I want to age gracefully and I bet you do too! But, I have some fears about using facial injections such as Botox, and fillers to help me along. No judgment if that is your thing. But, I am always on the lookout for a natural alternative that doesn’t involve a surgical procedure. This is how I discovered face yoga.
Face yoga is an exercise designed to tighten the muscles in your face.
You probably work out to tone the muscles of your body and face yoga is the same concept, except the focus is on exercising your face.
You have more than 50 different muscles in your face. They are stretched like layered, elastic sheets and sit on top of your cranium and facial tissues. When your facial muscles contract they create different facial expressions.
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These facial muscles are exercised and toned when you do face yoga. Face yoga contours and shapes your face. It is a way you can maintain a more youthful look as you age and help keep your neck and face tauter.
Facial yoga is useful because it helps you relax your face, which smooths those expressions you may make when you are tense without realizing that you do these things naturally.
When you relax those facial muscles, it helps to give your face a natural lift. If your face does this naturally, this saves you the trouble (and cost) of using Botox to freeze those muscles.
Annelise Hagen, a New York yoga instructor and author of “The Yoga Face: Eliminate Wrinkles with the Ultimate Natural Facelift," states that, “Relaxing the facial muscles, especially where we hold tension – like the jaw, brow, and forehead can counteract the wrinkle-causing grimacing we do on a daily basis.”
She goes to on to say since the muscles on our face can’t lift weights or run on a treadmill when you apply pressure with your fingertips or make certain facial expressions, you’re toning and strengthening the muscles.
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And while this won’t eradicate all of the lines, it can help with the downward drift which happens as you age.
Fumiko Takatsu is the creator of the Face Yoga Method and believes that taking a few minutes daily to stretch your facial muscles will help to lift and tone your face.
Fumiko suggests that you incorporate some of the facial yoga exercises listed below a couple of times a week:
- Raise your eyebrows as high as you can and hold them for five seconds.
- Open your mouth as wide as possible and stick your tongue out as far as you can and hold for a few seconds.
- Move your nose as much as you can from side to side.
- Sit in a comfortable chair and look up at the ceiling. Pucker your lips and stick your tongue out as far as possible to exercise your neck muscles.
Face yoga is one of many steps you can take to ease your aging process.
Being mindful of what you eat, managing your stress and getting enough rest will also help you to stay youthful.
