BLOG 27: THE 5 MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED FACE YOGA QUESTION (AND MY ANSWERS TO THEM)

I get quite a lot of questions each day, both from clients and people interested in face yoga everywhere – via email, social media, website forms, and in person. I’m always so happy to answer them all, as I understand Face Yoga can be a rather new topic for some of you. Plus, I love sharing scientifically proven techniques and stories that have turned lives around for the 16 years I’ve been the World leading Face Yoga Expert. 

Over the years, I’ve noticed that five questions stand out the most. So, I thought it would be super helpful for you guys if I answered the 5 most frequently asked face yoga questions of all time in one place.

Let’s jump right in. 

HOW OLD AM I? HAVE I HAD BOTOX?

That’s the number 1 question (two questions, actually!) I get daily. I’m on the verge 39 years old (I will turn 39 on 23rd February 2021 – I am a Pisces!). I am also asked if I’ve had botox/fillers/surgery, often in a very lovely and complimentary way (sometimes in a slightly accusing way though!).

The answer is of course no, I’ve never had fillers, botox, or anything similar to botox like face lifts and remodelling surgeries. Nothing of that nature. I completely believe in Face Yoga. It’s what I do everyday and share everyday with such passion and so many proven results that I don’t feel any need to go for botox. But I do want to add, that if you do feel like going for surgery or fillers, you do you! I’m totally pro-choice and believe we should feel good in our own skin no matter what.

HOW TO REDUCE A DOUBLE CHIN AND FACIAL FAT?

The first thing to say about this is (and this is important): you can’t spot-reduce fat. 

You can’t pick an area of the face – the chin and neck area, in this case – and start doing isolated exercises expecting to burn the fat in that area. The same lesson works for body fat: you can’t expect to do exercises for the arm and burn fat in that area alone. Burning fat is about eating healthy and focusing on general (instead of targeted) weight loss. 

What you can do, though, is tone the muscle in an area. When you do that, it really helps to define that area and can really help to reduce the appearance of a double chin. So I’d still absolutely recommend doing exercises for the lower face area if you’re suffering with your facial fat, while still striving for all-around exercises. 

If you know for certain that your double chin has to do with excess weight, then like I said, you’ll be better off following a general weight loss plan. But certainly, still, you’ll find that complementing your exercise and diet regimen with Face Yoga will drive visible results. That’s because as you lose the fat in that area you may find that it leaves your skin looking saggy and even wrinkly, so it’s definitely worth strengthening those muscles underneath the skin. 

In terms of what you should be doing to tone a double chin, here’s one of my favorite exercises:

Tilting your head back, make sure you have your lips together, and repeatedly bring the tip of your tongue up and down towards the roof of the mouth. Do this at a rate of about one movement per second. You’ll feel it just underneath the chin. Place your hand under the chin so you can really feel that working as your tongue moves up and down.

You can do this simple exercise about a minute per day, even twice a day in the morning and evening. 

If you’re used to watching my YouTube videos,  have read my book, or have participated in my 10-day course, you should be pretty used to this exercise by now. 

Even for one specific area, I’d still highly recommend a full face yoga program. Here’s why:

If you’re toning up the muscles around the upper neck and jaw area, that really gives the rest of your face muscles great support. After all, the muscles in your face are all connected, from the jaw to the eyes to the nose to the neck. By exercising one of them, you exercise all of them. 

HOW TO REDUCE EYE BAGS/PUFFINESS/DARK CIRCLES?

This is a great one. By the way, I’ve done a complete podcast with Susie Willis solely dedicated to the eye puffiness drama and how to solve it, if you’d like to check it out. 

The best way to get rid of dark circles and puffiness is through massage, because you want to improve the blood circulation in that area. By doing that, you’re bringing all the fresh blood up to the skin’s surface, and that “new” blood is carrying fresh oxygen and fresh nutrients. It’s going to nourish the skin, making it look brighter and glowing, as well as helping with your body’s natural detoxification process. 

While the circulatory system is a major part of that process, so is the lymphatic system. It’s our bodies’ waste disposal system that carries everything we don’t want in our body (toxins and all of the “gunk”) out of it. 

Still, it doesn’t have a “pump” like the circulatory system does to keep the blood pumping and flowing, so it needs a helping hand. Through moving our body, drinking water, eating the right foods and giving ourselves a massage, we can give the lymphatic system the helping hand it needs. 

Here are a couple of easy techniques to add into your routine:

Use your index finger to tap around the eye area in one direction for 30 seconds. When you’re done, repeat the process in the opposite direction. You can also use your ring finger if you find you have a lighter touch with it.

But, as I so often say, be careful with the eye area!!! The skin around your eyes is about 10x thinner than the skin on the rest of the face, so it’s absolutely worth your time doing it gently. 

HOW TO SMOOTH FOREHEAD LINES WITHOUT BOTOX?

Here’s how to get rid of those horizontal lines that often run across the forehead, as well as those vertical lines between the brows. 

Good news: I also have an entire podcast dedicated to smoothing the face without botox. 

One of the best ways to do this is retraining your forehead. For many reasons – nature, stress, habit, copying other people’s habits when we were growing up – some of us are prone to raising our eyebrows way too much when expressing ourselves. That, in turn, will definitely result in noticeable lines and wrinkles. 

With the simple at-home exercise, your forehead will look and feel much smoother, relaxed, and lighter over time. After all, the number one thing we want to get from Face Yoga is to feel good!

Either place one hand or two hands onto your forehead area. Then, focus on one point in front of you and open your eyes as wide as you can. The key here is to not raise the eyebrows. If you start feeling the eyebrows raising up, use your hands even place your index fingers on your eyebrows to keep that area still. You can also train the forehead by looking up and down or around, as though you’re following the pointers of a clock. 

This is going to strengthen your eye muscles and also help with eye bags. This technique is renowned in Ayurveda, Yoga, and Traditional Chinese medicine for helping strengthen the eye muscles, increase blood flow, and even improve eyesight. 

The lovely thing about face yoga is that you can take time doing the exercises and you’ll see improvements over time, which is fantastic. Unlike botox that wears off in 3 months, you’ll notice things will continue to improve as you dedicate yourself to your daily face yoga routine. 

HOW TO TONE A SAGGY NECK?

The neck tends to show our aging quicker than any other area. That’s because the skin of the neck is super thin, almost as thin as the skin around the eyes. We put a lot of strain on the neck, particularly now that we’re using phones and computers practically all day. 

To tone a saggy neck, you want to start by paying attention to your posture, even from a Face Yoga viewpoint. To do this correctly, imagine a string going from the top of your head all the way up to the ceiling and lengthen yourself up. 

Now, for strengthening and toning exercises, I absolutely love the giraffe exercise. Here’s how to do it:

Place your hands onto the collarbone, tilt your head back. Then, bring your bottom lip out a little bit and hold that position, breathing deeply for about four breaths. 

You can also do some lymphatic drainage in that area, massaging the side your neck very softly downwards for a few times daily. It will certainly streamline your results. 

You may like this Podcast episode: Naturally Firm the Neck With These 5 Easy Tips

So there you have it: my five most-asked questions, fully answered. If you’d like to delve deeper into any of the above topics and strengthen your face yoga knowledge, my book Danielle Collins Face Yoga: will give you in-depth tips on how to work with every part of the face and look and feel the best version of you.