This technique is for Justin Bieber, and anyone else who might be interested in helping those suffering from facial paralysis. It will help people whose condition has just recently been diagnosed—rather than affecting them for a long time already. It would also be effective for people who were just diagnosed with paralysis, such as those who received the diagnosis within a few days or weeks ago.
I want to talk about face exercises. I know I'm a face instructor and I teach face exercises all the time, but please don't do them if you've recently gotten facial paralysis. It's not going to work. For example, Justin here has right-side paralysis. If you try moving this side, it doesn't work because the nerves are damaged and there's no way to move them. Only this side moves the active side only moves. If you're trying to do an exercise on both sides or just this one, it's not going to work either because only this side works and can cause more asymmetry after you recover from your injury (if it's not too severe). It can also cause more asymmetry in the long run if you try to move the paralyzed area—it's impossible!
1. Modiolus
The chin is the center of your face. It's where all your muscles start from, and it's next to your mouth. If you want to make sure that your face stays youthful, you don't want to stretch the skin around the chin and make it sag later on in life. So relax your chin and then lift up a little bit so that your skin stays taught, otherwise, it tends to go naturally down by itself—and then your thumb doesn't move at all inside. It moves only outside and looks like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; reverse 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; thumbs look like they're moving but I'm not trying to move them at all—I'm just moving them inside. And if you paralyze one side only (you can do this) or do both sides (it might be helpful), you'll feel the difference!
2. Buccinator
So the buccinator muscle is a muscle that's on the inside of your cheek, and it helps you to smile. It's like this little dimple area here. It's a little bit deeper down than your cheekbone.
And then again, not just moving inside it's moving around your mouth. So like when you smile, some people have cute dimples! I don't have them, but you might have them. They look like they're up and out here (indicating). And for purpose of this tutorial, I'm doing a quick version of the dimple exercise. But you can do it longer if you want!
3. The cheek muscle
The muscles that control our facial expressions are called the muscles of facial expression, and they're located in our cheekbones and around our eyes.
When you get facial paralysis, these muscles are in a deep sleep state and need to be woken up with a light massage. To do this, you can massage the zygomaticus major and minor muscles by placing your thumbs on either side of your nose and moving them toward the middle of your face. You want to do this at least twice a day for about five minutes at a time.
4. Chewing Muscle
The chewing muscle masseter muscles are famous for TMJ grinding. But even when you have facial paralysis, you can't chew. You still want to massage it!
So, we're going to press your finger here. Make sure your nail isn't too pointy or at least not so pointy that you're hurting yourself. The idea is that you want to get as much pressure as possible into this area. You can do this on both sides if you want, but the paralyzed side will probably feel more different or weird than the other side.
5. Temporalis Muscle
The temporalis muscle is a muscle that connects to the temple area and moves when you chew. It's connected to this muscle, this one, and this one. That's why when you chew you see movement in your temple area. It moves!
You can massage it yourself by pressing gently on the top of your head (where your hairline is) and moving your fingers toward your ear. You'll feel some resistance at first but eventually, it'll loosen up just keep massaging until it does!
6. Lateral Pterygoid Muscle
We're going to work on a muscle called the lateral pterygoid. It's another chewing muscle, so you'll use your fingers and follow the upper teeth. Start by following the upper teeth in a little bit up from where they meet your jaw, then back down. It's like the wisdom teeth area. Then do this—it's hard to do with a thumb this way, but it feels great! And then do the opposite, then massage as you drop your jaw. You could also do it like this: sandwich between two hands, with one hand cupping one side of your face and one hand cupping the other side of your face. This is especially helpful for paralyzed people who want to get their mouths open more easily.
7. Medial Pterygoid Muscle
When you're chewing, this muscle is really important for biting down and creating a lot of saliva in your mouth. But when you're paralyzed, it kind of loses its function. So it deteriorates over time and we want to wake up by doing massage therapy on these muscles.
Here's how: follow the upper teeth, then the lower teeth, then back to the upper again in between them is where you'll find the medial pterygoid muscle. Follow it until you hit a bone called the mandible bone, then go inside and feel for something long vertically that runs along the inside of your mouth—it might be hard to find at first but keep looking! Now when you close your mouth and bite down on something solid like an apple or potato chip or whatever else is on hand right now (lol), it will contract as well. Once you've found it, go ahead and rub that sucker until you see results!
So now that you've gotten a feel for how to do a buccal massage, let's quickly review the seven areas of buccal massage.
Number one: Modiolus up. This massages the muscles along the inner side of your cheeks and below your eyes.
Number two: The dimpled area, or dimple one—this massages the muscles around your mouth and chin.
Number three: The cheeks—you can do this for longer than I'm just doing here. You can also massage in a circular motion around your mouth and chin to massage these muscles as well.
Number four: Chewing muscle—the chewing muscle is located near where your upper teeth meet your lower jawbone and temple area.
And lastly… medial pterygoid muscle… follow the upper teeth and then a little bit up from there, as well as the lateral pterygoid muscle… hit both sides at once for an even better effect!
You can also add some extra touches like inside here this inside the wall, and then inside you'll feel the long vertical one then massage or not so much that it hurts but enough so that you're able to notice it.