BLOG 272: PUFFY EYES EACH MORNING? TRY THESE TWO TRANSFORMATIONAL MASSAGES

Waking up with puffy, swollen-feeling eyes is a common problem – one that can be caused by a variety of factors, including lack of sleep, allergies, and fluid retention.

The good news is that I have a couple of lovely face yoga moves to share with you that are brilliant for puffy eyes. You can do these two massage techniques in less than two minutes, which hopefully means you can find time for them on even the busiest mornings.

Massaging around the eye area boosts lymphatic drainage and encourages blood circulation, which in turn helps to reduce puffiness and dark circles.

Energetically, facial massage can help to release blockages and encourage a healthy flow of prana (lifeforce, also known as Qi in Traditional Chinese Medicine), especially if you combine it with deep, centred breathing.

If you’d like to watch me demonstrating these two eye massage techniques, you can find a short video over on my YouTube channel.

Before You Start

Find a comfortable place to sit or stand. You might want a mirror to hand so that you can see what you’re doing.

Make sure you have clean hands before doing these facial massage techniques.

Apply some eye cream to the skin around your eyes to help your fingers move easily over the skin. The skin around your eyes is very delicate, so you want to make sure your fingers can glide over it without snagging.

Take a couple of deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling through your nose if you can. Try to keep your breaths long and full as you do the massage – not only does this help you to feel relaxed and refreshed, but it also brings plenty of fresh oxygen into your system to nourish your skin.

1. Circular Massage

For our first technique, place the tips of your ring fingers by the inner corners of your eyes and then gently massage around the eyes in a circular motion, coming around underneath your eyebrows and then down under the eyes and along the line of your cheekbones and back up.

Continue in one direction for around 30 seconds and then reverse the action to go in the opposite direction for another 30 seconds.

The reason we use our ring fingers for this massage is because we naturally press more lightly with this finger than with our index fingers. Because the skin around the eyes is so thin and delicate, we want to make sure we use a featherlight touch for this technique.

Keeping your touch light also helps to focus this massage on boosting lymphatic drainage, which encourages all the waste and toxins to move away from the skin cells and out of your body.

In turn, this reduces puffiness and dark circles around your eyes.

2. Tapping

Switch to using your index fingers for our second massage technique. Start at the inner corners of your eyes and gently tap around the eye area, coming above your eyebrows this time.

Continue to tap around your eyes in one direction for about 30 seconds and then switch to the other direction for the remaining 30 seconds.

This massage technique is one of my favourites for boosting blood circulation to the skin around your eyes. That blood brings with it plenty of fresh oxygen and nutrients to nourish your skin and helps to remove waste and toxins too.

Finish

As we’ve been working with lymphatic drainage, finish off by smoothing your hands down the sides of your neck and bringing your fingers onto your collarbone. Gently pulse your fingers for a few seconds to stimulate the lymph nodes here.

And then we are all done. Release your hands down into your lap and take a couple of deep breaths to finish off your practice.

This is a great little routine to do every morning to reduce puffy eyes. You can do these techniques on their own or combine with other face yoga moves to build a full routine.

I have plenty of resources available to help you build out your face yoga toolkit – discover free videos via my YouTube channel or visit my courses page for more in-depth learning.