Even those who lead a healthy lifestyle can have bad habits — facial expressions. Those that make themselves felt by a sudden wrinkle or other aesthetic skin flaws. Why it is necessary to control the face and how to do it, says psychophysiologist Anastasia Dubinskaya.
Excessive emotionality
Usually our emotions are reflected in facial expressions. We can even carry on a conversation without uttering a word — everyone will speak for us with furrowed eyebrows or narrowed eyes. From the point of view of communication, active facial expressions are good, people like the emotional participation of the interlocutor.
However, this can seriously affect our appearance. “They are busy with their face,” the actors say about lovers of sweeping, overly active facial expressions. They know: you won’t get an Oscar for emotions replayed by the face, they are too pretentious.
Even if active facial expressions are useless on stage, why use it in real life? After all, the skin «remembers» our every facial movement.
«Working Side»
No mysticism — simple anatomy. We are all asymmetrical by nature: most of us have a dominant hand and a “working” side of the face, which is better in photographs. And this is absolutely normal.
But you should not emphasize this asymmetry by endlessly tensing the muscles on only one side of the face, for example, sarcastically raising the right corner of the mouth or raising an eyebrow in surprise.
Many people have such habits. A good example is the singer Laura Pergolizzi. During especially expressive performances, the wing of her nose sharply flies up, her zygomatic muscles “shoot out” — but only from one side.
If you don’t want noticeable wrinkles, creases and wrinkles to appear on one side of the face, try to keep facial expressions under control.
One of the steps to this is regular facial massage, which will help relax tense muscles, relieve clamps and restore symmetry to the face.
At the same time, not only “emotional” habits can be harmful to our appearance.
«Lazy» jaw
In mimic wrinkles and nasolabial folds, which on the one hand appear much more noticeable than on the other, often, oddly enough, our teeth are to blame. Or rather, how exactly we chew food with them.
By doing this with only one side of the jaw, we unconsciously «chew» for ourselves not only extra folds and wrinkles, but also orthodontic problems.
Due to the fact that on the one hand the teeth are erased, and the muscles tense much more than on the other, there is a serious distortion of the jaw, asymmetry increases.
On the chewing side, brightly marked cheeks, wrinkles and nasolabial folds appear. In addition, a large load on the temporomandibular joint can lead to its damage and functional impairment.
«Talking» neck
It is believed that the jaw and tongue are involved in articulation, but it turns out that often we also strain the neck, as a result of which we provoke problems with the lower jaw.
The fact is that the superficial muscles of the neck (platysma) are woven into the buccal region. Working during articulation not with the mouth, but with the platysma, we direct the tension vector down — to the chest region.
Thus, we form the habit of lowering the corners of the mouth during a conversation, as a result of which puppet wrinkles form, and the skin of the neck acquires an uneven relief — it becomes more flabby.
Checking how “talkative” your neck is is easy. Place your palm on it and read the next few paragraphs or your favorite poem loudly and with expression.
What do you feel? If the muscles are resting, great! Are you tense? Then it is worth weaning them from this bad habit.
Deep myofascial massage will help to relax the muscles of the neck, in which the fascia, the sheath of connective tissues surrounding the muscles, is affected. And in order to learn how not to turn them on during a conversation, it is better to contact a speech therapist or a specialist in speech technology.
Lip strain
Wrinkles around the mouth, sunken cheeks and thin lips appear as a result of constant tension in the muscles of the mouth.
Test yourself: put your fingers on either side of your lips and just swallow 10 times in a row. The lips should be relaxed: no compressed, compacted tissues. Do you feel your muscles tense? This means that any sip that you take during the day increases hypertonicity.
Overexertion of the muscles can be associated with the habit of resentfully pursing the lips or lowering the corners of the mouth, increasing surprise. Tip: “turn on” your lips only for delicious food, smiles and kisses, and for all sorts of trifles, try not to strain them.
So, to prevent all of the above:
- Control the face;
- Watch yourself, track your bad ingrained habits;
- Choose the right intonations, looks, gestures — they perfectly help to convey the necessary emotions without resorting to facial expressions;
- Massage your face to relax tight muscles. After all, it is when the muscles freeze in the contraction stage that wrinkles become permanent.