Words: Minal POTNIS
Face yoga is garnering a growing fan-following the world over today. No painful pricks to remove wrinkles, or applying a range of products to reducing dark circles. All of this can be achieved with just a few simple exercises.
The unique holistic programme is based on the principle of dynamic muscle resistance, a simple non-invasive mode to energise, tone and rejuvenate weakened muscles from the inside out. It not only works by reversing your face’s aging process, it also stimulates the endocrine glands. The only tools used are your fingers and face muscles. Nothing else.
Face yoga includes simple exercises to target specific muscle groups of the face and neck. There are 57 tiny muscles, which construct our face, neck, and scalp. These muscles are exercised specifically, isolating them to the point of feeling a lactic acid ‘burn up.’
How Does It Help?
Muscles are masses of fibrous tissue, primarily made of protein. The result of exercising these muscles leads to strengthening and thickening of muscle fibres. Face yoga helps to lift the face from all directions and angles, including the scalp which has ‘large’ muscles attached to ‘small’ facial muscles.
Face yoga exercises increases blood circulation to the face. With increased blood flow the cells and nerves are ‘flush,’ or enriched, with more nutrients, oxygen and prana, or chi, to the cells, ‘working’ them to their optimal capacity, while stimulating different parts of the brain, endocrine glands and nerves located in the face, neck and the scalp region.
Face yoga ‘fuels’ blood circulation to deeper layers of the skin too; this helps the lymphatic fluid to drain out from certain areas, while ‘reducing,’ for instance, bulges under eyes.
All the tiny 57 facial muscles, like a patchwork quilt, are interconnected. Exercising one has an impact on the other. This is what face yoga would achieve for us. For the best results, face yoga exercises must be done for at least ten minutes a day. It can be done anywhere, anytime. The result from the programme can be seen and felt within a month’s time.
It is also observed that the effects of aging have varying effects on different muscles and skin textures. This applies to healthy results derived from face yoga.
The face yoga programme is in its nascent stage as far as relieving medical problems are concerned, especially with the facial nerves, the jaw and associated muscles.
This practitioner-writer is currently interfacing with leading Indian doctors and therapists — neurosurgeons, physiotherapists, cosmetologists and speech therapists — to align face yoga with their respective medical verticals. The technique has already gained acceptance with two internationally acclaimed neurosurgeons and a dermatologist.
A Foray In Point
The ‘neck smoother exercise’ helps strengthen and tone the platysma which is the big, flat muscle running down and across the front of your neck. It also helps to tone and smoothen the skin on your neck. It diminishes wrinkles on the sides of your chin and strengthens your jaw.
- Place one palm flat on your neck and slide the palm down until your wrist rests on your collarbone.
- Now, repeat the action with your other palm, placing it on top of the other. Anchor both palms tightly. Smile.
- Hold your hands tightly, extend your chin up and forward, while slightly tilting your head back.
- Force your lower jaw out. Hold the position. Place the fingers of one palm under your chin.
- Now is a great time to apply neck cream, or oil, with one hand. Smile. Hold for 60 seconds. Keep smiling and breathing.
- Practice this sequence six times.
Note: Personal and advanced exercises should always be performed with and under the guidance and supervision of a face yoga professional.
