BLOG 255: SIMPLE FACE YOGA FOR LESS EYE BAGS AND BETTER CIRCULATION
Feb 20, 2024
Eye bags, dark circles, and puffiness around the eyes are common issues, and I get asked about them regularly. This blog post takes you through a really quick and simple Face Yoga sequence focusing on the eye area.
This should take you only a couple of minutes at most, so is great for when you don’t have much time on your hands or just want a little circulation boost throughout the day. Of course, you can also do longer if you have more time available – I have a five-minute video here or a six-minute one here if you are looking for a longer routine focusing on eye bags.
But if all you want is a couple of simple techniques to quickly boost blood circulation to the eye area and reduce dark circles and puffiness, this is the post for you!
How Does Face Yoga Help with Eye Bags?
Eye bags have several different causes. They can simply be a natural sign of aging – as we get older, the muscles of the face get weaker and we produce less collagen and elastin, all of which can lead to eye bags.
Eye bags can also be caused by lifestyle, especially anything that increases fluid retention, since this will lead to puffiness around the eyes. Late nights are the classic example that we associate with eye bags, but diet, stress, and alcohol can all play a role here too.
Energetically, eye bags are often a sign that there’s some stagnation or blockage in the flow of prana (life force – also known as Qi in Traditional Chinese Medicine).
So, when we focus on eye bags in Face Yoga, we’re looking for techniques that encourage lymphatic drainage, increase blood circulation, and stimulate the flow of energy in the eye area.
If you have longer, you can also do some Face Yoga exercises to strengthen the muscles and reduce sagging. The longer routines I linked above have some examples, but since I want to keep this sequence short and simple, we’re focusing instead on boosting blood circulation and energy flow.
Getting Started
Make sure you have clean hands before starting this Face Yoga routine. A clean face is ideal too, but this is a short sequence, so you can get away without washing your face if you are doing this as a quick circulation boost for the eyes during the day.
If you can, I always advise applying a few drops of serum to your skin to help your hands move more easily.
And I like to start any Face Yoga routine by taking a few deep breaths to help me feel centred and calm. These little moments of rest and self-care are a vital part of increasing our sense of health and wellness and are so often overlooked. We may as well make the most of any opportunity we have to tune into the breath and let go of some stress and tension.
1. Tapping
Use your index fingers to gently tap over the skin beneath your eyes. Start close to your nose and work around to the outer corner of your eyes and then back again.
Repeat for around 30 seconds to a minute.
Make sure to keep the tapping really gentle. The skin around your eyes is much thinner and more delicate than the skin elsewhere on your face, so it doesn’t need much pressure at all.
This is such a simple technique, but it is also extremely effective for boosting the circulation to all those tiny blood vessels, which in turn helps to bring oxygen and nutrients to the skin.
Tapping also stimulates lymphatic drainage, encouraging the removal of any waste. And, of course, it boosts the flow of energy too, especially when combined with long, deep, calming breaths.
Just a few moments of tapping can leave the skin under your eyes looking brighter.
2. Acupressure
Next, bring your index fingers to the acupressure points just by the inner corners of your eyes (on the sides of the bridge of your nose).
Press gently on these acupressure points for a few breaths, then move your fingers to the points by the outer corners of your eyes. Again, press gently here for a few breaths.
Pressing on these points is great for encouraging the blood circulation to the eye area, reducing eye bags, puffiness, and dark circles.
3. Massage
Finally, use your ring fingers to gently stroke around your eyes in a circle. Start at the inner corners, come up and under the eyebrows, down and round under the eyes, and then repeat.
The reason I tell you to use your ring fingers here is that the skin around the eyes is so delicate. We want to use a feather-light touch to avoid dragging at the skin.
We naturally put less pressure on our skin when we use our ring fingers instead of our index fingers. It might feel a tiny bit awkward at first, but you’ll soon get used to using these fingers to massage the eye area.
This massage aims to encourage lymphatic drainage, reducing puffiness and leaving your skin looking brighter.
Finish
End the sequence with your ring fingers resting on the acupressure point by the inner corners of your eyes and give them a little wiggle. Then, you are all done!
If you prefer to follow along with a video, you can find this short sequence in action over on my YouTube channel – don’t forget to subscribe while you are there!
One last thought before I close – I mentioned earlier in the post how tiny moments of rest and self-care can have a profound impact on our wellness. I hope short sequences like this help inspire you to find those moments throughout your day.
As well as integrating those moments into our daily lives, we also need to take longer opportunities to nourish our wellness from time to time. I love to use the seasons as inspiration for a deeper focus on self-care through face yoga, which is why I’ve developed a bundle of four pre-recorded face yoga retreats that you can do from the comfort of your own home.
Each retreat corresponds to a particular season – although of course you are welcome to do them at other times of year if you need to invite the energy of that season into your life at a different moment.
