led her to an almost obsessive search for products that work. The products, chosen after meticulous research, are those that blend science and nature.

“That’s how I treat skincare and medicine… When you get into just Western medical (treatment) you miss out on the natural cycle of life.”    

While dermatology offers a strictly medical approach to skin care, aestheticians lean more on the beauty aspect of skin care. Northcutt’s services include facials and Hydrafacials, microchanneling and chemical peels in addition to the ancient practice of Ayuveda.    

Ayuveda, from the Sanskrit meaning “science of life,” is a belief that everything in life is connected. Mind, body and spirit all must balance for the best possible health. And with health comes beauty.

Northcutt explained that before modern science revealed the mechanisms of how biology, chemistry, psychology and pathology affected the human body, healers instinctually recognized these processes in nature.

Rather than overwriting that legacy of knowledge, Ayuveda counselors use science to better understand those wisdoms and find ways to use them in the modern world.

“Ayuveda today is practiced more as a preventive and a rejuvenative as opposed to acute treatment,” Northcutt said. “It’s about taking care of yourself every day.”

Diet, mediation and other daily improvements come together as the ounce of prevention that’s better than the pound of cure.  

One of the other services Sunshine Heals provides is Shirodhara, a hair and skin treatment that involves the sustained pouring of oil on the head and scalp.

The patient lies down on a massage table with their head slightly elevated.  Warm oil is poured from a special vessel onto the forehead in a steady stream.

The procedure also helps induce a meditative state. Some people, especially those new to mediation, can find difficulty moving from a sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system response to a parasympathetic (rest and digest) setting.  Laying still, letting the oil flow over the scalp helps some people relax and find their meditative state much easier than working to clear their thought as in traditional mediation.

Another service, Microchanneling, a non-medical-spa cousin to microneedling, uses tiny filaments to prick the skin with micro-wounds so the body will send collagens and elastins that addresses texture and fine lines.

Facial massages help get the lymphatic fluid and blood flow moving to help with puffiness and improve the appearance of vitality in the skin.

“I have these memories ­­­­­– I was little,” Northcutt said, “watching my mother and my grandmother every night. They had this Clinique three-step ritual. What is cool, what I’ve learned is that in Ayurveda, your morning and nighttime rituals are important. And that what they had, a ritual.”

“As I got into it more, it reminded me of the women in my family,” she said. “The science in me…finds (research) that backs up all of that intuitive wisdom. That’s what Ayurveda is.”

For more information about all the services available, go to Sunshinehealsnaturally.com or call (931) 314-6347.          

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.