Nadeau - The Yoga Facelift

The Yoga Facelift, Second Edition

Published by Bitingduck Press
eISBN 978-1-938463-00-6
2012 Marie Nadeau
All rights reserved
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Bitingduck Press, LLC
MontrealAltadena
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Cover image by Dena Eaton
Originally published by Conari Press (January 1, 2007)
All images have been altered from the original to increase contrast on electronic readers

For Jay

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art Eleanor Roosevelt

Introduction

Introduction to the Second Edition

After age forty, everyone is responsible for his/her own face. Albert Camus

The second edition of this book, making its first appearance as an e-book due to popular demand, is a new spin on a timeless subject. Today we are confronted with an array of Yoga practices ranging from Yoga in heated rooms or at high altitudes to Yoga for pets.

I like to think that this particular Yoga practice, the Yoga Facelift, hereinafter known as YFL, has the advantage of being the least intimidating of them allif you have a face you can do it.* YFL can further be classified as Yoga for the really busy, Yoga for the quite lazy, or Yoga for the very practical. Take your pick.

For the busy: once youve mastered the exercises you shouldnt spend more than 5 or 10 minutes a day doing them, because when it comes to exercising neck and facial muscles, less is more. Too much exercise tires the muscles and can defeat your purposethe real trick is to exercise facial muscles correctly, as introduced in Chapter One. The other advantage of this program for on-the-go types is that you can do them anywherein the car, on the subway, while riding your bicycle. Just ignore the funny looks from nearby fellow travelers.

For the quite lazy: you can lounge on your couch and do the exercises during down moments of The Big Bang Theory. Consistency of effort yields much better results than breaking a sweat, so just pick a few exercises and do them somewhat regularly and youre good. Another advantage is that if friends ask, you can tell them youve already worked out and no, you dont need to go to the gym with them.

For the very practical: we sweat and strain to keep our bodies supple and lovely but if our purpose is to remain attractive to others of our species shouldnt we be spending more time keeping our faces fit? Cleverly draped clothing hides a lot of defects, but our faces are always out there, on display. And like it or not, its faces people of both sexes look at first and foremost. It was a face that launched a thousand ships after all.

*A Note to Botox Patients

The one exception to the if you have a face you can do this rule is Botox patients. I once taught a YFL class to a group of matrons who all had frozen face syndrome. They literally could not move their muscles enough to do the facial exercises. Botulinum toxin, popularly known as Botox, is a neurotoxin that works by temporarily paralyzing facial muscles. I advise people who undergo Botox treatments regularly to get in the habit of practicing YFL in between treatments, so that facial muscles do not atrophy. Once that happens a surgical facelift may be the only option. On a happy note, the fact that Botox eradicates wrinkles and lines by paralyzing muscles supports my contention that facial exercise is a realistic Botox alternative. You can paralyze muscles, or you can exercise control over them so they do not contract in ways that make unwanted lines.

Chapter 1

How the Yoga Facelift Works

YFL helps us become aware of that fascinating region above our necks. When I first started teaching classes my working hypothesis was that it was all about repeated facial expressions creating unwanted lines, so I put the emphasis on replacing bad facial habits with better (less line-producing) ones. But it turned out that the simple exercises were having a beneficial effect far beyond anything I could have anticipated. What I and my students discovered as we did the exercises was quite profound, even game changing. Changing facial expressions on the outside affects how you feel inside.

The Formation of Expression Lines

We can name countless exercise programs that engage the muscles of the body, yet there are very few that involve exercising the 109 muscles of the face and neck. Obviously there are good reasons for thislifting weights or running does not lend itself to facial toning, and isometric exercises, even when they come from otherwise great exercise programs, can with respect to the face, do more harm than good. For example, one well-known exercise has people scrunching up their faces, then stretching them out wide in an expression of extreme surprise (imagine being goosed from behind and you get the picture). The problem with this type of exercise lies in the fact that using your face expressively over times creates lines. Scowling is a great example of this mechanism. Years of contracting the corrugator muscles (the ones on top of the brows that pull the eyebrows together), often unconsciously, eventually forms creases between the brows. If you are a scowler you are probably also frowning in your sleep, when it is said we make about 50% of our expression lines. This unfortunate habit makes grooves on the surface of the skin, to the point where even when you are not scowling the lines remain. This is where Botox, the mainstream approach to erasing lines and wrinkles, comes in.

Botox and Wrinkles

The Botox neurotoxin was first used to (among other things) control involuntary facial contractions, or facial tics. It worked well, and one of the side effects that nobody complained about was that lines and wrinkles seemed to disappear. In fact, it opened the floodgates for cosmetic treatments that have since become wildly popular. Cosmetic use of Botox has increased from 2000 to 2011 by 621%, and the trend now is for people to start the Botox habit at earlier ages, with some people getting hooked while still in their teens.

Basically, Botox works by paralyzing muscles. So, corrugator muscles that no longer contract cant pull your eyebrows together and voila! the brow creases disappear. This certainly indicates just how powerful these facial muscles are. But it also suggests another way to address the formation of unwanted lines and wrinkles. This is where Yoga and increased awareness of the body comes in.

The Yoga Facelift and Wrinkles

One of the great benefits of Yoga is that it increases awareness of how you are using your body. When we do Yoga poses we notice pleasing shifts in our bodies and the way we hold themfor example going from a habitual shoulder slump to an erect posture expands the rib cage and lungs, getting more oxygen into the system. (For a real life example try the Shoulders Back Exercise on page 32.) Over time, with Yoga poses to guide us, our bodies learn to replace bad postural habits with healthier ones, without strain, but simply because good posture makes your body, and you, feel better.