Welcome to Ashira Salon
Inhale the pure air and unwind in Ashira Salon’s tranquil non-toxic space.
About Ashira Salon
Here at Ashira Salon, we embrace your hair's natural movement, nourish it to reveal its beauty, and set it free from harsh products and tools. Each session begins with a detailed consultation where your hair experiences, goals and fears are carefully listened to while your hair type, face shape, silhouette, personality and lifestyle are assessed. The image that emerges from your personal story and attributes guides the process of sculpting and painting your individualized style. Each session includes a therapeutic scalp massage, as well as instructional styling techniques tailored to your individual needs. Reveal fully your beauty, while honoring your wellness and the environment with non-toxic products and services in a soothing private space. Whether you desire a subtle enhancement, or are ready for a whole new look, together we will get it done.
Hair Artist
Jennifer Brass, Owner
Helping people to see their unique beauty is my passion. Whether enhancing and illuminating or gently coaxing its emergence, I savor the process and treasure the honor. When I was 10, a hairdresser really listened and understood that even though I was a tomboy, I felt invisible and wanted to feel pretty. The result was the most flattering style that honored my hair type and lifestyle, which made me feel beautiful from the inside out. From that moment on I have been compelled to share this joy. Eight years later I was a Zenzi's beauty academy graduate. I received advanced on the job training in San Francisco's Union Square from artists such as Toni & Guy, Vidal Sassoon and Rusk. I went on to become an advanced trainer and was awarded certification in the art of color and curl. In my quest to learn more, I earned certification in personal image consulting and performed whole image makeovers for an expanding clientele. In the last eighteen of my thirty eight year practice, my services have been non-toxic. This transition was driven by a lifestyle choice to honor and preserve our Earth as well as personal health issues resulting from 20 years of working with conventional hair products.
Services
Haircuts/Hair sculpting ~ begin with a detailed consultation and end with styling techniques tailored to you. If a shampoo is needed, be pampered with a luxurious scalp massage.Hair sculpting ~ employed when traditional wet cutting just won't do! Especially designed for textured hair.
Hair coloring ~ think outside the box! Whatever is desired or required that suits your needs . . .
Highlighting, Lowlighting, and or Color blocking ~ if you wish to bring in some light, create some depth, and enhance your hairstyle there are a variety of ways to achieve this with foil and hand painting - all options will be discussed.
Creative color, Hair color extensions ~ there are so many ways to color hair, what is important is to keep your hair healthy and maintain it's integrity.
Embrace the gray transitioning ~ for those no longer willing to be beholden to their roots and/or those who just wish to press rewind and make it look as if they just started going gray, there is gray transitioning. This is a creative rather than an exact process, so guaranteed results are not part of this service.
Hairprint ~ is a brilliant scientific breakthrough that restores gray hair to its true color. For individuals with brown and black hair, the color you get with Hairprint is so natural it will defy detection because it brings back your true color. Invented by Dr. John Warner, the father of green chemistry, it replenishes the natural eumelanin pigment that is already in your hair, but which is missing from the gray. Hairprint is completely safe, 100% non-toxic, hypoallergenic, and odor free. It is designed to be a better, kinder, and safer way to honor the health of women and men, and the living world around us.
Hair treatments ~ to restore hair health, indulge your hair with deep penatrating, nourishing hair masks and/or remove damaging build-up with demineralizing products.
Rahua ~ Hair Detox and Renewal Treatment. An organic, vegan, gluten free hair and scalp treatment. Helps loosen and remove synthetic product build-up and enviornmental residue.
Olaplex ~ Is a system that permanently rebuilds the damaged disulphide bonds in your hair that are broken during the chemical or mechanical process. If you've over-bleached or colored your hair over the years, Olaplex allows you to rebuild the strength, structure and integrity of your hair; a 'reset' for your locks.
Demineralizer ~ Immediately removes layers of “rock” on the hair caused by mineral build-up that can inhibit the successful processing of color & highlights. Revitalizes hair and scalp that has hard water mineral build-up and is oxidized, damaged or over-processed.
Mission & Sustainability
Honoring Indigenous wisdom of living harmoniously with Mother Earth by doing our part to provide a livable planet for our future. We offer only clean products and services that set hair free of toxic ingredients and harsh tools to reveal its natural beauty. We partner only with companies who share our passion of honoring the wellness and nourishment of our guests as well as the health of Mother Earth on whom we all depend upon for life.
Here at our salon we are doing everything in our power to be good ancestors and leave a livable planet for our descendants as well as all who we share our planet with. Ashira Salon is climate positive, which means we go above and beyond current standards of carbon neutral. We are as close to zero-waste-to-landfill as currently possible, donating acceptable landfill to The East Bay Depot for creative reuse. Beyond basic recycling and compostables, we separate and take our non-landfill waste to the proper facilities ourselves to avoid the carbon footprint of shipping it out. We carefully collect hair clippings from haircuts into compostable bags and donate them through HumSum to Matters of trust, which turns hair and fur into mats and coils that clean up oil spills and filter oil out of run off water to keep it from contaminating our Bay. We collaborate with Sustain Beauty, using their climate positive products, such as their Ecohead shower head that reduces how much water we consume while it filters out damaging minerals and chloramine. Our hair care products: Rahua and Innersense, found on their own pages on this site, are certified B companies whose ingredients keep our waters clean and who share our passion of sustainability as well as honoring ancient wisdoms of living harmoniously with nature. May Asherah’s legacy continue here at Ashira Salon as we nurture and nourish our guest’s health with clean ingredients, while honoring the health of our Mother Earth on whom all of life depends on for nourishment and survival.
Namesake
Ashira Salon's namesake is the ancient and powerful Earth goddess Ashira, more commonly spelled Asherah, known as God’s wife. Referred to as Mother Goddess, the one who came before all other Goddesses, she embodies the spirit of motherhood, fertility, and believed to be the creator of all life on Earth. She was worshipped by many different cultures who gave her names such as Astarte, Inanna, Ishtar, and found in the earliest Sumerian writings as Ashratu. As new research on her continues to evolve, what fascinates me is the consistency of who she was to people across so many diverse cultures. She was treasured as the luminous goddess of the seas and prayed to as the goddess of reproduction and life-sustaining vegetation. If there was no place to worship her, all one needed was a tree. Associated with sacred trees, her name even translates as a grove of trees in some languages. Asherah poles, often trees, were found at sites of worship, while small wooden Asherah carvings have been discovered well beyond her origin, the Fertile Crescent. Her association with trees is echoed in Ashira Salon’s logo, as I’ve always felt a deep connection with trees.
Rahua
Innersense
*Entrance to the salon is around the corner on Carmel Ave. Free parking is on Carmel, just past the 90 min parking signs at the corner of Solano Ave. Salon policies: In honor of those waiting patiently on the wait list, a 48-hour notification is required to avoid payment of any services canceled. Thank you for remembering that our salon is free from synthetic fragrances such as those found in fabric softeners.
Contact Us
1398 Solano Ave. Suite 4
front door around corner on Carmel Ave*
Albany, California 94706
Tel: 510-301-1818 texts welcome
Email: ashirasalon@gmail.com
thank you for your patience with email