Where formulation science becomes professional treatment knowledge. Professional skin science, formulation logic, and treatment protocols taught where the products are actually developed and made. Complete Elixir Academy is designed for estheticians who want to understand not only what to use, but why it works, when to use it, and how to adapt treatment decisions to complicated skin.
Training connects skin biology, active ingredients, formulation, barrier function, pigmentation, acne, recovery, and treatment-room application. Courses combine structured theory with practical protocols, product evaluation, and hands-on learning developed directly from Complete Elixir’s laboratory and professional treatment experience.
Selected programs also include laboratory-based training, allowing practitioners to see how formulas are designed, processed, evaluated, and translated into professional treatment systems.
Cohorts are offered in English or Korean, with each group taught entirely in one language to keep the learning clear and consistent. Upcoming English cohort dates will be announced once confirmed.
Estheticians do not diagnose and do not treat disease. Every module is built around that boundary rather than around it.
Read what is in front of you, and know what it is commonly mistaken for.
What is safe, what is conditional, and what is an absolute contraindication.
Clear thresholds for sending a client to a physician, and what to do when you are not sure.
Filmed during a Complete Elixir Academy session in our laboratory in Surrey, British Columbia.
The groundwork. These have already run with practising estheticians and are repeated for new cohorts.
How skin is built, layer by layer, and what each structure does.
The vocabulary every other module depends on, taught properly once so nothing later has to be hand waved. Layers, appendages, cell populations and the junctions between them, with an emphasis on what changes when skin is compromised.
What makes an active an active, and what it needs to stay functional.
How ingredients behave together in a formula rather than side by side on a label. Stability, pH windows, delivery, and the difference between a concentration on a carton and a dose that reaches the layer where it works.
Expulsive reactions, understood properly.
What purging is, why it happens, how long it should reasonably last, and how to tell it apart from a reaction you need to stop. The question clients ask most and the one practitioners get wrong most. Four sessions because the distinction is where most treatment plans fail.
How pigment is made, why it persists, and what actually influences it.
Melanogenesis from trigger to transfer, the difference between epidermal and dermal pigment, and why the most aggressive approach is so often the one that sets the client back months.
How the epidermal barrier fails, and how it rebuilds.
What helps or hinders at each stage of recovery, and why sequence matters more than strength. The spine of everything Complete Elixir formulates, and the module that changes the most treatment plans.
Heat in the dermis, and the recovery window afterwards.
Where cellular damage comes from in energy based treatments, how to think about thermal load, and what the skin needs in the days that follow. Written for practitioners who work alongside device based clinics.
One condition at a time, three or four sessions each, rather than fifteen minutes at the end of a general course.
Barrier science for skin that has lost its own defences.
Lipid and filaggrin deficiency, the itch and scratch cycle, what a treatment can safely do during a flare, and what to leave alone. First cohort ran July to August 2026.
Subtypes, triggers, and what the treatment room can and cannot do.
Barrier and vascular behaviour, the products that quietly make it worse, and clear referral thresholds.
Irritant against allergic, and how to tell them apart.
The ingredients most often implicated, patch testing basics, and how to rebuild a routine after a reaction without starting the cycle again.
Sebum, microbiome and inflammation together.
The scalp and face relationship, and why so many clients arrive having already over treated it.
What it is, what it is not, and where skin care fits.
The systemic picture behind it, and the narrow but real role of skin care alongside medical management.
Distinguishing it from acne, which changes everything.
The causes that repeat in practice, and the treatments that make it worse.
Treatment room training with written protocols, not a device demonstration. Recovery first, results follow.
Ultrasound is not a machine for working the skin hard. It delivers actives into skin that is relaxed, and the protocol exists to put the skin in that state first.
Seven steps from cleanse to home care. Sonophoresis delivery worked as three zones at about twelve minutes each, so a full face runs to roughly thirty six minutes.
A dosage guide that moves time, quantity and starting intensity together. The four rules that override everything else, beginning with maintain glide and skin response comes first. The contraindications that matter, including why you never treat immediately after skin boosters or fillers.
Device neutral: any professional handpiece with a sonophoresis mode.
Microneedling creates controlled microchannels. The treatment does not end when the needling stops.
One stage stimulates the skin. Six stages come after it. That ratio is the protocol, and the recovery phase is where most of the appointment is actually spent.
Cleanse, numb and prepare, build the serum mix, microneedling, reapply serum, about thirty six minutes of ultrasound infusion across three zones, then fifteen minutes or more of hydrating gel recovery, finishing with Clarity and Beauty of Balance.
The serum mix is a clinical decision rather than a default recipe, chosen against six things: what the skin is doing today, the objective for this session, the planned depth, sensitivity, pigmentation tendency and barrier condition. It is loaded into a disposable needleless syringe for cross contamination control and never reused.
The endpoint is the appropriate tissue response, not the greatest depth. Ultrasound after needling is recovery, not more stimulation. Home care reopens the routine in stages from Day 0 to Day 3, and the client advances only if the skin has settled.
The complete Complete Elixir treatment, taught end to end.
Built so your team can repeat it without drift, with the retail conversation that follows it.
A five day residency inside the Surrey lab where Complete Elixir is made. Five seats a cohort, 10:00 to 16:30 daily, 32.5 hours in total. Each participant formulates one serum from the first weighing to the finished batch record, then judges it against the products on the shelf. Full details are sent on enquiry.
Skin physiology and formulation chemistry, built into one working language.
Skin as a system: the lamellar structure of the stratum corneum and its water gradient, the ceramide, cholesterol and fatty acid ratio and why one alone fails, what a TEWL reading tells you and what it does not, the loop between micro inflammation and pigment, and how skin reactivity collapses. Then the variables that change after peels, lasers, ultrasound and microneedling, and why professional grade design is a separate discipline.
Formulation as physical chemistry: water, oil and glycol phases, solubility and partition behaviour, delivery routes and contact time, the four ways an emulsion fails, working pH windows and buffering, and preservation, chelation and oxidation.
The day closes with each participant writing a design brief: target skin, moment of use, place in a routine, and what they are willing to give up. That brief becomes the target specification at the Day 2 bench.
One serum, from the first weighing to the finished batch record.
A serum has nowhere to hide. No emulsifier, no powder and no silicone film to cover for it, so the structure shows.
Lab discipline and how a batch record is written. Water phase and chelation, and why the same formula in a different order becomes a different product. Active integration, charge point and temperature, antioxidant protection and oxygen pick up. pH adjustment on a calibrated meter, and the drift that follows in the next twenty four hours. Viscosity and sensory build recorded against the clock. Preservative load, then filling, headspace, labelling and lot assignment.
Each participant lays down a simple stability set on this day: an ambient control, freeze and thaw, a warm shelf at 45 degrees Celsius, and a windowsill light sample. They are read on Day 3 and scored on Day 5.
Judgment moves from impression to measurement, with no instrument you could not buy twice.
A field test kit that needs only a balance, a pH meter, glass plates, a timer and a freezer. Dosed spread, tack, glass plate residue, water break, pilling, an afterfeel timeline at 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes, and an inclined plate slump for relative viscosity.
Bench work on commercial products: measured pH against label pH, behaviour on dilution, a solubility rack, and a 50 degrees Celsius hold that shows separation tendency early.
Reference samples laid down eight and four weeks before the cohort are opened and scored against a fixed rubric. A contact slide preservation demonstration makes the point visible, and is taught explicitly as a demonstration rather than a validation, because challenge testing belongs to an accredited laboratory.
The day ends with a blind set. Participants may bring products from their own back bar, and Complete Elixir goes onto the same protocol.
What turns a formula into a product, and a product into trust.
Claim literacy: how far in vitro, ex vivo, consumer perception and clinical studies each reach, what clinically proven actually underwrites, the difference between supplier data and finished product data, and the three things to check first in any dossier.
When to commission external testing: microbial limits, challenge testing, stability and irritation, what distribution, export and retail listing each demand on paper, and how to build cost and turnaround into a plan.
From lab object to market object: directions and dose, the container the formula dictates, material compatibility and light and oxygen transmission, batch codes and period after opening, and how unit cost is really built in small batch production.
Regulatory frame across markets, including Canadian cosmetic notification, European notification and safety assessment, United States MoCRA and Korean functional cosmetics, with the line between a cosmetic claim and a drug claim drawn precisely.
The day closes with consultation work: translating client language into physiological cause, separating what the product did from what the skin was already doing, layering and contraindications, and how to say no when no is the answer.
The samples are read, the field is seen, and the standard is fixed.
Final scoring of the freeze and thaw, warm shelf and light exposed samples laid down on Day 2, read against the ambient control and alongside the four and eight week reference set. Each participant finds out where their own prediction held and where it did not.
The afternoon is spent at a partner spa running Complete Elixir: back bar practice, storage and decanting, open pack control and turnover, a live protocol, and how post treatment home care is handed over.
The week closes by revisiting the Day 1 design brief, settling the final version, and writing the ninety days of action that follow the return home.
The week leaves with you as documents and objects, not as recollection.
The serum you made, lot numbered and marked with a period after opening. Small quantities travel with you and larger quantities are shipped.
A formula sheet in your own name, with phase structure, order of addition, target pH and target viscosity.
The original batch record: weights, temperatures, times and observations. The only document that lets you make it again.
Your own stability read out, scored by you on Day 5.
The design brief written on Day 1 and settled on Day 5, which becomes the standard you apply to every product afterwards.
A certificate: Complete Elixir Academy, Lab Master Class, issued on completion of all five days.
Five seats a cohort, five days, 10:00 to 16:30 each day.
There is no fixed annual calendar. A cohort is scheduled once applications come in, and the dates are agreed with the group.
Included: lab materials, equipment and protective wear, lunch on all five days, and the partner spa visit with transport arranged. There is nothing to bring.
Not included: airfare, local transport, accommodation and living costs.
Taking your formulas home is permitted. Small quantities travel with you and larger quantities are shipped.
A letter of invitation for visa purposes is issued on request once a place is confirmed.
The fee is quoted on enquiry, together with the cohort dates. Write to us and we will send the full day by day curriculum, the fee and the application steps.
English or Korean. Each cohort is taught in one language, matched to the group.
Dates will be announced once confirmed. Write to us and we will tell you first.
Problem Skin Science, track two, in Korean
2 October 2026 to 26 February 2027
18 sessions, 90 minutes each, run straight through without a break
Fridays at 09:00 Korea Standard Time
Live online, with a reading handout for each session
Track one has already run and is repeated for new cohorts. Write to us for dates.
Taught separately, in person and online
Five days in Surrey, British Columbia. Five seats a cohort, scheduled once applications come in.
Working estheticians, spa and clinic staff, and esthetics students in their final year
On enquiry. Write to us and we will send the current cohort fee and enrolment window.
Course materials are prepared for enrolled participants only. Reproduction, redistribution and commercial use are not permitted.
Complete a full Complete Elixir Academy module and receive a numbered Certificate of Completion, issued by Complete Elixir Academy in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.
The certificate confirms that you have completed structured professional education in the subject area of the course, including the underlying skin science, formulation principles, active ingredients, treatment considerations and practical protocols covered in the program.
What your certificate includes
Each certificate records the program name, completed module, participant name, completion date, unique certificate number, and the signature of Clara Song, PhD, Founder and Formulator.
Complete Elixir Academy is structured as a continuing professional learning system. As practitioners return for additional modules, each completed course becomes part of a growing record of training across skin science, formulation, active ingredients, treatment protocols and recovery-focused care.
The certificate documents the education completed through the Academy and can be displayed in a treatment room, clinic, professional portfolio or training record.
Certificates are issued in English regardless of whether the cohort is taught in English or Korean.
Tell us where you practise, which track you are after, and which language suits you. We will reply with the next cohort dates, the fee and what is involved. Lab Master Class enquiries receive the full five day curriculum by return.