The face becomes longer with age because overworking muscles (Red muscles here) in the mentalis and others tend to get stronger downward with age. If you want to shorten the face, you should try to reduce the tension there. Unveil the secrets to achieving a more refined, balanced, shorter face with three transformative Koko Face Yoga and Face Posture® tips.
1. Optimize Resting Face Posture® for a Harmonious Look:
This is the most important thing. Resting Face Posture®, because your face is resting all the time, almost more than 23 hours per day, every single day. You can keep your mouth closed, but still, you can drop the jaw, right? That’s the posture you might be doing unconsciously. This physically lengthens the face and stretches the skin downward.In addition to closing the mouth and nose and breathing, keep a tiny, tiny smile up, it's like a chin strap. Although I personally don't use it because it's uncomfortable, I think a chin strap is good for you. If you have a bad habit to keep dropping your jaw all the time, a chin strap would help lift the jaw up to close the mouth. I have so much respect for people who sleep with them. I wish I could do it, but it is too uncomfortable for me. With age, the chin muscle (mentalis) becomes stronger and it drops the jaw bone down. But with a chin strap, ti's so hard to keep dropping the jaw, which is good.The good news is that you can create a natural chin strap without a physical chin strap, by creating a tiny smile all the time. A tiny smile is a replacement for a chin strap. The zygomaticus major and minor muscles are like the strap part. (The blue in the cheeks here). By the way, you guys know that we offer sleep tape, which is great to keep your mouth shut and lift the jaw up while sleeping. Although the chin strap is too uncomfortable to wear in bed, this sleep tape is so comfortable and you’ll forget wearing it. With the lifted resting Face Posture®, you keep lifting up the maxilla bone,which lifts up the face.
One experiment that I would like you to try is good and bad body postures. I want you to feel the there is tension in the chin, by changing from good body posture to bad,and bad to good. Do you feel the difference in the chin? Don’t you feel lighter in the chin when you have good body posture? A lot of people overlook the importance of reducing chin tension. If you think you don’t have any chin tension, probably you just don’t know and there is bad tension there. The more chin tension you have, it drops the face down, because chin tension is like a dumbbell. Imagin your chin is holding dumbbell all the time, and by looking down, the weight gets heavier, right? But if you position your head above your butt, the weight is less. Body posture changes the game here, Another experiment is about Mewing tongue Posture®. If you don’t know where the tongue should be in the mouth, please watch the video Mewing 101. You on purpose put your tongue down aka unmew. Don’t you feel chin tension? Then keep your tongue up and flat. Isn’t the weight in the chin slightly reduced?
In other words, it is important to keep mewing Tongue Posture® and good body posture at the same time. Those 2 work as a set. Please let me know if these experiments work for you or not.
2. Release Jaw Tension and Promote Facial Harmony:
Let's do the buccal massage to reduce chin tension directly, from inside out. Place your finger in the mouth. Make sure that you don't have sharp nails. It's painful, but that’s the evidence of tension to be reduced. You can also do shiatsu, instead of wiggling. Whichever you feel good is fine. I like buccal massage because it’s closer to the muscles, and more effective than massaging from outside. You can do the buccal massage every time you take bath, shower, or washing your face. If you want to do it but the timing doesn’t allow using water, try from outside by hands or even massage guns. I really like using smaller massage guns on my face because I learned from my sensei facial chiropractor/dentist that stimulation on periosteum (layer on the bones) produces glycosaminoglycan, which becomes proteoglycan, root of collagen and elastin, That's another official chiropractic technique. If you are interested in the technique, check our video with the sensei.
3. Exercise to reduce and shorten our face:
I know that I keep saying the same thing over and over. Relax chin tension. One of my favorite exercises is this. Place the index fingers slightly below the nasolabial lines, and lift up the cheeks to look like a cute hamster. Actually, this exercise is listed in our book, as “Smile Hamster Exercise”. Anyway, lift up your cheeks to look like a Hamster and then look down to feel the gravity. Lift up the cheeks even higher. Do you see the blurry nose and cheeks? You should. And then of course, the tongue is up and flat. Then slowly come back to the front. Keep your shoulders down to relax, and then of course, keep the tongue up. Then let's do a cheek smile. Imagine that your chin does not exist anymore. Only cheeks are alive. Show upper teeth only. Never show lower teeth. Only cheeks are active. Your chin is dead. Keep the cheek smile for 10 seconds, Then slowly, slowly take off the finger, but keep the cheek smile. That's it. Do you feel the difference? Do you feel more cheeks are active and chin is relaxed? That's the idea. I want you to feel the state that when your chin is relaxed, and cheeks are more active.I hope you feel the difference. Do this exercise once a day, to feel the difference. Even if you don’t, keep doing to feel it. As always, practice makes progress.
Summary:
First, keep a good resting Face Posture®. Remember the chin strap story. By using your natural chin strap aka Zygomaticus Major and Minor muscles to create a tiny smile, your jaw is lifted, which results in a shorter face. Second, buccal massage to reduce chin tension. Third, Hamster smile Face Yoga exercise to relax chin. Place your index fingers slightly below laugh lines, and lift up the cheeks. Look down to feel gravity and lift up even higher. Keep your tongue up and flat, mewing position. At this point, imagine that your chin is dead. Only cheek ups are alive. Smile with cheek muscles only without engaging the chin. Keep the cheek smile for 10 seconds, slowly leave the fingers off but keep the cheek smile for another 10 seconds or even longer. Once you know what kind of feeling it is without chin tension, then you can try to do that whenever you feel, without the exercise.
Please remember that this is not a quick fix. Quick fixes don’t last long, so you have to do it on a regular basis for a long time. Try at least for a couple weeks to see the result.