Advanced Liquify

I watched the Face-Aware Liquify tutorial which mentioned advanced topics like freeze. I would appreciate a tutorial that covered these advanced Liquify techniques. I would also like to see how to prepare an action that updated an existing Smart Filter with the layer contents below as I have been unsuccessful in creating one. For example, take a portrait image do a few healing layers then create a smart filter layer and use Liquify as per the video. Then add an effects layer above the smart filter e.g., black and white. You then notice you missed an area needing some more healing. If you go back to the healing layer the smart filter blocks the changes. I tried a merge visible but that adds in the black and white conversion layer. In an action I tried turning off layers but would not always work as it depends what layers exist. Is it possible to create an action to update an existing Smart Filter layer with just the layers below?