Facial Fitness Exercises

Anna Lynn C. Sibal

Being beautiful on the outside is all about keeping the face young and looking healthy. We know that the absence of wrinkles and sags, as well as having taut, toned, smooth and glowing skin are the signs of youthful and healthy beauty. Some go through so much just to maintain the vigor and agelessness of their faces, so much that they would spend a fortune on face lifts and other procedures that would keep them looking as close to 18 years old as possible.

There is, however, an inexpensive way of retaining youthful beauty, and that is through observing a regular facial fitness routine - that is, exercising the muscles of your face. The idea behind facial fitness is similar to the principle of doing a body workout: by exercising, you build up the muscles of your body and keep them toned and firm.
In case of the face, by exercising the facial muscles regularly, the muscles will be lifted enough to remove the sags, and the skin - sunny glow will be smoothened enough to remove the wrinkles. The blood circulation to the face will also increase with facial exercises, enabling the tissues of the face to repair themselves more quickly.

Maintaining a regular facial fitness routine is easy. It only takes a few minutes of your time and it can be done while watching television or waiting for the stoplight to turn green when driving. Here are a few sample exercises for different areas of the face.

Forehead. This will smooth down the wrinkles of the forehead. Place your fingers just above your brow. Then, with your fingers, pull the skin down. At the same time, try to raise your eyebrows. Repeat this ten times.

Eyelids. To deal with crows' feet at the corners of the eyes, put the thumbs at the corners of the eyes and then shut your eyes tightly. Then, with your thumbs, pull at the skin towards the forehead. Repeat this ten times.

For sagging eyelids, hold your index fingers close to the brow bone. Afterwards, raise your eyebrows. At the same time, try to close your eyes. Again, repeat this ten times.

Cheeks. Form an 'O' with your lips and try to push them forward as fast as you can. Then release the 'O' and smile as widely as you can. Repeat ten times.

Lips. Push your lips outward in a pout as far as you can, then smile. Or you can suck on your finger as hard as you can. Once again, repeat ten times.

Neck. Arch your neck backward and place your hand on your neck just under the chin. After that, let your hand slide downward and push at your collarbone. An alternative to this one would be to push your lower lip outward as far as you can and tilt your chin up toward the ceiling, resting the hand against the collarbone as you are doing so.

Chin. Push your lower lip upward as high as you can. You can also press your thumb on the bone just under your chin and then push your tongue against your lower gums as if it is trying to meet your thumb. Another thing you can do is to tilt your chin up and massage the flesh under it with your thumb with strokes directed towards your neck. These exercises will take care of the double chin.

Just like in total body workouts, facial fitness exercises take time. However, if you truly want to see results on your face, try doing this once or twice a day, five times a week. You will be able to see changes in around a month or two.

Serenity and the Road to Beauty

By Anna Lynn C. Sibal

Beauty is not always about how you look, what you are wearing or how you smell. Despite societys current emphasis on what looks good, hip or cool, beauty that puts so much stock on the physical and takes into account only these small things is at best superficial.

What definitely counts as true, real beauty is not judged by how the palette you used for your makeup matches your skin coloring, or if the clothes you wear flatter your figure, or if your hairdo is nice and trendy. These are only our feathers; they make us look beautiful, but not entirely so. Physical beauty fades. We can diet all we want, we can stay the aging for as much as we can, but that is a fact of life: like a flower past its bloom that is slowly wilting away, physical beauty passes from its full bloom and slowly fades away.

What counts for true beauty is what you are inside, the peace and serenity that you hold inside your heart. Having peace and serenity inside your heart is not just some newfangled new age thing. It has benefits to both your body and your mind.

Having inner peace and serenity reduces the amount of stress you are experiencing and strengthens your mind and your person into taking more challenges and facing them more solidly and staunchly as they come. We all know the merits of living a stress-free life. If our bodies experience as little stress as possible, it makes us less susceptible to diseases like respiratory infections, digestive problems, and even all sorts of cancer. Stress, after all, weakens our immune system, and it is our immune system that keeps the disease-causing bacteria and microbes in check. Living a stress-free life drives the diseases away.

The more visible benefit of having inner peace and serenity in our hearts and minds is that the quiet we have inside us radiates outward. It makes us warm, it makes our skin glow radiantly, and it makes us smile. More importantly, it makes us look younger.

Another thing about gaining inner peace and serenity is that you do not have to spend money to be able to get it. How much do we spend on new outfits every year? How much do we spend on makeup, skin care and cosmetics? How much does cosmetic surgery cost nowadays? Gaining inner peace and serenity does not cost money, only time.

Unfortunately, our daily lives do not afford us much time for the simple rituals necessary in attaining inner peace and serenity. All of us are always busy rushing from task to task, struggling to fill in our roles as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, career women, and whatever roles we need to fill in our lives. There are so many things that need to be done and yet so little time to do it.

But the rituals needed to gaining inner peace and serenity are so simple and do not take much time. It can be as simple as taking a walk by yourself at the same time every day, leaving everything behind and focusing on just taking in the sights, the sounds and the smells you encounter as you do your walks. Or it could be as simple as closing your eyes for five minutes each day at the same day, not to take a power nap but to blank your mind out for just a short while, just to give your mind a rest.

Gaining inner beauty and serenity is not a quick fix, but it is not hard to do. All it takes is the commitment to set some time for yourself and to connect your mind to everything that is around you. The benefits are so great, a lot more beneficial than constant dieting or having Botox on your skin. Be beautiful, not just on the outside, but also within.