Talking Business: Longview spa offers noninvasive skin treatments in tranquil setting | Local Business

Renee Callis is offering what she calls “the best of both worlds” at Body and Spa Esthetics inside the Split Enz Salon in The Merk — a place where people can receive doctor-level skin treatment amid a calming spa environment. 

“It’s pretty close to a doctor’s office, but in a relaxing place,” Callis said. “You get high quality results without the pain.”

Before she became a licensed esthetician in 2012, Callis said she worked at dermatology and plastic surgery offices where customers received work like Botox injections and facelifts. 

At Body and Spa Esthetics, customers don’t go under the knife, but go under LED lights and ultrasonic radio waves to rid them of problems like hyperpigmentation, acne, fat and fine lines.

While receiving treatment, customers sit atop a bed heated with jade stones as Callis massages their hands and feet in the spa’s subdued lighting. A small water fountain flows nearby, and an electric fireplace warms the room.

Callis said mostly women, 35 to 80 years old, frequent the spa, which offers prescheduled and same-day appointments from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Customers seeking anti-aging services usually come every two weeks until they reach desired results, then taper off to once a month, she said. 

People visit the spa for birthdays or relaxing days off, Callis said, for facials that range from 30 minutes to two hours. 

“A lot of people come because it’s their favorite thing to do,” she said. 

Callis opened her Longview spa in 2019, but soon closed once the pandemic hit. She has offered minimal appointments to protect customers’ safety since November 2020, and fully reopened last spring.

Under a current special for $80, Callis offers 60 minutes of ultrasound cavitation body sculpting, where she uses ultrasonic radio waves through a wand to break apart fat cells. She said the service helps to rid people of fat that can’t easily be shed through diet and exercise. 

“For the little areas of fat you can’t get rid of yourself,” she said. 

Another special for $97 provides a 60-minute hydrodermabrasion facial that injects oxygen and saline into pores to rid skin of blackheads, acne scars, uneven skin tones or minor fine lines. The process doesn’t leave “slices or prick marks,” Callis said, the way traditional spas treatments that manually unclog pores might. 

Experts say hydrodermabrasion can be less abrasive than microdermabrasion, which uses crystals to shed dead skin cells.

For a period during the hydrodermabrasion facial, customers sit under photodynamic therapy lights. The Mayo Clinic says the lights can destroy cancerous and precancerous cells, and Heathline.com says the lights can correct sun spots, acne and scars. 

Callis said she also uses medical-grade products by SkinMedica during facials because they were used by her previous dermatology and plastic surgery employers.