Can practicing face yoga cause wrinkles?

On the internet, we can discover all kinds of facial exercises and tips that supposedly help you get rid of fine lines and wrinkles on your face. While face yoga can indeed help you erase wrinkles and lines when done correctly, a lot of the exercises you find on the internet can cause your skin to wrinkle even more. In this blog post, we’ll explore why that happens and how we can avoid this problem.

Face yoga is a lot more than making funny faces and doing uncontrolled facial movements that only stretch and wear out your skin. It’s a technique which activates every muscle on the face and teaches you how to control them consciously.

We don’t often think about our facial muscles and their function. Facial expressions and mimics are something that comes to us naturally since it’s a way we express our emotions. In the long run, these movements cause wrinkles – especially on the forehead and in between the eyebrows.

If you are doing the right exercises, face yoga can help you control and prevent your mimics and minimize the forming of facial wrinkles. However, when done WRONG, face yoga CAN cause wrinkles, so be cautious when choosing exercises to follow.

In order to understand why the right exercises are so important…

Let’s explore how face yoga really works.

The trick is to create resistance and opposite resistance using our facial muscles. One muscle pushes one way, and the other muscle connected to the first one pushes the other way. The key is to make sure there are NO WRINKLES on your skin no matter what exercise you’re doing.

If you see wrinkles on your face during the exercise, that means you’re either doing it wrong or you chose the improper exercise, to begin with. A lot of free workouts you find on the internet are counter-effective because they’re training one part of the face, but creating new wrinkles on other areas at the same time.

In our online face workout program we use our hands to keep skin and muscles in place. The pressure and extra “weight” they provide make muscles work harder and prevent forming additional wrinkles. If you are older and there is excess skin on your face, you can still see some lines while doing the exercise. In this case, you have to adjust the pose and smooth them out by using your fingers and hands.

The next super important thing is to make sure we’re doing SLOW and CONTROLLED movements – especially when we are just starting with face yoga. The key is to gradually activate and feel all facial muscles and get control over them. Keeping all your facial muscles active and strong is super important because they are firmly connected and always influence each other. That’s why using just one exercise, you found on the internet won’t do the trick. You can only achieve lasting results by following the right sequence of exercises. You face yoga workout should activate your whole face step-by-step instead of just focusing on specific areas.

In our basic online face yoga program, that’s precisely how we structured our workouts. Every exercise is extremely potent because it follows a specific sequence of steps that engage the desired muscle group. For maximal resistance & opposite resistance, every single exercise should be done slowly and conscientiously.

So how can you make sure face yoga WILL NOT cause wrinkles on your face?

It is essential to use the right technique and the right exercises. Because this kind of workout is getting more and more popular, you can now see a lot of different exercises that only target specific wrinkles and problematic areas on the face. Unfortunately, without a proper structure and technique, you can easily create unnecessary lines.

My best advice on avoiding wrinkles would be:

When starting, NEVER focus on one area of the face only. For example; If you want to get rid of dark circles, you have to engage all muscles surrounding the eyes.
NEVER start with exercises containing FAST movements. Your muscles are most likely atrophied, and you will not be able to control the movement of every single muscle. This will create more wrinkles.
ALWAYS protect the area where wrinkles form. If you see a line on your face during the exercise, use your fingers to smooth it out.

How to make sure you have a pleasant and fruitful face yoga journey?

Always turn to someone who is a certified face yoga teacher and has enough knowledge and experience to back up his/her work.
Get informed about how your face is structured and how your face muscles look. On Glowinface blog, you can even find a detailed post explaining how your whole face ages.
Purchase a program that focuses on training ALL facial muscles. It should start with the biggest and heaviest muscles first and slowly proceed to the smallest ones. Start with static exercises because you need to learn how to control your facial movement first before moving to the dynamic versions.
Continue with your practice even after you finish with your program. Do your workouts daily for 10 – 15 minutes.
Do your workouts in front of the mirror, especially in the beginning when you’re still learning. This way, you can check your form and adjust the exercise when needed.
Put your mind and soul into the practice. Visualize what you want to achieve and how you want to look. This will help you stay focused and your results will come faster.
Take a before & after picture! Sometimes we don’t see how far we’ve come, but putting together photos makes it easier. We always encourage our clients to snap one photo before they start, and one after they finish our 5-week face yoga program. The results are amazing, and you can even see some of them in our testimonial section.
Be consistent! Face yoga is not a quick beauty fix. It takes time and patience to create any new habit. Keep on practicing, and you will see the results sooner than you anticipate.