Face Massage vs Face Exercises...

Both Face Massage and Face Exercises have the power to redefine your skin and sculpt your face. But, I’m going to break down how they both work and differ, so you can establish which one will suit you best and easily incorporate them into your daily routine. So, let’s get our faces moving…

What are the benefits of face massage?

Face massage is one of my absolute favourite things to do, as you can feel the instant benefits. The muscles in your face are often overworked through endless facial expressions, concentration and of course, day to day scrolling. This means that over time, they become short and tense which leads to deep-set forehead and frown lines. But by embracing this ancient technique, face massage has the power to dramatically reduce them.

The idea is to break down tension knots and relax the muscles sitting underneath the surface of your skin, which will soften and smooth wrinkles. Although face massages can often look complicated, I promise you can do it at home without any training whatsoever! I practice daily at the end of my 5 Minute Kit with The Everything Oil, and if you’d like to follow along with me, I’ll link my 60 second routine here.

As facial massage is currently trending, so are tools such as jade rollers and gua sha stones. But in my opinion, nothing will ever beat the power of your hands. With continued practice, not only will your lines reduce, but your circulation will improve, product absorption will increase and your face will look less puffy and more sculpted…And as an added bonus, it won’t cost you a penny!

What are the benefits of face exercises?

So now we know how face massage works, why might we need face exercises too? Well, think of them like taking your skin to the gym.

As with the muscles all over your body, with age, your facial muscles become weaker and lose tone and definition too. This means we start to notice drooping eyelids, sagging jowls and a loss of firmness in our neck. So strengthening these locations can work wonders for restoring a youthful appearance.

Unlike massage, these exercises involve performing specific movements and muscle contractions such as smiling, puckering, frowning and raising your eyebrows. However, they’re practised by creating resistance with your fingertips, so your muscles have to work harder, creating a facial workout. This delivers the same results as training your body with resistance bands or weights, to further tone and strengthen key areas.

For this reason, a little more guidance is required to ensure you’re working the muscles correctly and not doing more harm than good. If there a is particular concern you’d like to target, I recommend practising for approximately 30 seconds a day and often share techniques over on Instagram, to guide you through the process. Think of me like a personal trainer for your face and I’ll link a video specifically for lifting the corners of your mouth and cheekbones here.

Which one do I recommend?

As an aesthetician, I can confirm one technique is not better than the other. As you may have guessed already, I personally love a little bit of both as they work beautifully in unison. The secret is not to overthink, or become overwhelmed by either. You’ll naturally massage your face when applying your 5 Minute Kit anyway and if one of my exercise videos catches your attention online, just save it to refer back to when you have a spare couple of minutes.

A little goes a long way with both and all you need to do is focus on relaxing into the movements, rather than stressing about the outcome. In fact, everything in life delivers better results when we adopt that approach 🥰