How to de-stress and restore your skin with face yoga

You might have already heard about face yoga. It's being used by celebrities like Meghan Markle, Jennifer Aniston and Madonna as part of their daily beauty routine in an effort to restore skin, and de-stress. Owner of Face Yoga Renew Sophia Ha broke down exactly what face yoga is, the benefits, and how it works - check out her tips below. To try some Face Yoga exercises for yourself, watch the video above!

WHAT IS FACE YOGA?

Face Yoga is a form of facial exercises- that when practiced properly and consistently, gives you a natural face lift. Just like how we work out the muscles in our body to keep them toned and fit, we want to do the same thing for the 43 muscles in the face. Just like the body, some facial muscles are constantly being used, while others lay lazy.There are two main complaints as we age - wrinkles, fine lines and sagging skin. Aside from the natural loss of collagen as we age, wrinkles are created by the habitual use of the same muscles over and over. Some examples of hyper active muscles are the 11 lines (vertical lines) that are created between the eyebrows from constantly furrowing, or the crows feet from squinting our eyes, and forehead lines from constantly raising our eyebrows.Sagging skin on the other hand, is a combination of a natural loss of collagen, combined with gravity, and not using certain muscles often enough. An example of under used muscles are the cheek muscles, where we begin to see a lack of definition and drooping cheeks, and frontal the neck muscles where we see the dreaded double chin( or turkey neck), and jowls. Face Yoga exercises combine releasing exercises for the muscles that are being over used, and resistance exercise for the muscles that are under used.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

People are practicing facial exercises as an alternative to surgical facelifts, fillers, and botox. Aesthetically speaking, wrinkles diminish or disappear. We see lifted cheeks, a redefined jawline, and more sculpture brought to the entire face. Therapeutically speaking, it provides mental calm (just like yoga for the body), as well as it immensely helps to release tension through the head, neck, and jaw.[video_embed id='1965510']RELATED: This full-body workout can be done with items from around the house[/video_embed]

WHY DOES IT WORK?

It works so well because we're actually working out the facial muscles. Think about your body. To keep it toned and fit, you work out. We want to do the same thing for our face to keep it lifted and glowing! Again, Face Yoga is a combination of resistance and relaxation exercises. When we practice facial exercises, it stimulates blood circulation to our facial muscles, feeding the muscles and the skin with oxygen. So as we work them out,  they begin to lift, and our skin glows from all the blood circulation that's being stimulated.

HOW DOES IT RELIEVE TENSION?

So many people are experiencing this right now. It's important to remember everything in the body is connected. So what often happens is when we're stressed we often clench our jaw. If you take a minute to put your fingers on your temples, and just clench your teeth for a second, you'll feel the temporalis muscle contracts. You can see how having tension in your jaw will affect your temporalis, and how that can stimulate a headache from the temples shooting all the way up and through the head.Also poor posture - shoulders forward as well as your head - puts massive pressure on your jaw, as well as the back of your neck, putting pressure on the occipitofrontalis muscle which will also create headaches. So for relieving tension we use acupressure and massage to release the over worked muscles. But it's also very important to check in with yourself, and your posture. Notice, are you hunching your shoulders? Is your head jutting forward? Are you clenching your teeth? This self awareness is one very key fundamental of Face Yoga.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD I DO IT?

Sophia recommends 10- 20 minutes daily depending on your particular concerns. To see the best results, though, you want to be practicing daily. Depending on how many concerns you have, the time you spend will vary. So if you have one particular you'd like to improve, you could be spending approximately five to ten minutes daily. If you have several concerns, they'd be spending anywhere from 15- 20 minutes daily. But this doesn't have to be 10-20 minutes at once! That's what's so great about face yoga, you can practice it anytime anywhere. Typically each exercise takes about 1- 1.5 minutes to complete, so it's really not much time at all.In terms of seeing results, it varies from person to person based on their personal conditions and their age. We can expect to see changes anywhere from six to twelve weeks, and the results continue as you continue to practice.For some demonstrations of different Face Yoga exercises, watch the video at the top of this article.[video_embed id='1966036']BEFORE YOU GO: Husband goes all out for wife's birthday who can't have visitors while in hospital[/video_embed]