I know my way around a facial. I have well-formed opinions about collagen face masks and laser treatments. I planned a trip to Seoul, in part, so I could visit a famous spa known for its advanced skin care techniques and K-drama celebrity clientele. So when I saw a TikTok video that described a local L.A. treatment as “gua sha on steroids,” I couldn’t resist.

The $108 service is offered at JY Beauty in San Gabriel. Owner Yajing Lu opened the shop in 2021 after she cut her teeth in local salons for six years. Before launching her own business, Lu traveled to China to gather inspiration, incorporating ideas like Bojin, a traditional Chinese technique that stimulates facial muscles, into her spa’s offerings. On the menu, it’s listed as “face tendon,” which, as Lu explained to me through a translator, is a direct translation from Chinese.

Lu said the facial contours the face, firming and lifting the skin. It can also reduce the appearance of pores and minimize wrinkles like marionette lines, which go from the nose to the mouth. Overall, she said, it reduces signs of aging.

This is all pretty close to the claims of face sculpting, another beauty trend that promises at least temporarily tighter-looking skin. But Bojin goes beyond face sculpting and relies on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practices that focus on manipulating the body’s energy pathways.

Yajing Lu massages the author as a nourishing facial mask sets on her face during a Bojin facial at JY Beauty.

In TCM, these pathways, known as meridians, are believed to channel qi, or life energy, throughout the body, according to Dr. Elizabeth Ko, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine and medical director of the UCLA Health Integrative Medicine Collaborative.

“A central credo in TCM is that blockages in meridians lead to imbalances in health, including illness or pain,” Ko said. “Like acupuncture, which uses fine needles, Bojin is a method of unblocking stuck qi using a pointed tool made of stone or horn.”

Bojin involves the same tool as gua sha, another TCM technique that uses a flat, smooth-edged scraper usually made of jade or stone. Gua sha allows for targeted massage to release tension along muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia of the face and neck so that qi can flow properly through the meridians, thereby restoring balance. Bojin might allow for a more targeted and precise treatment, enhancing circulation and promoting lymphatic drainage, according to Yu.

“The benefit of skin care resides in skin clarity and health, and Bojin is a tool that might offer some benefit when combined with a comprehensive facial in the skilled hands of a trained aesthetician,” Ko said, adding that its risks are low beyond slight pain from the pointed tool used.

Beyond those benefits, Yu says she’s seen the treatment reduce dark circles around the eyes and brighten the skin for many customers. There has been a surge in interest in TikTok since the “gua sha on steroids” video from Jing Zhang, an L.A.-based beauty influencer who posted herself getting the facial in January, which has garnered more than 2.6 million views, bringing in new customers who Yu says often request the “TikTok facial.”

“A lot more people know about Bojin and love it,” Yu said about the video.

All of the 90-minute facials at JY Beauty include the usual facial steps, such as cleansing, extraction and moisturizing. There is also a lymphatic facial massage section, which includes the chest, neck and shoulders.

Frames decorate the entrance at JY Beauty.

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Yajing Lu gives the author a facial and shoulder lymphatic detox massage.

Yajing Lu applies a nourishing facial mask on the author’s face during a Bojin facial.

The treatment began with me changing into a dressing gown that wrapped around just under my armpits, exposing my shoulders and upper chest. Then I lay down in a cozy room, where Yu quickly cleansed my face. She set up a steam machine to keep me hydrated and help open up my pores.

Yu then performed a facial lymphatic massage with her fingers, a process that focused not only on obvious areas like the muscles in my jaw, but also surprisingly tight areas, like under my eyebrows. The process made it clear that I have been woefully neglecting these parts of my face. She applied gentle pressure slowly down my face toward the lymph nodes in my neck and down into my chest. Beyond feeling wonderful, I had to keep swallowing, which can be a sign that lymphatic drainage is occurring, according to Yu.

To do the Bojin section of the facial, she took out two gua shas and worked the tools along my face and neck. This part was pretty gentle, but it still felt like part of the massage and despite Ko’s warning, there was no pain.

Then came my least favorite part of any facial: extraction, or the process of clearing clogged pores by pushing out blackheads and whiteheads. This part always feels like the start of a “Saw” movie, but maybe because the massage relaxed me this extraction was not that painful.

Next up was a hydrating serum. Yu pulled out a serum booster device, something I recognized from other facials, to supercharge the serum’s effectiveness. It was a nice cooling experience after the extraction.

Yajing Lu does extractions on the author’s face.

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The author receives a red light treatment. (Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)

After that, Yu put covers over my eyes before placing a panel of red lights around my face. A red light treatment can treat wrinkles, acne, scars and, most importantly for me at that moment, redness. While my face was getting blasted, Yu rubbed and moisturized my hands before putting them into warm mittens, a process that left me feeling like I was on a beach somewhere, snoozing in the sun.

JY Beauty also offers 30-minute eye and head Bojin treatments that can be tacked on to a facial. Yu demonstrated a few minutes of what the head addition would feel like. While it wasn’t not painful by any means, I was left wanting a good head scratch, but maybe there is just less tension there for me.

The finale was a cool, clay face mask thick enough to make me feel like a cake being frosted. While it dried, Yu rubbed my legs. The mask peeled off in one giant piece.

The author after receiving a Bojin facial from JY Beauty.

Finally, Yu rubbed some sunscreen into my face and finished the facial with some quick pats on the back. It was half-facial, half-massage, and all relaxation.

Post-facial, I asked Lu about my blockages. She gestured at my eyes, hinting that I might need that extra eye treatment next time. This is totally fair: I can feel my eyes ache even as I type up this article.

I’ll certainly be back to try it out. With my skin moisturized, and my qi unblocked, my skin glowed. I’m not sure I can go back to plain old facials or massages now that I’ve experienced this hybrid heaven.

Bernice Johnson Reagon, seen here at the memorial celebration for Odetta at Riverside Church in 2009 in New York City.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

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Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Bernice Johnson Reagon, seen here at the memorial celebration for Odetta at Riverside Church in 2009 in New York City.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later started the African-American a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, has died at the age of 81.

Reagon’s death was confirmed Wednesday night by Courtland Cox, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Legacy Project.

It is impossible to separate liberation struggles from song. And in the 1960s — at marches, and in jailhouses — the voice leading those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. Her work as a scholar and activist continued throughout her life, in universities and concert halls, at protests and in houses of worship.

The future songleader was born in southwest Georgia, the daughter of a Baptist minister. She was admitted to a historically Black public college, Albany State, at the age of 16 and studied music. Albany, Ga., would become an important center of the civil rights movement when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there in 1962, causing the media to descend on the town.

Reagon, however, wasn’t there to see it. “I was already in jail, so I missed most of that,” she wryly remembered on WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1988. “But what they began to write about… no matter what the article said, they talked about singing.”

The singing that so fascinated the media were freedom songs — often revamped versions of spirituals familiar to anyone who’d grown up in African-American churches. Reagon would later say that in many cases, she simply replaced the word “Jesus” with “freedom,” as in the rousing “Woke Up This Morning.”

After Albany State kicked her out due to her arrest, the rising civil rights organizer co-founded The Freedom Singers, an a cappella group that was part of the SNCC. Through music, the Freedom Singers chronicled SNCC’s activities, including a movement leader’s funeral (“They Laid Medgar Evers In His Grave”) and a visit from a Kenyan dignitary brought in by the State Department to demonstrate America’s strides towards racial integration (“Oginga Odinga”).

Such intertwining of songs and resistance helped define the era and those who fought for equality, says civil rights professor Kevin Gaines.

“When they were being arrested and loaded into the paddywagons, when they were in jail, when they were having mass meetings in African-American churches to organize the next protest, civil rights activists sang in all of those settings,” says Gaines.

Reagon remembered, on Fresh Air, that being the good kind of troublemaker was not necessarily encouraged.

“If you grow up in a black family, the best badge you can have is that you never got into trouble with the law,” she said. But she drew a parallel between the struggle for civil rights and biblical stories like those of Paul and Silas, who were jailed for their ministry.

“When you’re in the civil rights movement, that’s the first time you establish yourself in a relationship that’s pretty close to the same relationship that used to get the Christians thrown in the lion’s den,” she said. “And so, for the first time, those old songs you understand in a way that nobody could ever teach you.”

In 1963, Bernice Johnson married Freedom Singers co-founder Cordell Reagon. They had two children, Kwan Tauna and Toshi, who would go on to become a musical star in her own right. After her 1967 divorce, Reagon returned to school, received a Ford Foundation Fellowship, and founded the women’s a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Her activism grew to encompass the anti-apartheid movement. She became a leading scholar of Black musical life. In 1974, she received a music history appointment at the Smithsonian; in 1989 she won a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. In 1994, she created a 26 part NPR documentary called Wade in the Water that won a Peabody award. And in 1995, she was awarded the Presidential Medal and the Charles E. Frankel Prize.

Wade in the Water was a listener’s guide to African American sacred music — one that celebrated the ways in which both worship and liberation are sacred.