Facial Exercises/Yoga

Some people will do a lot for great skin ranging from drenching it in glycolic acid, to the extreme facelift. Facial exercises are not new, and chances are you’ve read about facial yoga using methods such as sculpting the face from the inside which involves massaging cheek muscle from inside the mouth.

Facial yoga and/or exercises can offer benefits of targeted small scale lymphatic drainage massage to help to keep the body clear of toxins and fluids, improve contours, remove tension and stress in muscles, and push blood with essential nutrients and oxygen into the skin and muscles to nourish and improve cell renewal, in a process that will help with tone and texture of skin, refining pores, clearing out congestion, and wrangle breakouts.

JAMA Dermatology has published 20 week study showing women who did daily facial exercise were found to look younger than they were using a program designed by Gary Sikorski of Happy Face Yoga which entailed doing 32 particular movements for 20 seconds three times for a minute total every day, and a lot of smiling.

For those worried that that extra facial movements will cause more wrinkles the authors note frown/smile lines are caused by repetitive facial motions made for many hours a day over years; while the individual exercises are just one minute a day and not likely to cause wrinkles but will help to grow muscles and fill out the face. We've listed a few of the exercises used in the study:

The Cheek Lifter: Is done starting with an open mouth forming an O, position upper lip over the teeth, smile lifting cheek muscles up, place fingers lightly on cheek, release cheek muscle, and smile to lift then back up: repeat lowering and lifting cheeks push ups for one minute about 3 times. If you tighten the buttocks during the 20 seconds it will help push the cheeks muscles.

Happy Cheek Sculpting: Is done starting with a smile showing the teeth, purse lips together while smiling forcing cheeks muscles up, place fingers on corners of mouth and slide up to top of cheeks, hold for 20 seconds, release and repeat 3 more times.

Eyebrow Lifter: Starts with a smile, then press 3 fingers of each hand under eyebrows to forces eyes open, smile while trying to frown your eyebrows down against fingers, hold and breathe deeply, close upper eyelids down tightly and roll eyeballs up towards top of head, hold for 20 second, release, realx, repeat exercise 3 times.

Scooping Jaw & Neck Firmer: Starts with a smile, open mouth to make an Ahh sound, fold lower lip and corners of lips into mouth and hold tightly, extend lower jaw forward; using lower jaw scoop up slowly as mouth closes, visualize lifting as you pull chin up about an inch into each time you scoop tilting the head backwards; open and close for 10 repetitions, on the final rep with chin pointed to the ceiling keep it extended holding tightly for 20 second visualizing side of the face lifting; repeat sequence three times.

Temple Developer: Starts with that smile, pace finger at temples pressing lightly while closing the jaw clenching teeth together and moving chin up; clench teeth putting tension in muscles as if trying to move ears backwards, hold tightly for 10 seconds, clench down on back teeth for 10 seconds feeling temporalis muscles flex, relax: repeat 3 times.

Upper Eyelid Firmer: Smile, place fingers each hand under eyebrows to force eyes open, squeeze eyes tightly closed, roll eyeballs up towards ceiling feeling upper eyelid stretch, hold for 30 seconds while smiling, relax: repeat three more times.

Subjects were rated at the beginning, at 8 weeks, and at 20 weeks for age by dermatologists using photographs looking at 19 features of the face, who found upper and lower cheeks to have had more fullness and estimated average patient age decreased over the study period. Subjects also reported being highly satisfied with their results noticing improvements in nearly all facial areas that were rated.