The Importance of Hand Placement During Lashing
After many years of being a Lash Technician as well as a Eyelash Extension Instructor, I have seen first hand, how important hand placement is to various aspects of lashing, from safety to posture.
Anyone who has done Eyelash Extensions knows how tiring it can be on the hands, especially throughout the learning process. During this learning process, the benefits of good hand placement are clearly seen. It is very common for people to instinctually try to keep their hands in the air when first learning in order to keep from touching the clients' forehead. Most people feel like this will give them better angles when coming in to place an extension. In reality, placing hands in the air makes the process more strenuous for the technician from carrying more of their own arms' weight. This usually leads to unsafe holding positions as well which cause the tweezers to end up pointing straight down towards the clients' eyes which is highly dangerous. The simple solution to this is to provide oneself with a support point for your hand. This support point is usually a finger or part of the palm of your hand and they are usually resting on the clients' forehead. It is completely normal to use the client's forehead for some support, although it is always important to not lean into or place too much weight on the forehead. The support point helps to make the hands more steady and also helps to control fatigue, which is specially helpful to those learning and first starting.
While ensuring to have some type of support point is highly important as far as hand placement and the safety of lashing goes, there are a few other things that can ensure you have proper hand placement. How the tweezers are held, bed and stool height, and elbow positioning all contribute to hand positioning. First, the tweezers should be mainly held by three fingers most of the time for the best mobility. Holding the tweezers like this will make it easier to reach many hard to reach spots and angles without having to move much.
The height of the bed as well as the height of the stool you sit at should be set so that your back is straight throughout the whole process. You should not have to bend your back over to get closer to the client if the heights are set right and you are using the correct magnifying glasses. Once the correct height for the bed and stool have been found and your correct posture determined, you can focus on keeping your elbows parallel to your body and hanging freely throughout the lashing process. Lightly resting your forearms on the edge of the bed is normal but you shouldn't have to lean on the bed with your arms for any support of your weight. It can be seen here that proper hand positioning and good posture while lashing go hand in hand and directly affect each other.
All in all, the hand placement used during lashing is crucial to good work, safe practices, and good posture. How do you feel about your hand placement? Does it need work in any areas? Have you experienced the benefits to posture? And hand mobility?