Face Yoga and Gua Sha, the natural facelifts

Face Yoga and Gua Sha are two ancient practices with differing origins, which are today used as complementary practices.

Both Face Yoga and Gua Sha are used to increase your face’s tone, skin’s glow, and circulation, working with facial muscles, facial exercise, and facial massage.

And both practises are growing in popularity across Greater Geelong and the Surf Coast.

Zero Point Yoga owner Bec Duffield said Face Yoga is a practise quickly gaining in popularity among local yogis and they have people asking about face yoga more and more.

“It’s basically a manual manipulation of the fascia in the face, most of the time using our hands sometimes using our expressions.”

Face Yoga uses several facial movements, exercises, and massages to stimulate the muscles, skin and lymphatic system of the face.

The practice aims to release stress and tension and to help soften, relax, and shape the face.

“Face yoga is essentially using in the connecting tissue in the face, moving and stretching the muscles in the face.

“So, we do a surprise expression, or an angry expression to exercise the muscles.”

Duffield said there were no specific facial yoga classes at Zero Point, practices from face yoga were incorporated into many of the classes, particularly towards the end as participants wound down and relaxed muscles.

“We incorporate bits into the ends of classes sometimes… the facial manoeuvres that we run we release the face and the neck and the chest.”

Duffield said many of the instructors at Zero Point also personally enjoyed face yoga in their own time, and they collectively loved watching and learning from face yoga instructors, including following their favourite instructor on Instagram, a 71-year-old who created short videos explaining face yoga movements.

“She’s 71 and you should see her, it’s called ‘Yoga face lift’.

“We also sell a lot of Gua Sha, and we have retailed them for a long time.”

Gua Sha is an ancient form of facial self-massage originating from Chinese medicine, often used as a treatment complementary to face yoga.

Using a hand-held crystal tool, you massage the face upwards to lift and tone your face, increase the micro circulation, releasing tension and energy in the face muscles.

Hannah Watson from Acupuncture Wellness Co. in Geelong said the importance of caring for our face muscles was often overlooked.

“We often focus on our bodies ‘I’ve got tight shoulders I’ll go get a shoulder massage’, or ‘I’ll get a foot massage if my feet need it’, but we rarely think to get our face massaged and relaxed, which is so important because we hold so much tension there, and we’re using our faces every day to connect with each other to express how we’re feeling.

“Particularly we have very characteristic facial muscle forming patterns, that each of us have shown, whether that’s very tight TMJ or we’re furrowing our brow a lot,”

“So, it can help to reset the muscles to break them out of that holding pattern.”

The health benefits of Gau Sha are said to be increased circulation thatt brings nutrients to the skin, aid in lymphatic drainage and reducing puffiness, detoxification by removing toxins and stimulating collagen production, improved elasticity of the skin and increased muscle tone.

“Traditionally it was called the eastern face lift because they felt really refreshed and lifted after,” Watson said.

Both Face Yoga and Gua Sha target tension in face muscles and reforming the way muscles in the face rest.