The most enduring impressions are those made during the first few moments of a person’s life. More importantly, you only get one shot at making a good first impression. Furthermore, your face is the first thing people notice. A smile brightens the mood, attracts attention, and puts others at ease. According to prominent research, an infant smiles 400 times every day, but an adult only smiles 8 times.
A build-up of tension in your facial muscles can be caused by a lack of facial exercises and an accumulation of stress. Sukshma Yoga, or face yoga is an exercise that might help you relax. This technique consists of a series of brief, simple, and subtle yoga techniques that can dramatically improve the appearance of your face.
Facial yoga can brighten and rejuvenate your face in minutes. Your facial muscles and nerve connections will relax, preventing wrinkles from forming. Moreover, Sukshma yoga is a fantastic approach to tone your face.
However, before we get into what exercises you can do, let’s discuss more about what exactly face yoga is and what are its benefits.
What Is Face Yoga?
Face yoga, to put it simply, is a set of facial exercises in which you isolate and tone your face muscles. We all have tiny, delicate muscles in our faces that we don’t even realise we have. Consider your eye area: there are over ten muscles around our eyes that are continuously squinting, smiling, and expressing themselves. The face, like the rest of the body, has muscles. So, why not isolate and tone those muscles while resting the rest of your body?
Naturally, you move your face on a daily basis (smiling, chatting, and the like). But the key is intention; you’re focusing on certain muscles, strengthening them while isolating the movement, just like in a yoga flow. So many muscles are interconnected; all you have to do is figure out which ones you’re using and how you want to move them.
As part of your skin-care routine and self-care practise, it’s normally recommended to start with basic face yoga exercises for five to ten minutes per day and work your way up to 15 to 20 minutes each day.
Benefits of Face Yoga
Face yoga is a practice that has been adopted by people for centuries, in an attempt to make their skin more radiant and to reduce their stress. Here are some of the most prominent benefits of face yoga.
Get A More Radiant Complexion
Face yoga activities increase microcirculation and oxygenation of the cells. This gives the skin a more even, glowing, and balanced appearance. The breathing exercises help you better manage your emotions, resulting in a calmer, more tranquil face with softer eyes and features.
Get Softened Wrinkles & Plumped Skin
Natural collagen levels decline as people become older. As a result, the skin begins to sag and lose tone, while wrinkles begin to appear. Face yoga movements have the added benefit of stimulating collagen and elastin production in addition to muscle stimulation. Face yoga will tone up your skin, lessen the depth of wrinkles, and make your face look smoother and less weary if you do it on a daily basis.
Get De-Stressed
You’ll most likely feel more calm after performing face yoga exercises! These exercises are beneficial to both the body and the mind since they relax facial muscles while also calming the nervous system.
Potentially Slow Down The Aging Process
The more we smile, squint, or tighten our faces, the more wrinkles we get over time. While ageing is an inevitable part of life, face yoga can help slow down the process. Specific positions might help us recognise when we’re furrowing our brows or pursing our lips unintentionally. You’d be shocked how frequently habitual face expressions add to deeper creases and strain.
Tone Your Facial & Neck Muscles
Facial yoga is essentially a sort of exercise that tones and tightens your face. You’re bringing blood, oxygen, and increased circulation to this fragile skin when you exercise these muscles, which can boost collagen synthesis and make you look younger.
Furthermore, unlike botox’s frozen look or other procedures’ red scarring (chemical peel redness can remain for months), facial yoga provides you a natural glow and relaxed appearance. It is also intended to follow in the footsteps of conventional yoga in terms of assisting in the clearing of the mind of tension and turmoil.
Potentially Get Rid of Your Double Chin
Who doesn’t want to get rid of that pesky double chin? Or do you have jowls? Facial yoga can help you get rid of both! This is similar to toning, but focuses more on the neck, which can sag with age. Essentially, did you know that face yoga exercises are a beauty secret said to promote youthfulness in several Asian cultures?
Most Popular Face Yoga Exercises
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to face yoga, but there are a few popular methods and moves that are making waves in the wellness world. These basic facial exercises can be performed at any time and in any location. Regular practise will keep you energised all day long.
These exercises can even be done right before an interview or presentation. Your expression will be calm and composed.
1. The Cheek Lifter
Make an O with your mouth open. To elevate your cheek muscles, place your top lip over your teeth and grin. Place your index fingers directly beneath your eyes, on top of your cheek muscles. Lower your cheek muscles by releasing them.
Then grin again, this time with the intention of pulling your muscles up toward your eyes. Repeat 10 times by lowering and raising the cheeks. Hold your muscles as high as you can for 20 seconds on the tenth repetition. Rep three times more.
2. Happy Cheeks Sculpting
Roll your lips out as if trying to reveal as much lip as possible while smiling without showing your teeth. As you press into the muscle, slide your index fingers up to your cheekbones and press into the corners of your mouth.
Raise the muscle toward the corners of your eyes, up to the cheekbones. Hold for 20 seconds when you reach the peak of your cheekbones, and feel the muscles in your cheeks tighten. As you do this, continue to smile with the corners of your mouth. Rep three times more.
3. The Eyebrow Lifter
To keep your eyes open, gently press three fingertips above each brow. Try to lower your brows against your fingertips while smiling. Hold. Then close your eyes and roll your eyes up to your brow. Keep smiling for the next 20 seconds. Let go and repeat the same process three times.
4. Jaw and Neck Firmer
Make an “ahh” sound with your lips open. As you extend your lower jaw forward, fold your bottom lip and the corners of your lips into your mouth and hold them tightly. Scoop up slowly with your lower jaw as you close your mouth, lifting your chin roughly 1 inch each time and turning your head backward.
Open and close your jaw ten times. Your chin should be pointing to the ceiling by the tenth scoop. Hold this stance for 20 seconds while imagining your cheeks lifting. Rep three times more.
5. Temple Developer
Close your jaw, lock your teeth together, and tilt your chin up as you press your fingertips into your temples. Clench your teeth and focus on your temples, as though you’re trying to move your ears backward. Hold for 10 seconds before clenching your back teeth and holding for another 10 seconds. With each contraction, your temple muscles should flex. Relax, then do it three times more.
FAQs On Face Yoga
Some face yoga poses can help you reduce the fat around your face. For example, the Jivha Bandha (Locked Tongue Pose). This one can offer you a chiseled jawline and a tighter face, among other things. Simply sit comfortably and place the tip of your tongue against the top dental wall. Now press your tongue against the wall until you can feel your neck stretching.
Face yoga has been shown to improve the structural appearance of your face by strengthening the muscles of the cheekbones and face, according to research. Practitioners have also reported a younger appearance.
No, face yoga doesn’t come with any harmful side effects. It is non-toxic, non-invasive, and completely safe for everyone. It’s also affordable and can be done on your own time.
If you want to see results immediately, do your facial exercises 3-5 times a week for a total of 20 minutes each time.
Conclusion
Face yoga may not be as popular as the other forms of yoga, however, it is definitely gaining traction, fast! This massive growth can be largely credited to its effects and the need for living a healthier life among people. That being said, to learn more about the different types of yoga, keep reading Seema!
