Marionette lines (also known as laugh lines) are often associated with aging. However, it is not unusual to notice indications of such lines even as early as your 20s. While they are perfectly natural and absolutely nothing to feel self-conscious about, you may have personal reasons why you wish to have them removed.
What Can Cause Laugh Lines?
To give you context into why facial exercises work to reduce the appearance of laugh lines, let us first look closer into why and how they can occur.
Laugh lines are wrinkles caused by reduced collagen production that emerges over time. As part of the natural aging process, your skin can lose its elasticity and look more stretched. Other causes of laugh lines involve frequent exposure to the sun and inadequate nutrition.
Many different methods help reduce the appearance of marionette lines, some being more invasive than others. One of the less invasive techniques to minimize laugh lines involves habitually performing facial exercises (in other words, taking part in face yoga).
Face yoga can be highly advantageous in helping you to remove laugh lines. They are easy to perform and can also be an enjoyable part of your routine.
Best Facial Yoga Exercises To Treat Laugh Lines
Several muscles in your face may stand to benefit from frequent exercise. As such, this is where face yoga comes into play. Face yoga involves numerous activities to help tone and strengthen your muscles.
This article will cover six different exercises that are very easy to implement in your daily life. Before we start, it is essential to know that you must perform the exercises every day to yield effective and timely results. Furthermore, some activities pay the most benefits when you complete them twice a day.
1. The ‘O’ shape and tapping
The first exercise helps to strengthen the muscles between the mouth and the chin, where marionette lines would form. The ‘O’ shape exercise can be considered one of the most popular exercises in face yoga and has proven to be highly effective for many individuals.
During the exercise, you will notice that the form you shape the lower half of your face into results in no lines between your lips and chin. It strengthens the muscles between those areas and can promote increased circulation throughout your entire face, thus helping to reduce the appearance of laugh lines.
To complete this exercise, you will need to follow a series of manageable steps:
Step 1: Lower your jaw and shape your mouth into a distinct ‘O’ shape. You will notice that several sections of your lower face feel strained as the muscles form for this step. Continue to hold this shape for all of the following steps.
Step 2: Gently place the tips of your forefinger an inch below your lips near your jaw.
Step 3: Use the tips of your fingers to make small yet quick taps. Start from your jaw, go past your lips, and end at the sides of your nose.
Step 4: Quickly tap your fingers both up and down your face for 15 seconds
Step 5: Complete another set twice and stop.
2. The ‘L’ shape and lift
Along with strengthening the muscles between your lips and chin, this exercise can also help tone your lower jaw. This exercise uses your lips and hands to help further shape your lower face. It enables you to directly encourage the corners of your lips to lift upwards instead of downwards.
This exercise requires you to complete a few simple steps:
Step 1: Shape your left hand into an ‘L’ shape and your right hand into a backward ‘L’ shape. Next to each other, your hands should appear as if you are replicating the bottom half of a regular square shape.
Step 2: Place your hands on your face such that your thumbs rest towards the bottom half of your cheek. Your thumbs should be pointing towards each other and the rest of your fingers pointing upwards.
Step 3: Press your lips against each other so that you can no longer see them and hold that position for 5 seconds.
Step 4: Repeat step 3 twice.
3. Lipless smile
With this exercise, you can use the muscles directly around your lips while upwards pulling the skin above your chin. The lipless smile exercise helps reinforce the skin where laugh lines would often occur, thus helping to prevent them from forming.
To complete this exercise, you can follow a straightforward set of steps:
Step 1: Tighten your lips and hold them towards each other so that you can no longer see them. You will notice that the skin around your lips is kept tense in this shape.
Step 2: Place each forefinger on each corner of your lips gently.
Step 3: Hold that position and attempt to smile without showing your lips for 5 seconds. This action will strain your muscles in the area.
Step 4: Relax your muscles and repeat the process another two times.
4. Pucker exercise
This exercise involves the simple use of your lips without the need for hands. For this exercise, the main goal is to strengthen the section between your lips and nose.
When you make expressions, you often utilize the corner of your lips and your chin. Whether you’re smiling, laughing, or frowning, those areas are typically most used. It is an excellent idea to strengthen your upper lips and help lift the lower half of your face to reduce the appearance of laugh lines.
To help you perform this exercise effectively, below is a short sequence of actions that you can complete step-by-step:
Step 1: Shape your lips into a ‘pucker’ shape. You will likely notice that the skin between your nose and lips is curved upwards with this step. This shape helps improve blood circulation and firm up the muscles in the area.
Step 2: Hold that ‘pucker’ shape for at least 10 seconds and release the tension around the area.
Step 3: Repeat the process four times.
5. Pufferfish face
Several exercises help get your blood circulating nicely around your face. Blood circulation is important because it facilitates the cycling of blood, oxygen, and essential nutrients around your face. Good circulation can help to give you healthier skin and help you maintain your natural complexion.
The pufferfish face exercise is one exercise to help with blood circulation and muscle strengthening. To perform this exercise, you need to follow a series of steps:
Step 1: Puff out your face by ensuring that your lips touch tightly and fill your cheeks with air. This step involves pushing air towards your closed lips, giving the appearance of a pufferfish.
Step 2: Hold that position for 5 seconds, then push the air from the center of your face towards your left cheek.
Step 3: Hold that position for 5 seconds and push the air towards your right cheek.
Step 4: Continue holding that position for 5 seconds, then move the air towards your upper lip.
Step 5: Lastly, after 5 seconds, move the air onto your lower lips towards the chin area. It is important to note that you should feel resistance from those areas.
Step 6: Release the air by breathing and repeat the exercise twice.
6. Upper Lip Air Exercise
Strengthening your upper lips is an excellent method to help you achieve a lifted and firmer lower face. The upper lip air exercise intends to help firm up the muscles in your upper lip while also allowing you to strengthen the muscles in your cheek.
The upper lip air exercise can also help circulate blood and oxygen around your cheeks and lower face more effectively, therefore helping you get more nutrients into your skin.
For this exercise, there are a few simple and easy steps for you to follow:
Step 1: Ensure that your face is relaxed and untensed.
Step 2: Place 3 fingers (specifically your forefinger, middle finger, and index finger) on your upper lip in a line. The sides of all three fingers should be touching one another.
Step 3: Close your lips tightly and fill your cheeks with air. Start with centering the air towards your lips.
Step 4: Move the air to your left cheek and then transfer it towards your right cheek. Air should be moving between your left and right cheek at an average speed for this stage.
Step 5: Continue step 4 for 30 seconds and repeat once or twice in one session. It would be ideal for you to perform this exercise at least twice daily for best results.
Protect Your Smile With Facial Exercises
Utilizing the exercises listed above can help strengthen the muscles where marionette lines often appear, reducing the appearance of such lines and helping to lift your smile naturally.
To reiterate an important point, you must complete your chosen exercises daily, at whatever time is most convenient. Adding the activities to your daily routine helps firm up the muscles in your face and prevent marionette lines more quickly and more effectively.
Whichever exercise(s) you choose to incorporate into your routine, it is likely to yield considerably positive results in helping to remove marionette lines (as well as having other benefits to your face shape in general). Simple, non-invasive, and likely to bear fruit, facial exercises are worthwhile.