In the eye socket, there is an eyeball. Because it's an important organ, there is fat to protect it behind the eyeball. But with age, this fat becomes less, which is same as face fat loss and the reduced fat even drops from the top down. That is how you get eyebags. And because you lost the fat from the top down, the lost fat on upper eyelid causes hollow.
That is how you get the hollow on the upper eyelid. Also another thing: mid-cheek line, the line from the inner corner of the eye to the cheek. The line aligns on the lower curb of orbicularis oculi (eye) muscle. (Blue in the anatomy) When the eye muscles are saggy, the mid-cheek line shows up. When the muscles are lifted, the cheeks are lifted, because they are connected, and when they are both lifted, there aren't visible mid-cheek lines.
In other words, when the eye muscles are loose downward, you will get 3 items.
- Eyebags
- Hollows on the upper eyelids
- Mid cheek lines
In addition, the cheeks may sag too, because the eye muscles are pulling up the cheek muscle. When the cheeks are saggy, you might get jowl and loose skin on the jawline and neck too. Now let's talk about three exercises and tips to improve the condition.
#1. Lower Eyelid Lift
This is our classic, signature exercise because so many people claim that they see big differences.
Triple eyelids to double eyelids
Before: The eyes are saggier, with triple eyelids.
After: The eyes and the cheeks are lifted, with double eyelids.
How to do the exercise:
- Keep good resting Face Posture®: TLT, Tongue up, Lip seal & Teeth apart
- Try to lift up the tiny lower eyelid only without moving any other muscles including the upper eyelids.
- Repeat the lift X 10 slowly.
The tiny lower eyelid is what is often called the “Tear line” and categorized as dark blue in the anatomy. In the anatomy, blue are sleeping muscles and red are overworking muscles. But this lower eyelid is dark blue, which means super sleeping. On the flip side, because they are not activated in our regular facial functions and expressions, if you stimulate them, you will see bigger differences relatively easily, compared to the other facial parts. Especially eyes are the first facial part people look at when they see your face. People talk by looking at the other person’s eyes. And, because the face is smaller canvas, even tiny difference makes bigger visible differences. In my demonstration, you might not see the up motion, but that is ok, as long as you kind of feel the area being activated. If you see big movement there, you might be using wrong muscles, instead of focusing on the lower eyelids. Common mistakes are moving the upper eyelids too.
Difficult to do? Here are some tips to kick-start the activation.
1.Alternate
Lift up the easier side first and alternate. Because this is such a small movement, sometimes it’s easier to focus on only 1 eyelid at a time. After you get used to it, you can try both at the same time. Ideally, you want to be able to do it at the same time. It is difficult to move only the lower eyelid because it’s a part of bigger ring shaped muscles, like a round doughnut ring. Another common mistake is that your mouth, cheeks, or any other areas such as shoulders are moving. It is hard to isolate the muscles as they are connected, but you should try.
2.Mewing Tongue Posture®
If you don't know what Mewing or Tongue Posture® is, please check our video. The reason why you want to do it while doing the exercise is that you want to have a stable foundation to focus on the lower eyelids. This is a very tiny movement, like 1-2mm, so in order to focus on it, still ground (Maxilla bone) is preferred..
For example, imagine you are on a balance ball and balance required working out at the same time. It is easier to do so if the ball is stabled. Focus and try now. Quality matters more than quantity. That’s why you only need 10 reps per day or so.Unlike the body, facial muscles do not need a lot of workout. The strategy is more important. So try to keep good resting Face Posture®: TLT, tongue up and flat, lip seal and teeth apart.
3.Piece
Pose the piece on your fingers and keep the middle fingers on the inner eye corners and the index fingers on the outer corners. This pose helps feel the tiny movement. Try 10 reps slowly. Do you feel them more?
4. Piece and look down
Keep the same finger positions, look down and try again. Do you see the blurry nose and maybe lower eyelashes moving too?
5.Piece and look up
Do the same but this time look up. You won’t see the movement as you are looking up but as long as you feel it, it’s ok.
6. Look up with “O” mouth shape
Make “Oh” mouth shape and look up to do the lift up. Because the skin is being stretched, it helps you feel the muscles more. Although I'm not super fan of this stretch because it can stretch the skin unnecessarily, it is helpful just to kick start the tiny muscles. So when you do this, it should be quick, like 10 seconds per day, but that's okay. In general, you don't want to stretch the philtrum (The skin between the upper lip and nose) It is a sleeping muscle (Blue in the anatomy) and it gets longer with age. Let me know which one out of the 6 above works for you!
#2. Forehead Freezer
- Keep your head above your butt.
- Open your chest and shoulders down.
- Keep your pinkies on the eyebrows and the rest fingers on the forehead.
- Slowly open your eyes WITHOUT moving your eyebrows or forehead.
- Open as big as possible.
- Slowly almost close the eyes again WITHOUT moving the other muscles.
- Repeat this slowly 3 times.
Why pinkies on the brows? The pinkies are to feel the movement. You don't want to feel the movement on the eyebrows up.
Be careful with 3 below.
- Do it slowly. Faster movement requires the other muscle movements, which is not good.
- If the brows try to move, stop that with the pinkies.
- Don’t frown between eyebrows, while squinting.
Did your eyebrow try to lift up or not? Let me know if it was easy for you not to move your forehead. If this is easy, don’t use the hands. Do the same movements but without hands. The goal is during the movement not to move any of the other muscles than the eyes, Orbicularis Oculi. It is good to check the moves in front of the mirror. You can do only 3 slow repetitions per day, but every day. You don’t need a lot of repetitions for facial muscles. The purpose of the facial muscles is to create facial expression and some functions like eating, yawning or speaking of those things. It does not need a lot of movements. It is connected mostly to the skin. The purpose of body muscles is to move the body and they are connected to the bones.
#3 Face Habits (Face Posture®)
Even if you do a lot of exercises, if you keep doing bad Face Posture®, you're not going to see good results. In my opinion, facial exercises don’t anti-age the face, but does help master the blue and red differences (Anatomy), so you can keep better facial habits in your daily lives.
Bad Facial Habit #1
When you are surprised, you raise your eyebrows, which is normal, but how many times do you get surprised per day? People tend to use the eyebrow and forehead muscles too much. I have an occupational habit to check people's facial expressions all the time, and have noticed that lots of people use the brow and forehead muscles unnecessarily. Every time you do the upward movement there, the eye muscles become weak, because they are connected. Because with age, forehead muscles become stronger and we depend on the forehead too much. The eye and forehead/eyebrows are a set. In other words, if you train the eye muscles, you don’t have to use the forehead. The forehead habit is a muscle memory.
Bad Facial Habit #2
Every time you touch the face, especially eye makeup, you might be activating the forehead. It's human nature to do so as a habit, you don’t have to. You can do eye makeup without raising the brows. You just need to be conscious. To make things worse, it stretches the upper eyelids. With age, upper eyelid starts saggy and it can form even triple eyelids and wrinkles. In addition to the 2 exercises above, please be conscious not to make the 2 habits. When I was in my late 20s (Currently 44 years old), I noticed that if I keep doing the forehead movement, I’d cause wrinkles on the forehead. At that time, I didn't know much about this relationship with the eye, but my instinct told me to keep relaxing the forehead for forehead wrinkle reduction. It was such a great idea if I think about it now. By the way, you don’t want to do eyebag fat removal before trying the natural methods. I learned that if you remove the fat under the eye, it might be okay temporarily, but later you might get hollow, because you lost the fat there. Once you surgically lose it, you cannot get it back even if you do a lot of workout there. It's good to try something natural. If it works, that's great. If it doesn't work, you can think about medical procedures.