Urban Rituals is two things working toward the same goal. It's a San Diego holistic wellness studio where results-driven skincare meets genuine nervous-system care — and it's a growing library of practitioner-tested product reviews and best-of guides for people who want honest skincare recommendations no matter where they live. Both come from the same person: founder Candy Iverson, a dual-licensed esthetician and massage therapist, Reiki Master, and CranioSacral practitioner.
Meet Candy
Candy knew in high school that she wanted to work with her hands and help people feel better in their bodies. She began as a massage therapist at eighteen and spent her early years in day spas, deepening her craft and discovering the transformative power of good skincare. The results she saw in her own skin drew her back to school for an esthetician license — if she was already helping people heal internally, esthetics would let her help them heal on the outside too.
Licensed and ready to bet on herself, she opened her own practice, later moving nearly 600 miles to rebuild it from scratch in San Diego. Over seventeen years in, that practice has become Urban Rituals. Candy treats her work as an art form — skincare and bodywork as the medium, the client as the canvas — and says her greatest inspiration is the relationships she builds and the chance to be part of each client's wellness journey.
A whole-body approach to skin
Candy treats skin as what it is: an organ, and often a mirror of what's happening internally. Every first facial begins with an in-depth consultation — not just your current products, but your lifestyle and daily habits — because lasting results come from your home routine and diet as much as from the treatment table. From there she blends targeted facial massage to release tension and soften fine lines with medical-grade products and modern tools like high-frequency, red-light therapy, and microcurrent: med-spa results, delivered with day-spa luxury.
Being dual-licensed, with a background in yoga and energy work, is what lets her see the whole picture — skin, muscle, and nervous system together. In 2018 she completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training.
Tested in the treatment room
The question Candy hears most from clients isn't about a treatment — it's "what should I actually be using at home?" After more than seventeen years evaluating formulations on real skin, across every type and concern that walks through her door, she's become the person people trust to cut through the marketing claims.
Urban Rituals' product reviews and best-of guides are an extension of that chair-side expertise. Each recommendation is assessed the same way she'd vet a product for a client: a clean-ingredient screen, the form and concentration of the actives, how it performs across sensitive and reactive skin, and real results over time — not hype. Candy only recommends products she has tested and would use on her own clients.
It's also how Urban Rituals reaches beyond San Diego. Most people can't come sit in Candy's chair, but they can still get an expert's read on what's worth buying. The guides exist to help anyone, anywhere, find and confidently choose the right products for their skin.
Come see us — or start reading
Urban Rituals is at 3333 Midway Drive #104 in San Diego. Book a treatment and Candy will build a session around exactly what your skin and body need — or explore the reviews and guides to find your next product from someone who's tested it on real skin.
