Yoga has long been celebrated for its mind and body benefits, including its ability to help turn back the clock. If you turn to yoga to keep your body trim, it’s time to focus your efforts on an additional target: your fine lines and wrinkles.

Enter, face yoga. Through a series of facial exercises, face yoga promises to relax and tone your facial muscles. These repetitive movements lift and firm the skin, giving the appearance of a non-surgical facelift. Sold? Here’s how to incorporate face yoga into your skin care routine.

How Face Yoga Works

Face yoga works by simultaneously relaxing muscles that are overworked and activating those that are underworked. This minimizes fine lines and wrinkles caused by repetitive motions (think crow's feet and laugh lines) and lifts skin that has begun to sag due to loss of muscle tone. By strengthening the matrix that holds the skin together, sagging skin is less likely to occur over time.

Facial exercises also increase blood circulation and stimulate your lymphatic system. This pushes blood with essential nutrients and oxygen into the skin and helps your body flush out toxins and relieve tension. Together, these actions support healthy skin cell renewal and enhance the production of essential proteins like collagen and elastin which keep skin firm, plump and elastic.

How Often To Do Face Yoga

Leading face yoga expert Danielle Collins recommends practicing face yoga for 20 minutes, six times a week. She says: “As a general rule you will start to see more of a long term improvement in your face and neck after two weeks. After two to four months, you will notice you have less fine lines and less tension and people will notice you look healthier and more energized. Within six to nine months people have reported that they look and feel many years younger and feel more relaxed within themselves.”.

Face Yoga Exercises

The five types of wrinkles appear primarily around the eyes, lips, forehead and neck. Here’s how to target each of these areas with exercises by face yoga experts Danielle Collins and Fumiko Takatsu.

Eyes: Crow’s Feet & Drooping Eyelids

1. Using your fingers, gently apply pressure to the inner and outer corners of the eyebrows.
2. Look to the ceiling and raise your lower eyelids to squint, then relax.
3. Repeat 6 times.
4. Squeeze eyes tightly shut for 10 seconds to complete the exercise.

Jaw: Smile Lines And sagging Skin

1. Place your palms on your temples and push your hands up and back to lift the sides of your face.
2. Open your mouth into an “O” shape and hold for 5 seconds.
3. Repeat twice.

Forehead: Horizontal Wrinkles

1. Place both of your hands on your forehead, facing inward.
2. Spread your fingers out between your eyebrows and hairline.
3. Gently sweep your fingers up and back, applying light pressure.
4. Relax and repeat 10 times.

Neck: Loose And Sagging Skin

1. Look straight ahead and cross your hands at the bottom of your neck.
2. Using your fingertips, gently stroke your skin downwards with your head tilted back.
3. Bring your head back down to your chest.
4. Repeat twice.

Supplement Face Yoga With Skin Care

To supplement your face yoga practice, you can use skin care products that firm and tone the skin. As the face ages, the fat pads between the muscle and skin begin to atrophy and loosen, causing the skin to lose shape and begin to sag. Stimulating actives like the paracress extract in the Snow Mushroom & Reishi Masque can enhance your face yoga routine by helping the skin regain a strong and toned appearance. The result? A firmer and healthier looking complexion.

Is face yoga part of your skin care routine? We’d love to hear more! Tell us about your experience in the comments below and join the conversation on social media.