Face Pilates

Visit www.kinesispilatesdenver.com/face-pilates for our new Intro Face Pilates Online Course.

You probably never thought about exercising your face muscles before. But in Pilates, we believe all muscles—small and large—need to be trained. Why wouldn’t that include the 50+ muscles of the face, head, and neck?

Exercise of the facial muscles is called a lot of things—face yoga, face gymnastics, facersize. Since I teach Pilates, I’ll be calling it Face Pilates. But regardless of the name, it is just exercise and tissue manipulation/massage of the face and neck. Face Pilates is sometimes performed by the muscles alone and sometimes with resistance provided by the hands (you may be relieved that no equipment with springs is involved).

My interest in face exercise has slowly been building for a decade. It began when one of my children needed Orofacial Myology, which is basically physical therapy for the mouth and face. To see how regular exercise could change the shape and function of his mouth was impressive. Then I saw a rolfer and a cranial sacral therapist who would massage inside my mouth and cheeks with great results. Then I underwent vocal cord surgery in 2018, and a huge piece of my recovery was exercise as well as deliberate relaxation of muscles in the mouth and neck. The final straw was when COVID struck and the necessity of face masks made me change the way I used my jaw to speak, sometimes causing muscular soreness and headaches. All these experiences made me realize that I wanted to give dedicated attention to the tiny muscles of my face, jaw and neck.

While my primary interest in beginning a face exercise program was better use of facial muscles and reduced pain, it wasn’t lost on me that training these muscles may also change the appearance of my face (before and after photos below). I’m in my 40s and have been noticing small changes to my face—dark under eye circles, a hollowness and thinning of the face, wrinkles—that I would like to slow or reverse without botox and surgery. I want my face to feel and look as young as my body does thanks to Pilates. It would be nice to be able to change the function, as well as form, of my face with one natural and affordable approach.

When you exercise, only muscles that are specifically used experience an increase—about tenfold!—in circulation and the myriad of benefits that come from more vascularization, blood flow, oxygen, and nutrients, as well as improved waste removal. So while I was doing Pilates and movement for my body every day, none of the muscles of my face were benefiting from all that exercise. In fact, I know from pictures that if anything, I tense my face in unproductive ways while performing Pilates (see in these photos how I inadvertently elevate my eyebrows while performing spinal extension…)

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I began with a Face Yoga program from Glowinface, and expanded into a variety of other face exercises from a host of experts in the field. I combined it with massage techniques and acupressure I have learned from therapists over the years. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to activate muscles I had little control over and felt emotional and psychological changes after exercising my face. After teaching Face Pilates to some of our teachers and clients, they had this to say about the experience:

• I really enjoy face pilates. It’s great stress relief.

• My face feels so strong. Smiling feels great. It’s easier to do.

• The self massage really reduces tension and helps with headaches.

• I love the way my face feels. I literally feel uplifted.

• If I practice before bed, I feel more relaxed going to sleep. And it helps with my TMJ.

• I didn’t like opening my mouth wide before because it hurt.  I would cut my apples instead of eat them whole.  I notice now it’s easier to open my mouth.

Just like all exercise programs, consistency is the key. Practicing daily means the face muscles, connective tissue and skin get regular increased circulation and toning. Personally, it took at least a month to notice better control of my face muscles and reduced headaches when wearing a face mask, and close to two months to see visible changes to my face. The good news is that it’s easy to sneak into your day, like when you’re reading a book, while waiting at a stoplight, or when you first wake up but want to stay in bed a bit longer.

One of the best things about self awareness and improved muscle control is not just that you can move your face differently, but also that you can relax those muscles when not using them. Reduced facial tension can mean less headaches, less jaw clenching, fewer wrinkles caused by tension (like pursed lips and furrowed brows), and a plumper feeling to the tissue. There’s also a noticeable mood boost from this type of self care. Especially right now when we’re seeing fewer faces and communicating less with our faces, it’s very satisfying to spend time closely connected to your own face or the face of your virtual teacher, especially in the sometimes amusing exercises (who wouldn’t feel better after watching themselves make “funny faces” in the mirror?) See this meta-analysis for more on this.

Want to give Face Pilates a try? Starting on Friday October 2nd 2020, we’re launching a 10-week virtual Face Exercise and Massage course. (The next session will begin March 12, 2021—sign up here). Consistent exercise and massage of the face and neck can give you:

• Increased self awareness, especially of expressions you make inadvertently while focusing on other tasks.

• Increased control of facial muscles.

• Increased tone and volume of facial muscles, which has the potential to change the appearance of your face (note in the before and after photo how my eyes have brightened and the area between the nose and upper lip has plumped).

• Increased strength and resting tone in the neck.

• Increased circulation to the muscles, connective tissues, and skin of the face and neck, changing the color/tone and health of your skin (note in the before and after photo how much pinker my skin looks).

• Increased potential for angiogenesis—the growth of new blood vessels.

• Deep relaxation of not just the face, head, and neck but also the mind and spirit.

• Increased range of motion in joints like the jaw.

• The potential to reduce tension in the jaw and tension headaches.

• The potential to balance out asymmetries of the face (note in the before and after photo how my eyebrows are a little more symmetrical).

• The potential to better control vocal projection, resonance and articulation by relaxing the muscles that choke our voice and strengthening the ones that form speech.

• A simple way to self care that doesn’t require as much energy and motivation as exercising your whole body and can easily be incorporated into your daily routine.

Update:

We now offer our Intro Face Pilates course as an online option, worth 6 CECs for Certified Pilates Teachers. Learn more on our Face Pilates Page.

Out of Control or In Control?

When life feels out of control, unpredictable, and scary, remember that you have a movement method originally called Contrology.  The science of control. 

You may not be able to control what's going on around you, but you have control over some things. 

You have the chance to spend part of every day moving mindfully, thoughtfully, with intention.  You have the chance to breathe deeply, put all your joints through their full range of motion, coordinate your movements, forget about your troubles, and focus on yourself. 

Life may be uncertain, but you can have moments of certainty, calm, clarity.  You can choose to take control of the things you can control and by doing so, feel empowered.

We're here to help.  Our studio has gone virtual and we have multiple options to keep you practicing the coordination of mind, body, and spirit at home. If none of our options meet your needs, just reach out and we're happy to help craft a solution that does.  

How Pilates Prevents Injury and Improves Tissue Health

Joseph Pilates said in his 1945 book Return to Life that we should not “devote ourselves only to the mere development of any particular pet set of muscles…” The term “pet muscles” is exactly right, even 85 years later. We do have muscles we love more than others, and requests to work the abs, glutes, and triceps are abundant. But what about iliacus, quadratus femoris, or supraspinatus?

Rather than training specific muscles with intensity while completing neglecting others, Joseph Pilates believed we should work towards the uniform development of our whole body. And here are two important reasons why.

Injury Prevention

When you develop your big gross motor movers, like the quads and glutes and lats, without training the smaller muscles that stabilize the spine or support the joint, you create an imbalance. The big muscle is likely already stronger, relatively speaking, then the smaller, supporting muscles. And by focusing your training on it, you exacerbate that imbalance. Now when the bigger, stronger muscle pulls on your bones, the smaller muscles will struggle to balance its pull—and voila, the risk of injury increases. It’s like hanging a really heavy painting on a very thin wall. The wall just can’t support it. And your spine, or your shoulder, or whatever other joint you want to think of, can’t always support the strong pull of your gym-developed big muscles.

Improved Circulation is Specific

As if injury prevention wasn’t a strong enough motivation to work all your muscles in an even, balanced way, there’s more. We tend to think that exercise of any kind increases health to the whole body. But not exactly. When you use your muscles, the contraction of that muscle helps pulls blood to the area from the capillaries—bringing oxygen and nutrients to the tissues and removing waste products. However, when you exercise your legs, this affect does not occur in your upper body. Only the areas of the body you use get the improved circulation, nutrition, and waste removal. If you want that kind of health for all your tissues, you have to work all your tissues. That includes your feet, your hands, and your neck. Definitely not the pet muscles you were hoping to strengthen, but ones that need strength, range of motion, movement, and circulation just as much as your six-pack abs.

Multi-tasking Exercise

Joseph Pilates wanted you to work your whole body in every exercise. First of all, that’s highly efficient. We don’t really have time to isolate each muscle and work it effectively every day. But Pilates exercises are also multi-tasking exercises—rather than an isolating clamshell for your deep six rotators, you’re going to do side kicks, which works not only your hip’s external rotators, but also your hip abductors, flexors, extensors, as well as your knee extensors and foot dorsi and plantar flexors, and depending on your form, even your stabilizing shoulder, obliques, and your non-active or standing legs abductors too. Phew! That’s a lot of muscles to work in a single exercise. If you’re aware of your whole body in every Pilates exercise, you can benefit multiple areas at once, ensuring more parts of your body benefit from improved circulation and waste removal, and ensuring a better chance of uniform development of your body that will help prevent injury.

So don’t play favorites. Work everything. Give every muscle some love and attention, and better yet, do it in whole body exercise!

Bye bye butts?

Do you ever people watch and notice the details of their anatomy? Sure you notice their hair, clothes, shoes. But what about their body—how they walk, how they hold their head, the shape of their backside?

In being a keen observer of human bodies and in teaching movement for thousands of hours, a trend becomes clear—as a whole, the people of sedentary cultures like ours have lost their butts. Where have they gone?!

Tilted vs. Neutral Pelvis

When you stand on your legs, ideally the pelvis is perched atop them in what we call a “neutral pelvis.” To see if yours is neutral, place the palms of your hands on the top front of the pelvic bones (anatomically referred to as the ASIS—anterior superior iliac spine) and your finger tips onto your pubic bone making a triangle with your hands. If this triangle is perpendicular to the floor, your pelvis is neutral. If the pubic bone is forward in relation to the top of the pelvis, we call this a pelvic tilt. In this case, a posterior pelvic tilt, or what you might call a tuck. We can tilt the pelvis when standing, sitting, laying down. And when the top of the pelvis tilts back while the base of the pelvis tilts forward, the butt and all its muscles are somewhat tucked under and likely clenched. The majority of people who come to our studio lay on the reformer on day one in such a position.

Triangle hands can help you notice whether your pelvis is tipped or “neutral.”

But people haven’t just tucked their butts out of the way. They’ve pushed their pelvis forward in space and essentially hung all its weight onto the ligaments in the front of the hip and the hip flexor muscles. This alignment of the bones makes the quads grip eccentrically to keep you upright and renders the hamstrings and gluteal muscles unable to participate in keeping you up. You’ve found a way to stand without using your backside. Yay for energy conservation, bummer for the function of your joints and development of the muscles that support them.

Sitting behind the sitz bones in a posterior pelvic tilt.

Sitting Pelvis

We reinforce this pattern in the way we sit. Rather than perch atop our sitz bones, many of us roll back behind them. Again a posterior pelvic tilt, this time putting pressure and stretch on the low back as well as the hip flexors to keep us upright. We sure are fans of sagging and hanging because let’s face it, it’s easier. Until the structures of your back start to wear out (discs!), your body signals pain, and then you head to the Pilates studio for help.

Walking Pelvis

The result of the way we align our bones is that we don’t use our glutes well. If we don’t use them to stand, then when we start moving from standing to walking, we aren’t going to use them either. Rather than truly extend our hips with each step, we shuffle by pulling forward with our quads and hip flexors. I used to stand and walk this way myself. And when I touched my backside, it was always cold. Cold because I wasn’t using it and bringing blood, circulation and warmth via muscle contraction.

So where did all the butts go? We aligned our bones so that we don’t use the muscles of our backside properly. We clench them to tilt our pelvis rather than use them to extend our hips. Or said another way, we use them to shove the pelvis onto the femur, rather than hold the pelvis up and move the femur in the pelvis.

Can glute exercises solve this?

When you notice the disappearance of your backside, you may head to the gym to try to train these muscles into a nice shapely rear. Yet your biomechanical habits remain and as soon as you leave, you’re back to using them as you always have. A movement coach like a Pilates teacher may point out that your pelvis is posteriorly tilted or tucked, but unless you unwind these patterns well, you may arch your lumbar to pull your pelvis into neutral, which ultimately is very tiring for the low back.

Get Your Butt Back

First we need to align the bones, release the clench that shoved the pelvis under, find the core stability to keep the pelvis neutral, and use the hamstrings and glutes to extend the hips as intended. And voila, before you know it, you may find your butt resuming its shape (and along with it, happier, less tight hamstrings and a pelvic floor that is aligned to do its job).

But don’t come complaining to us when you need new jeans. Or better yet, toss the tight jeans for clothes you can actually move in so that you can continue to use your new strong butt to get you from here to there.