Beauty Clinic: Do facial exercises really work?
Q. I’m noticing my jawline getting a bit lax with the suspicion of jowls forming and a little pouch under my chin. I would love to stop them in their tracks but not keen on anything invasive. Do facial exercises work and would they help?
A. The short answer to your question is yes and yes! Facial exercises do work and they would almost certainly help your neck and jawline as well as toning the lower half of your face. And of course you can extend the workout to the upper half too.
The legendary Eva Fraser was the first practitioner we know of to create a set of exercises that would tone the 40-plus pairs of facial muscles to help counter the downward drift as we age.
Eva actually devised special Instant Face Saver tips for our very first Beauty Bible, published in 1996. You can find Eva’s tips online at beautybible.com here. (Eva’s books are still available on Amazon.)
Technology is on the side of learning and practising facial exercises, which really helps as you can see so much more detail. The FaceToned® Facial Fitness programme is a recent online entry to the arena. Sarah had a taster of FaceToned recently and was impressed.
FaceToned is the brainchild of former banker turned Pilates teacher Carme Farré. Now in her forties and a mother, Carme wanted to devise a programme both for her clients and herself, and to make it available online so that everyone could try it for a moderate subscription. As she says, we devote hours to exercising our bodies but apart from perhaps a spot of facial massage when we apply product, our faces - the first part everyone sees – tend to get left out.
If you think life is too short to stuff a cherry tomato, exercises like repetitively pulsing your tongue against the roof of your mouth and doing micro movements with your lips may not be your bag. But Sarah had to admit, albeit a tad reluctantly, that 15 minutes working out with Carme had a real effect. Of course it didn't miraculously hitch up facial sags and bags but the workout did leave her with a bright, pink-y complexion, wide-open eyes, a feeling of muscles coming alive and a general air of uplift.
Before launching online this spring, Carme had been teaching and refining her FaceToned programme with clients for five years. She promises that, if you exercise regularly for 15 minutes three to four times a week using the online modules, you’ll start seeing real benefits after four weeks. Many subscribers actually choose to practise up to six times a week. In a survey of 33 women who signed up for the FaceToned online programme, 28 said they found it fun and intend to complete the course. Subscribers are also positive about the live weekly webinars.
In Carme’s experience, the majority of clients using the FaceToned method regularly notice the following improvements after eight weeks:
• Improvement and definition in the jaw and jowls (which is the number one concern, she says)
• A more toned and defined face overall with tauter skin
• More volume in cheeks
• Some reduction of lines and wrinkles on forehead and laugh lines around the eyes.
And finally watch that space, ie the website, because a FaceToned app will be launching in October this year.
