BLOG 262: HOODED EYES? TRY THIS NATURAL SOLUTION!

Hooded eyes are when the skin on your brow bone begins to droop or sag down, creating a hooded effect over your eyes.

It can be genetic but is also something that can happen as you get older. We all naturally start to produce less collagen as we age, which causes our skin to become less elastic and more prone to sagging.

Muscle definition can also play a part. Most of us don’t give much thought to the muscles around our eyes, but these start to weaken as we age, just like any other muscle. And when the muscles in this area weaken, the skin attached begins to sag a little too, leading to hooded eyes.

The good news is that the muscles of your face can also be toned and strengthened through regular exercise, just like the muscles of your body. In the process, the skin attached to those muscles becomes smoother and tauter. 

So, in this post, I want to show you three quick and easy face yoga techniques you can use to lift the eye area naturally, reducing or preventing hooded eyes.

As always, make sure you have clean hands before starting this face yoga routine. 

1. Eyebrow Lift

Make hook shapes with your index fingers and place them against the skin just beneath your eyebrows.

Gently use your fingers to slightly lift your eyebrows. Keeping your fingers in position, start to close your eyes against the resistance created by the lifted skin. Don’t close your eyes all the way - just until you feel a little tremor or flutter in the muscles beneath your fingers. 

Hold this position for a count of ten, keeping the rest of your face relaxed and breathing deeply in and out through your nose. Then, release your fingers and open your eyes. Repeat the exercise twice more.

In between rounds, take a moment to stroke across your forehead with your fingertips, smoothing out any lines created by this technique. 

With face yoga, we always want to be careful not to create new lines and if any do appear during an exercise, we want to make sure we smooth them out straight away afterwards.

2. Wide Eyes

Next, take the base of each palm and place them gently on the outer edges of your eyebrows.

Use your hands to lift the corners of your eyebrows up slightly. At the same time, open your eyes as wide as you can, keeping them focused on a fixed point in front of you.

Again, you want to hold this position for a count of ten. Release, then repeat twice more, closing your eyes in between to let the muscles relax.

3. Pinching

Finally, use your middle and index fingers and thumb to pinch along the line of your eyebrows, starting in the centre and working outwards. You can do both sides at the same time.

The important thing to remember with this technique is that we’re trying to pinch down into the muscle. We don’t want to drag or pull at the skin. So, the action you want is to pinch, hold, then release.

This encourages that slight lift in the muscles.

When you get to the outside corner of your eyebrows, bring your hands back to the middle to repeat another couple of times.

Done!

That’s it – all together, these three techniques should take less than five minutes, making this a quick and easy addition to your daily routine.

Of course, the most important thing with face yoga is being consistent. It is like any other form of exercise – you’ll get the best results when you do it regularly. 

The benefit is more than skin-deep too. I can’t emphasise enough how much of a difference it makes to your mental and emotional health when you make regular time for self-care. 

I have plenty of resources to help you make face yoga a consistent habit. You can find loads of courses and workshops here or check out my two books in my online shop.