Every threader at Benito has had someone sneeze mid-brow. Some people sneeze once, some go off like a car alarm, and nearly all of them apologise. There’s no need. It’s a reflex, and you can’t really help it.
What’s going on
The skin around your brows is wired up to the trigeminal nerve, a big nerve that carries feeling from most of your face, including the inside of your nose. When we work along the brow, especially near the inner corner, that nerve gets lots of small signals in quick succession. Some of them get read as a tickle in the nose, and your body deals with it the way it always does.
It’s the same kind of reflex that makes some people sneeze when they step out into bright sunshine. Watery eyes during threading come from the same place.
Can you stop it?
Not completely, but a few things help. Tell your threader you’re a sneezer and we’ll pause between strokes. Some people find that breathing slowly through the mouth calms it down. Pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth works for some and does nothing for others.
And if you do sneeze, we’ve seen worse. We’ll wait, pass you a tissue and carry on.