Face Yoga - The Low Down - as told by Lydia

 No, face yoga has been around for years; it is a part of the sukshma yoga tradition that focuses on the mastery of micromovements all over the body not just the face and eyes.  

 In recent years there has been a move towards a more natural way of living; we are trying to eat organic and avoid putting chemicals onto or into our skin, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still searching for ways to age with grace! 

Sculpt and tone the muscles of the face, 

Maximize the quality of our skin

Minimize fine lines and wrinkles

Increase circulation,

Stimulate collagen and elastin production 

Improve lymphatic drainage.

Release common tension patterns that cause ailments such as;

Eye strain, 

Tension headaches, 

Teeth grinding,

Squinting 

Dry eyes

In terms of the science face yoga has been proven to make you look 3 years younger in just 20 weeks – a study by dermatologists at northwestern university.

Also a study by doctors on the BBC show TWINSTITUTE showed that face yoga can make the skin look 1 year younger in 1 month.

 I always say it should be part of your daily self care routine just like brushing your teeth or cleaning your face;  2-5 minutes per day is plenty to see a difference in your skin and maintain the quality of the muscles in your face. 

No; I work therapeutically with clients who have had Bells Palsy, parkinsons, or strokes that have left them with facial drooping or asymmetry in the face and it has had amazing results, hugely improving their self confidence and quality of life.

I also work with people with eye conditions like lazy eyes or eye tracking issues such as dyslexia, and face yoga is a foundational part of this therapy, which I have seen to have significant benefits over the years.

 To be honest when I first started teaching face yoga publicly it was entirely women coming to me to ward off the signs of aging in a more natural way, but now more and more men are getting on board.

When you think about it, its just common sense; we all understand the necessity of going to the gym to maintain our muscle strength as we age but this doesn’t just apply to the muscles of our body,  also to the 136 or so muscles of our face, neck, head tongue and ears.

Due in part to the fact that one of my great great grandmothers was Indian, my family spent part of my childhood living in the Himalayas running a trekking lodge. My mother would organise yoga retreats to our beautiful and remote mountain village so that people could get some much needed rest and relaxation set amid the back drop of the beautiful mountain ranges that surrounded us and that is when I was first introduced to the discipline of Yoga; a seed was planted then and it has continued to grow in myriad directions throughout my life subconciously informing most of my choices to date.

When I was in my late twenties and had already been practicing yoga for quite some time, I decided to travel to the UK to train at The Special Yoga Centre, so that I could work with children with special needs. As it turned out, one of the foundations of their therapy model was eye yoga. The eyes, I learnt, connect directly into a part of the brain called the corpus callosum; which is rather like a superhighway for the brain. It controls all the inter hemisphere chatter between the right side of the brain and the left, and is responsible for controlling many important functions in the body such as our fine motor skills like speech, sight and finger movements, as well as governing our emotional regulation and our proprioception, which means how our body knows where it is in space, key therefore for things like balance and coordination.

If you exercise the eyes, you build neural pathways in that specific part of the brain, literally building grey matter, reducing cognitive decline and improving how the brain functions which has a profound knock on effect in EVERY system and every type of  body, but especially visible perhaps in those with additional needs.

When I was exposed to this knowledge, and saw it play out in action, in the observation sessions between my teacher trainers, and their young students, I witnessed the power of the body to heal & repair and I was humbled...and hooked.

I immediately started thinking and I figured that if there was a form of yoga for the eyes, then surely there was one for the face too.

My research led me to the  discipline of yoga called Sukshma Vyayama Yoga; the yoga of micromovements. 

The theory of these Face Yoga exercises was that, just like in any part of the body, the muscles of our body accumulate stress during the day and stress leads to tension. Just like in the rest of our yoga practice ; by engaging with facial yoga poses we can start to eliminate these stress pathways and find more vitality and ease in our bodies.

With Face yoga you can learn to bring awareness to the individual muscles of the face , of which there are many, and then start to isolate those muscles and use them independently of each other. Once we can learn to activate the individual muscles on command, we can also then learn to switch them off when we choose to; thus giving us mastery over the muscles of our face.

It sounds simple, and it is ; but it requires patience, persistence and practice.

 Where once we thought there were only 57 muscles in the face, neck, head, tongue and ears, latest research involving anatomical network analysis suggests that the actual figure is closer to 136! Just as in the rest of the body, these muscles need to be exercised or they will start to atrophy with age.

Unlike in the rest of the body however the muscles of the face are connected almost directly to the skin, with very little fat padding in between. Because of this, when the muscles start to shrink and depress with age or lack of targeted use, they drag the skin down with them on their journey south and this creates the appearance of sagging skin.

We are told by Cosmetic companies that this sagging can only be remedied by the application of various ‘tightening and toning’ elixirs but this simply isn't true.

The truth of the matter is that when we exercise a muscle it naturally ; lifts, plumps, grows and tones. And as the muscles underneath get bigger , the skin that covers them becomes firmer in appearance.

This is exactly what happens when we work the muscles of the face. Now I'm not going to lie to you and say that the grooves where the wrinkles once were will magically disappear altogether, but their appearance will be greatly diminished and the skin itself will hug the contours of your face once again.

Over the past few years there has been a growing understanding that in order to maintain optimal health into our older age we need to exercise our bodies regularly in a variety of ways. What does not seem to have happened alongside this is the understanding that not only do the muscles of our face, neck and head require the same kind of treatment plan, but that the body and the head are completely interconnected by a complex web of muscles, tendons and fascia.

I would like to extend this core principle into the positive ageing space, and remind people that just as we exercise our bodies, so too must we exercise our face. 

In a world where women who choose to age naturally are becoming marginalised and almost invisible in mainstream media and movies I think Face yoga and natural face lifting facials are desperately needed to fill the vacuum and show people that true beauty is an inside and and outside job, it requires us to tend to ourselves lovingly in the way we tend to those around us like our children and our partners; with acceptance and patience.

I have marvelled at the way that a regular face yoga practice has transformed how the women I work with feel about themselves; not only changing how they see themselves in the mirror, but also how they feel about the aging process in general ; it leads to a more complete love of our inner and outer selves. And I don’t believe there is anything more truly beautiful than that.

 I have developed my own style of natural face lifting facial,to compliment my Face Yoga programmes. It  relies not on the use of multiple cosmetic products but on the techniques I can apply with my own hands and also the use of Gua Sha cystals.

This bespoke facial treatment is 45 minutes long and involves lifting and sculpting massage to help your muscles hug the contours of your face, lymphatic drainage to de-puff and improve elimination of toxins, fascial rolling to help with lipid distribution in the skin and stimulate collagen and elastin production, jaw tension release techniques to reduce tmj issues like teeth grinding and migraines, and gua sha to maximise microcirculation and bring a beautiful youthful glow back to your skin.