Face yoga is an act of self love
My mind still takes real trips during yoga, when I’ll manage to stay in the moment for a whole session, I’ll throw a party, you’re all invited! One day, during one of my trips, I had a crazy thought: if I train the muscles in my body, shouldn’t I also train the ones in my face?
I then did a quick research and found out that we have 43 (!) muscles in our face, and that my idea was in no way revolutionary: somebody had already thought about it, and called it face yoga. I also found out (life is funny that way!) that a friend of mine in Marbella has an entire online course to teach face yoga, I contacted her and she was so kind as to give it to me! To thank her, I’ll show you the program today: you know me, if I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t write about it!
The program is called Fit Faces and Natalia is absolutely stunningly energetic — which you might think doesn’t really work with calm, relaxing yoga, but I find her enthusiasm about what she teaches very motivating and necessary.
I’m not going to write all the benefits that you get from face yoga, I prefer to leave that to professionals like Natalia: you can sign up here to receive a series of emails that will explain it all to you. I’m not even going to focus on the results, although even my husband genuinely noticed a change after 2 weeks of doing it every day (you can ask him!)!
Instead, I’ll tell you about the program that I’m following and how it makes ME feel. First of all, Natalia’s face yoga course focuses on massages, more than moving your face in funny ways (although there’s that too) — and I really love that! My program is called Essentials Program: it lasts 6 weeks and covers every part of your face: head, forehead, eyes, nose, chewing muscles (which I discovered cause a lot of tension in your face!), jaw, mouth, and neck!
This is my before/after picture, taken 6 weeks apart (but skipping some days towards the end because we were moving houses) and not retouched whatsoever: I honestly don’t feel it does the program justice, but I do see changes. You?
Also, although I’m intrigued by the idea of reducing wrinkles and toning my face, the biggest difference to me is not the result, it’s how face yoga makes me FEEL: it is relaxing and energising at the same time, and it connects me with my body. I miss it when I can’t do it, because massaging my face every day (like doing yoga every week) has become an action of self love: there’s a strong connection between self care and self love, and every little habit we can create in our daily life to take better care of our bodies also reflects on the way we feel about ourselves.
Self love is highly underestimated in our society, but it can make a huge difference in somebody’s mental health (especially for moms and new moms) and when we realize that self love is an action that we can express in different ways, we need to find as many as possible. My ways are yoga, face yoga and dancing (dancing saved saved me in my sleep-deprived years), which are the habits through which I can connect with myself and with my body. What are yours?
