BLOG 125: WANT FIRMER SKIN NATURALLY? HERE’S 5 EASY TIPS

Are you looking to lift, tone, and firm your skin this year? If so, I have five easy tips for you that you can implement straight away to give you firmer and healthier skin naturally.

I’m really going back to the core of face yoga in this post and covering the fundamental principles that make the Danielle Collins Face Yoga Method so amazing for both your skin and your overall wellbeing.

Let’s dive right in!

1. POSTURE

This tip may surprise you. The importance of posture is often overlooked when it comes to lifting the face and skin naturally. But I see posture as the foundation of a house. If your house isn’t based on a strong, sturdy foundation, it will fall down.

Similarly, if your posture is poor, it has a huge knock-on effect on your upper body, including your face. In our modern world, many of us spend a lot of time with our shoulders rounded, our backs hunched, or looking down at computers and phones.

This leads to a build-up of tension in our necks and backs, often causing us pain and stiffness. It also stops us from taking deep breaths, so we get stuck in fight-or-flight mode.

But when we think about our posture and work on lengthening and opening everything up, we can breathe properly – taking deep, long breaths from our abdomens. This moves us into our calmer rest-and-digest state.

Incorrect posture also affects our faces. Tension spreads into our necks, jaw, and cheeks, causing lines and wrinkles.

All of us end up hunched and slouched some of the time. It takes a little practice to get in the habit of maintaining a good posture. But whenever you remember, go through some simple steps to lengthen your spine and release your shoulders.

First, feel your feet grounding down onto the floor. If you are sitting or standing, you can imagine roots growing from your feet and connecting you to the earth. If you are walking, just feel that sense of being grounded with each step.

Then imagine a cord attached to the base of your spine, at the root chakra. The cord runs all the way up through your centre and out through the crown of your head, up to the ceiling or sky. Feel it pull you up, lengthening out your entire spine.

Next, turn your attention to your shoulders. I often think that the phrase ‘having the weight of the world on your shoulders’ is a very appropriate one. It often seems that when we are carrying a heavy responsibility or worry, we hold it in our shoulders.

We feel as though we need to keep ourselves closed in and tense, so we can keep control of everything. But it is when we allow ourselves to open up and let go that everything flows easily, we feel better, and we start to manifest the things we want in our lives.

Start by hunching your shoulders as far forward as you can, then squeeze them back. You are just getting a feel for your full range of motion and noticing whether how your shoulders feel in different positions.

Next make some circles with your shoulders, first one way and then the other. As you do, concentrate on taking deep, long breaths through your nose. Feel your abdomen rise and fall as you breathe. Try to make your exhale longer than your inhale.

Now bring your shoulders into a neutral position, not hunched forwards or pushed back. Make sure you relax them down away from your ears too. 

Any time you notice that your shoulders have crept back up again during the day, visualise yourself releasing anything you are trying to control. Say to yourself, ‘I can let go. I can surrender. I can relax.’ Feel your shoulders relax and drop down as you repeat this.

Finally, tuck your chin down very slightly. Not all the way down to your chest, just a tiny bit so that your neck feels relaxed.

Now do a quick scan of your face to make sure you aren’t holding onto any tension. As soon as you find a good posture, you should feel your face relax.

2. FACIAL EXERCISES

I’m sure that this recommendation won’t be a surprise to anyone who has followed me for a while. Many of my face yoga routines include facial exercises to lift and strengthen the muscles in your face.

When we move and strengthen these muscles, we also firm and tone the skin attached to them. Like any exercise, it works best when we do it regularly – ideally every day.

I have plenty of resources available to help you make facial exercise a daily habit. If you are new to face yoga or are struggling to do it regularly, the best place to start is my 10-day course, which includes 10 days’ worth of 10-minute face yoga routines. 

The course also comes with a digital copy of my first book, Danielle Collins’ Face Yoga.

3. FACIAL MASSAGE

Another tip that won’t come as a shock to long-term followers! Facial massage is a fantastic way to get healthy and glowing skin naturally. Even if you do no other part of face yoga, make some time to include facial massage in your daily skincare routine.

It can be as simple as tapping your fingertips all over your face and neck to wake up your skin, boost blood circulation, and release tension. If you have more time, you can do a longer session – I have loads of free videos on YouTube to help you get started.

Facial massage also helps your skincare products to penetrate deeper into your skin, nourishing it from the inside out. I always recommend using a few drops of  Fusion by Danielle Collins Serum, either before your moisturiser or instead of it.

The serum is specially formulated to have molecules small enough to penetrate the middle layer of skin, the dermis, where collagen and elastin production takes place. When you are trying to firm and lift your skin naturally, you want to get those high-performing organic seed oils into this layer.

4. MINDSET

This is another area that is often overlooked when it comes to your face and skin. We can use the most amazing skincare products, do all our facial exercise, do everything right for our skin. But if we are feeling rubbish in our minds, our skin will never look as healthy and glowing as it could.

I don’t mean that we should try to be happy and positive all the time. We all have hard times, especially over the past couple of years.

When those difficult feelings come up, my recommendation is not to try to fight them or push them away. Sit with them for a while. Let them settle. Then bring your curiosity to the feeling. If it has settled somewhere particular in your body, ask that area why it is there. Listen to the answer.

I then like to use a simple self-healing technique I learnt during my reiki training. It works best if you are reiki-attuned, but I believe all of us can access the healing reiki energy.

Visualise a warm, loving, white light. It should come from your higher power, whatever that means to you. It could be the universe, God, angels, spirit guides, the ocean – whatever resonates with you.

Feel the light coming down through your head, along your shoulders, down your arms, and into your hands.

Place your hands on the area where your pain or uncomfortable emotions are held. If there’s no particular place, bring the feeling to the front of your mind and place your hands on your head.

Then envision the white light bathing the area, filling it with love and healing. Take some deep breaths. Release your hands and give yourself a little smile.

5. FACIAL RELAXATION

My final tip is to bring your attention to your face from time to time and focus on releasing tension and relaxing the muscles.

We often don’t realise we are holding so much tension in our faces. But when we carry it for a long time, this tension can cause or deepen lines and wrinkles. Regularly relaxing our faces helps to soften and prevent those lines.

The forehead and eyebrows are one area many of us overuse. Take your attention to this area now. Feel if there is any tension here. Consciously let it go, relaxing the muscles and smoothing out the skin. If your hands are clean, you could do some tapping here too.

For the rest of the day, notice how you use this area. Do you tense it up or overexpress? Whenever you feel yourself tensing here, think to yourself ‘relax, relax, relax’.

You can do this with other areas of your face too.

GET MORE TIPS FOR HEALTHY AND GLOWING SKIN

I have plenty of resources available if you want to learn more tips and techniques to naturally firm, lift, and tone your face in 2022. As well as this blog, I share content regularly on social media, YouTube, and the Face Yoga Expert Podcast.

When you are ready to start sharing some of what you’ve learnt with others, I also offer two teacher training courses, in face yoga and facial gua sha. As well as deepening your own knowledge, these courses give you everything you need to teach others, including business and marketing advice for anyone wanting to make teaching face yoga part of their career. 

Find out more in the teacher training section.