Key Points
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Anti-aging face yoga involves facial exercises designed to diminish signs of aging, such as wrinkles and fine lines.
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Face yoga supports your body's natural functions, such as stimulating collagen production, increasing blood circulation, and reducing muscle strain.
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Different facial exercises involve smoothing out the lines on your cheeks, forehead, and neck, so do these exercises consistently to see results within a few months.
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When in doubt, seek a professional face yoga instructor to teach you how to work out your facial muscles.
You do yoga to stretch your arms, legs, and back to induce flexibility in your limbs. Yoga is beneficial for your body's health and strength — and for your skin. Anti-aging face yoga techniques age your skin back to youth by combating wrinkles and fine lines.
Think of anti-aging face yoga as exercise for your face. Facial yoga is when you massage, pull, and stretch your facial muscles to improve your skin's elasticity and firmness. Read on to understand how face yoga works.
What Are The Health Benefits of Face Yoga?
Facial yoga is like strength training for your face. When you target specific muscles on your face when doing facial yoga, the muscles become firmer and taut. Anti-aging facial yoga techniques help your skin in several ways.
Stimulates Collagen Production
Your body produces less collagen as you age, and your wrinkles are more pronounced. Your skin sags because you lose muscle tone. It would be best to have collagen to support your joints, ligaments, tendons, and bones. Collagen also helps skin cells adhere to one another to strengthen skin elasticity.
Facial yoga assists with collagen production. As you use your hands and fingers to massage your skin, the stimulation improves blood circulation, which promotes healthy cell growth. Rapid cell turnover allows new skin cells to form, removing damaged or drying skin cells.
Increases Blood Circulation
Blood circulation carries oxygen and nutrients to different body parts and assists your heart, lungs, and digestive system. Proper blood circulation helps cell growth, which produces collagen to maintain your skin cell's vitality.
Inadequate blood circulation causes irritation, dryness, and uneven skin texture. Exercising improves your blood circulation. Daily face yoga gets the blood moving within your body and alleviates stress. Not only does gently massaging your face increase circulation and promote cell growth, but it's also a great relaxation technique.
Reduces Muscle Strain
When you scrunch or squint, the muscles in your face tense. Tight muscles lead to facial tension, like headaches and jaw discomfort. Frequent squinting causes grooves in your skin that become wrinkles and grow deeper over time. Deep wrinkles make you look aged.
Relax your facial muscles throughout the day to prevent stiffness and rigidity. When you do your face yoga exercises, you want to relax your facial muscles to prevent strain. Doing this also lessens the onset and appearance of wrinkles.
Does Face Yoga Work?
Anti-aging face yoga does work. Daily facial yoga for about 30 minutes makes your skin look more supple and firm. When consistently exercising your face, your cheeks look plumper and appear more youthful.
New York-based dermatologist Dr. Doris Day suggests doing facial exercises each day. She explains that you must be mindful about overusing specific facial muscles while neglecting others. This causes stagnation and weakening of said muscles.
"When you frown often enough to create a crease, you're overusing those muscles and weakening the muscles that lift and smile because you’re using those muscles less. Another rule is that muscles can only pull in one direction. So for every muscle pulling down, there's an opposite/paired muscle that pulls up," Dr. Day says.
Try These Anti-Aging Face Yoga Techniques
Before doing any facial yoga exercises, don't slouch when you're sitting or standing up. Keep your back straight, and don't lean over. Though it's still debatable what facial yoga exercises work best, try these techniques listed below to firm the areas around your eyes, forehead, and cheeks.
Eye Opener Binocular Pose
Diminish the sight of fine lines around your eyes. With the binocular pose, place both index fingers on top of the skin above your eyes horizontally. Place your thumbs below your nostrils. Open your eyes widely without wrinkling your forehead. Lift your eyebrows and do this exercise about 50 times in one setting.
Forehead Smoother
Chase away those pesky frown lines with the forehead smoother. For this anti-aging face yoga practice, take both of your fists and place them on the center of your forehead. Your knuckles need to touch each other. Press your knuckles into your forehead and inhale. After that, move your knuckles to your temples and exhale slowly. Try this five times in one setting.
Cheek Lifter
Firm up your cheekbones with this exercise. You need to place your hands in a prayer position over your nose. Your fingertips need to touch under your nose. Run your fingertips along the bottom of your cheekbones, and trail them toward either side of your temples. Repeat this sweeping motion three times.
Neck Stretches
Having jowls and a sagging neck skin won't be a problem. Facial yoga routines improve the appearance of your neck and jaw. One routine is "Kiss the Ceiling." Pucker your lips and gently tilt your neck back. When you do this step, the front of your neck stretches. Hold the position for five to 10 seconds and repeat five times.
Tilt your chin at a 45-degree angle and turn toward one shoulder. Bring your chin to the center, and repeat the same movement on the other side. Do these movements for one minute straight, or practice for 20 to 30 repetitions.
Lip Puckers
Get a beautiful pout with full, luscious lips. To prevent vertical wrinkles above your lips, put your thumbs up next to each other. Place both thumbs under your upper lip, and push it forward while pushing against your thumbs with your lip. Repeat this process 5 to 10 times for 10 seconds.
Achieve full lips with this lip routine. Purse your lips together as if you're making a pout. Turn both your upper and lower lips inward and press them together. If you're comfortable, do 10 repetitions for 10 to 20 seconds.
When Are Facial Yoga Results Visible?
While you won't see results overnight, practice facial exercises consistently to delay aging. Do anti-aging face yoga exercises for 30 minutes daily for six days a week. It usually takes about one to two months before you notice facial changes. Your upper cheeks look lifted, your forehead is smoother, and your lips appear firmer.
The Disadvantages of Anti-Aging Face Yoga
Though face yoga is beneficial in making your skin look younger, there are downsides. Facial yoga causes wrinkles if you don't do your exercises correctly. Be gentle with your face so as not to hurt yourself or cause major damage to your skin.
Don't pull, stretch, or tug your skin. Remember not to crinkle your face or eyes while doing different facial poses. Follow the directions marked by each specific yoga facial pose. If your facial muscles feel too sore, take a day or two off from these exercises to prevent strain.
You shouldn't get headaches or experience face swelling. When this occurs, you're doing your facial yoga poses incorrectly. If anything, facial yoga alleviates headaches and migraine pains.
If face yoga interests you, get started on your path to face yoga enlightenment. Seek guidance from a certified face yoga method teacher who has extensive knowledge of human anatomy and dermatology. These certified face yoga teachers studied skin structure and anti-aging skin care techniques.
Not only do face yoga instructors teach different poses, but they advise on lifestyle changes to get you the desired results you want. Find a reputable practitioner around your local area through word-of-mouth and online research.
Flex Your Skin Back to Youth With Facial Yoga
Anti-aging face yoga is one way to reverse aging naturally. Not only does facial yoga avert wrinkles like crow's feet, but it also tones up the muscles in your face. You see subtle changes in your face's appearance, like a smoother forehead, firmer cheeks, and plump lips.
As well as enhancing your skin on the outside, anti-aging face yoga benefits your skin inwardly by supporting collagen production, blood circulation, and muscle strength.
Don't overwork or strain your facial muscles by doing complicated yoga poses or too many poses at once. Pursue a professionally-certified facial yoga instructor to develop an anti-aging face yoga routine curated for your needs.
Facial yoga supports your mental well-being. As you release the muscle tension in your face, you feel less stressed and worried about life. Your complexion looks fresher when you feel more clearheaded.
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