Hanford, CA Spa and Massage

Thread and Sugar's all-natural, eco-friendly products are hand-blended using organic ingredients in the salon, ensuring iniquitous chemicals can't set up shop selling Chiclets in your pores. Say a sweetly spoken farewell to unwanted follicles and fuzz with a low-pain sugaring service ($6 for women's neck to $235 for men's full body), or maintain your wanted mane with a women's cut and style ($50–$65), men's cut and style ($25–$40), all-over color (starting at $85), highlights ($95–$140), conditioning treatment ($55), and more. One of the salon's hip, talented aestheticians will help bring your best pores to the fore with an organic facial ($90) or a natural glycolic peel ($100). Or make a manly dermis extra dapper with a gentleman's facial ($75). If you've been wanting a tattoo but are terrified Alfred Bulltop Stormalong will use a humungous needle, have your design inked with a temporary and natural henna tattoo (starting at $10). This Groupon cannot be used toward threading or nail services.

Great Escape Massage is dedicated to helping clients reach total wellness through the healing touch of massage. During 75 minutes of manual manipulation, Great Escape Massage's therapists will mingle the techniques of basic Swedish massage with elements of shiatsu, deep tissue, and chocolate sprinkles. Swedish massage, a light- to medium-pressured technique, is the most popular type of knead. It uses long, connective strokes and kneading to improve blood flow, stimulate the lymphatic system, relieve physical tension, and melt stress into a puddle of biodegradable papier-mâché. The deep-tissue strokes delve deep into your body's underlying muscle Kleenex where the Swedish massage fears to tread, while the pressure-point stimulation of shiatsu punctures pockets of resistance as well as any accidentally ingested balloons. Expect to escape Great Escape feeling healthy, happy, and harmonized in mind, body, and spirit like a one-person doo-wop group.

Beauty specialist Vimaa Patel opened I Bar to concentrate on threading, body art, and permanent makeup. Vimaa ensures her staff is practiced in the ancient technique of eyebrow threading—gently pruning and shaping brows with cotton strings—by requiring potential team members to have at least two years of experience. The technicians also enhance eyes and brows with permanent-makeup treatments and personalize shoulders, ankles, and calves with temporary body art, such as birds, blossoms, or safe combinations.

I Bar's intensive focus on a handful of treatments let the staff master their craft, and customers took notice. Within four years, the beauty haven expanded to four locations, each of which maintains the rigorous quality and boutique ambiance of the original.

Erika Altaffer is a massage therapist with seven years of medical and spa-massage experience in her relaxation tool belt. For 60 minutes, let her apply her full arsenal of massage techniques to target your beleaguered torso, expertly removing knots from your muscles like a master sailor with surprisingly kempt hands. Each session is tailored to suit the individual customer, with benefits that range from pain alleviation and fatigue reduction to improved circulation, increased lymphatic function, and full exorcism of midnight haunts and apparitions. The private, spa-treatment rooms at Erika's spa are ideal for floating away on a dizzy cloud of stress relief. Details such as plush treatment beds and warm candlelight add to the peaceful experience. You'll leave the spa as relaxed and content as a January oyster that's already exceeded its annual pearl quota.

For almost two decades, the passionate dermal custodians at Aegean Advanced Aesthetics have combined top-shelf clinical products and professional care to energize orifices and invigorate visages. Today's Groupon smoothes over each face's troubled past with a rejuvenating four-layer vitamin-C facelift. In one 60-minute sitting, a friendly attendant will affix your skull sheath with coats of vitamin C, glycolic acid, and gentle enzymes, speeding up cellular turnover to tighten and enliven your face, as well as emit an incandescence unseen since Zeus removed a T-shirt from his lamp to reveal the sun. Upon completion, feel free to consult the face sages for how to maintain your ultra-radiant luminescence. After all, taking good care of your skin is important at any age. When future forms of facial recognition require a scan of your face before you can enter your hovercraft or open a can of hovercraft fuel with your automatic can-opener, it’ll be nice to know you’re dependably radiant. Call ahead to make an appointment.

Like leaving someone at the altar to elope with a true love, Akari Skin & Body Care owner Julienne James left hair school. It was 1987, and she had been giving her friends mini massages on the side. "I didn't have a true interest in my heart to do hair because of all the chemicals," she explained, "and [my friends] felt better after I did just a little bit of shoulder massage." That passing fancy was formalized through the massage therapy program at Therapeutic Learning Center in Fresno, aesthetician's training at Federico's Beauty College in Visalia, and a vow-renewal ceremony for her and her hands, creating a commitment to holistic health and skincare that she has sustained for more than a quarter-century.

Julienne exercises her passion on clients who range in age from 12 to 90 years. Treatments begin not atop the massage table she modified with extra padding and a tiny, hidden pea, but at the doorstep. The aromas of lavender and clary sage waft from the softly lit space, as these are some of her favorite scents for blending into massage oils and foot lotions. She acquired her knowledge of aromatherapy in England, where she also expanded her repertoire of Swedish, Shiatsu, and therapeutic massage with an Indian acupressure technique targeting stress in the scalp and neck. Massages are usually a fusion of these styles, which are further customized with the heat of the room and the presence or absence of scents and music. Julienne once noticed that a client who teaches piano recognized the classical music she turned on during the session, and has since been very careful about selecting tunes that would not remind anyone of going to work. Her meticulousness also extends to skin. Facials use additive-free Dermalogica products that won out against other brands in a personal, several-month-long test, and her wax is so thorough it can rid clients of hair and the memory thereof.