Face yoga for beginners: 6 exercises to start with
The Nodi team6 min read
Updated
A beginner's face yoga session is 6 moves and takes about 10 minutes. You use your own fingers as resistance, you work on clean skin with a little oil for slip, and you stop anything that hurts.
The research is early, and the one pilot study behind face yoga had 16 finishers and no control group, so try it if you like it and expect months and not weeks.
What is face yoga?
Face yoga is exercise for the muscles of your face and neck. You hold each contraction for a set number of seconds, then let go and repeat. Your fingers do one of two jobs: they anchor the skin so the muscle has something to work against, or they stop the skin creasing while the muscle contracts.
Face yoga doesn't move fluid, and puffiness is fluid. Face yoga vs lymphatic drainage explains the split, and it's the most common mix-up beginners make.
How strong is the evidence for face yoga?
The evidence is one pilot study, Alam and colleagues, JAMA Dermatology, 2018. 27 women aged 40 to 65 enrolled and 16 finished 20 weeks of facial exercises, 30 minutes a day for the first 8 weeks. Blinded raters estimated their age fell from 50.8 to 48.1 years, and upper and lower cheek fullness improved.
There was no control group, and everyone was a volunteer, which favors people willing to keep going. Cleveland Clinic dermatologist Shilpi Khetarpal says bigger studies are needed before dermatologists can recommend facial exercise. Healthline describes the wider research as limited and mixed.
Does face yoga work covers the study in full.
See what your routine could look like
Download Nodi, answer a few questions, and it builds a short daily face routine around your goals.
Get the appWhat do you need before you start?
You need clean hands, a clean face and a few drops of facial oil or a rich moisturizer wherever your fingers slide. Dragging dry skin is the fastest way to irritate it.
Sit at a mirror for the first week. Beginners often think they're isolating one muscle while the whole face joins in.
Work to your comfort level, because Healthline's guidance is that you shouldn't feel pain or discomfort, and a move that pinches or aches is out.
What are the 6 moves?
| Move | What you do | Dose |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Brow smoother | Fingertips at the center of the forehead, press and draw out to the temples | 30 seconds |
| 2. Eye tension release | Press the inner eye corners, then circle the socket in both directions | 30 seconds each way |
| 3. Cheek lifter | Purse the lips and smile, then slide fingers up to the top of the cheeks | Hold 20 seconds |
| 4. O mouth cheek raise | Open into an O with lips over teeth, smile, lift and lower the cheeks | 30 seconds |
| 5. Jaw release | Fist against the jaw, turn the head toward it, press, release | A few seconds a side |
| 6. Lion's breath | Inhale through the nose, open wide, stick the tongue out, exhale "ha" | Up to 7 times |
The brow smoother targets the frontalis, the broad muscle across the front of your forehead that does most of your eyebrow raising. Keep the pressure gentle, because this muscle is easy to overwork.
The eye tension release needs less pressure than feels natural, because the skin around the eye is the thinnest on your face. Healthline describes the touch as featherweight.
The cheek lifter and the O mouth cheek raise work the cheeks. You should feel the effort in your upper cheek and not in your jaw.
The jaw release needs care if you clench or grind your teeth, because that jaw is already working hard. Make it a controlled press with no pain.
Lion's breath looks silly and releases tension around the jaw and throat. Finish with 1 to 3 minutes of ordinary deep breathing.
When should you do face yoga?
Do it in the evening. Your face is already swollen when you wake, and holding contractions in a swollen face is neither pleasant nor productive. Evening also follows cleansing, when you have oil on your hands anyway.
The routine most people settle into is a few minutes of drainage in the morning and the exercise set at night. Both can sit in the same day, because they work on different layers.
When won't face yoga help?
Face yoga won't help with puffiness, which is fluid, and it won't change bone or remove fat. The one study found fuller cheeks, so the likeliest result is added volume and not a sharper jaw.
If you want the fluid half, light massage reaches it, and we film every Nodi session in a professional studio with experts to show the pressure and direction. Nodi teaches that one technique, facial lymphatic drainage, and not a catalog of exercises.
If puffiness is what you came for, Nodi's sessions of 2 to 10 minutes show each stroke on a real face. Get the app.
Common questions
- What is face yoga and how do you start?
- Face yoga is a set of exercises for the muscles of your face and neck, usually with your fingers giving gentle resistance or support. Start with 6 moves for about 10 minutes a day. You need clean hands and a little facial oil or rich moisturizer so your fingers don't drag. Work in front of a mirror for the first week.
- How long does face yoga take to work?
- Face yoga takes months. In the 2018 JAMA Dermatology pilot, women exercised 30 minutes a day for 8 weeks, then every other day to week 20, and the raters saw fuller cheeks at the end. Nothing supports a change in a week. Take a photo now, in the same light and position you'll use later, and judge at 8 weeks.
- Can face yoga make wrinkles worse?
- Nobody has tested it, so the answer is unknown. Expression lines form where skin folds in the same place many times a day, so hard squinting or scrunching in an exercise might not help. Keep your movements controlled, avoid gripping or squinting for long, and stop any move that makes you scrunch repeatedly.
- Is face yoga the same as facial massage?
- Face yoga is exercise and facial massage is passive. In face yoga you contract muscles against resistance, and any change comes over weeks and months. In facial massage, including lymphatic drainage, you move fluid along its drainage route, and the change shows within minutes and lasts a few hours. They work on different layers, so plenty of people do both.
Where this comes from
- Healthline: Can face yoga improve your appearance?
- Healthline: Facial exercises for fuller cheeks
- Cleveland Clinic: Can facial exercises help you look younger?
- JAMA Dermatology: Association of facial exercise with the appearance of aging (2018)
Nodi is a wellness app, not medical care. Nothing here diagnoses or treats anything. If something on your face feels wrong, see a doctor.
See what your routine could look like
Download Nodi, answer a few questions, and it builds a short daily face routine around your goals.
Get the appKeep reading
Does face yoga work?
Face yoga has one pilot study behind it. 16 women finished 20 weeks of daily exercises, and blinded raters guessed they looked 2.7 years younger. The study had no control group, and nobody has tested jowls, wrinkles or jawlines.
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Face yoga vs lymphatic drainage: which should you do?
Choose lymphatic drainage if your face looks puffy, because it moves fluid in minutes. Choose face yoga if you want muscle tone and cheek volume over months. The research on both is thin, and they fit together in under 10 minutes.
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What is facial lymphatic drainage? A beginner's guide
Facial lymphatic drainage is a very light massage that moves fluid from your face toward the lymph nodes in your neck. A session takes 3 to 5 minutes, and most people see a less puffy face for a few hours. It doesn't change fat or bone.
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