“I command you to get out!” is just one of the phrases that body therapist Mary Ascension Saulnier whispers to her clients’ fat cells in an effort to budge them out of their comfort zones (e.g., potbellies and jiggly thighs). “I listen to what emotion is in the cell membrane, then I talk to it,” Saulnier says. “I tell the cell which way to move out of the body.” It might sound, well, out there, but skincare queen Kate Somerville is a believer. After a few treatments in Saulnier’s Pasadena, California, studio, Somerville hired her to perform her low talking at Somerville’s namesake clinic in West Hollywood a few days a week. “Mary taps into the emotional part of why you’re overeating or drinking,” says Somerville. “Then she lets the machine do the scientific part.” The “machine” is a combination of a vacuum and an ultrasound emitter. After employing it, Saulnier slathers the client in a muddy herbal concoction, wraps her in an Ace bandage, and squeezes her into an inflatable rubber suit. That’s when the whispering begins. Hollywood starlets flock to Saulnier pre–red carpet, but she says anyone who “really wants to get conscious about permanent weight loss” is a candidate for her services. Somerville, for one, lost 17 pounds. The Fat Whisperer, she says, “was born to do this.”
Illustration: Rodrigo Corral
