It’s time to face your yoga. Literally. We’re hearing about face gyms popping up and you know what that means: we must brace ourselves for the face yoga craze.
Yes, we said face gym. And this could potentially lead to the next biggest thing in yoga outside of secret underground meditation sessions and detox/retox brewery-asana. A new one of these said facial gymnasiums just popped up in NYC’s South Street Seaport where customers with assumingly saggy and out of shape faces can come for a 15-minute workout for an eyebrow-raising $15.
A workout at Skin Gym Face Fitness involves using stretchy orange resistance bands and kissing tongue depressor-like objects in front of a mirror.
“We’ve got 57 muscles in our face,” co-owner Kate Gyllenhaal of the new Skin Gym Face Fitness told DNAInfo. “Working them out, training them, is just as important as the rest of the body. We like to say, ‘Why stop at the neck?'” said Gyllenhaal who’s also a personal trainer.
We agree, why stop at the neck when you can convince people to pay money for what we can accomplish with some stale milk duds and an homage to Macaulay Culkin’s unforgettable shaving scene in “Home Alone”?
Of course, face yoga and facial exercises aren’t so new and we can think of a few occupations where it would be beneficial. Singers, speakers, actors, mimes, face-pulling champions, and probably eating contest participants(?) are great candidates for some facial contortion workouts. And, hey, on the cosmetic spectrum, it’s cheaper and safer than Botox or plastic surgery.
And yet, we echo the sentiment of Jezebel writer Anna Merlan when she said: Dammit to hell, is this something else I have to worry about? We already work so hard trying to relax our dang faces in yoga (and life) so this seems somewhat counterintuitive. There’s no real scientific evidence that a facial workout will make a difference, but people still dig it, either because it feels good or they’re deathly afraid of looking old. There are all kinds of exercise gadgets and beauty tips to help us fight the dreaded “fine lines” and, heaven forbid, wrinkles by firming our faces and necks. Does it work? Eh. It might help you tear through that kale a little easier, though.
If you want to give it a try at home, go ahead and follow along with this wildly entertaining 80s how-to video featuring Greer Childers. Lion pose never looked so wild and mane-ly.
Follow it up with some eye yoga led by Sir Paul McCartney.
In addition to jaws-ercise, Skin Gym Face Fitness also offers facial massages which we would totally be up for. People really underestimate the amount of tension held in the face and head (see: relaxing face in yoga class, and life).
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