When you look in the mirror, what do you see? No, don’t look down, look straight ahead. Look at the face that is gazing back at you. For most of us, the changes are transparent unless we are comparing ourselves to pictures of when we are much younger. Our levels of fitness, age, illness, stress and dieting affect our looks, no matter how we define them.
As we age, our facial muscles also lose tone and this is part of what makes us look younger or older depending on their muscle condition. There are exercises that we can do to help tone the muscles in our face and neck.
Yes, I know – facial exercises make me think of clown contortions too. It’s the first thing that leaps to mind when I imagine doing facial exercises of any kind. However, facial exercises are actually a healthy way of restoring a younger looking face without investing in a lot of chemical or cosmetic treatments.
Some facial exercises that you can do are:
- The Howl – You don’t actually have to make a sound, but you perform this exercise by tilting your head all the way back like a wolf about to howl at the moon. You should feel the skin on your throat tighten. Make an ‘O’ with your mouth and you will feel the muscles around your chin and neck tighten further. Relax the O and perform it again. Repeat this 10 times a day.
- No More Lines – This is a forehead flexing exercise. You want to work the muscles there in different directions in order to help reduce or keep the lines on your forehead to a minimum. The exercise is simple – you frown gently; then you move your eyebrows up as though surprised and finally you let your face relax Repeat this exercise 10 times a day.
- The Grimace – This is an exercise to help reduce the lines around the mouth (including the smile lines). You curl lips into your mouth and bite down gently to keep your lips together. Now exhale with a blow of breath. Because your mouth is closed, the muscles around your mouth will balloon. Hold this position for a count of 4 before relaxing your mouth and then repeating the exercise 10 times.
I understand that you will feel very strange performing these exercises. Some may feel a bit uncomfortable at first. But these facial exercises are a great way to restore lost tone and retain tone that you have. You will look and feel younger and these exercises only take a few minutes out of the day – even less when you consider you can do them in the shower, in the car or just about anywhere.