Face massage: a five-step guide for home

What to prepare

• Clean skin: Remove make-up and wash your face and hands. Massage clean skin only, otherwise you work dirt and sebum into it.
• Something to glide: Two to three drops of facial oil or a hazelnut-sized amount of your usual cream. Without it the skin drags, and that is exactly what you want to avoid.
• Short nails, no rings: You work with your fingertips. Long nails scratch, rings press.
• Posture: Sit upright and rest your elbows on a table. This keeps your shoulders relaxed, so you are not pushing from your neck.
• Pressure: The skin moves with your fingers but is never pulled out of shape. Under the eyes, the weight of one finger is enough.

The guide in five steps

1. Forehead

Place the fingertips of both hands in the middle of your forehead, just above the eyebrows. Stroke slowly outwards to the temples. Start the next stroke one finger-width higher, until you reach the hairline. Then gently take your eyebrows between thumb and index finger and work from the inner to the outer end in small pinches. This releases the tension between the brows that many people build up while concentrating. Time: about one minute.

2. Temples

Lay your fingertips flat on your temples and briefly clench your teeth. What moves now is the temporal muscle. Let your jaw relax again and circle slowly, ten times in each direction. Medium-firm pressure is fine here. If you find tender spots on the temple, hold them for 30 seconds. How to do this exactly is explained in Releasing trigger points in the jaw.

3. Jaw

The chewing muscle lies about two finger-widths in front of your earlobe and turns hard when you bite down. Open your mouth slightly so your teeth do not touch. Stroke with your fingertips or the middle joints of your fingers from the cheekbone down to the angle of the jaw, six to eight times. Then stroke along the lower jawline from chin to ear. This step takes longest, a good two minutes, because people who grind their teeth at night hold most of their tension here.

4. Cheeks and eye area

With flat fingers, stroke from beside the nose along underneath the cheekbone outwards to the ear. Under the eyes, use only your ring finger, as it is naturally your weakest. Tap lightly from the inner to the outer corner of the eye. Never press on the eyeball itself. Finish with small circles beside the nostrils. Time: about one minute.

5. Neck

Tilt your head slightly to one side. Using a flat hand, stroke from the ear down along the side of the neck to the collarbone, very lightly and five times on each side. Leave out the front of the neck. That is where the larynx and the carotid artery lie, and wherever you can feel a pulse, you do not press. If your neck still feels tense afterwards, you will find exercises in Neck pain: what really helps?.

Hands, roller or device

Gua sha stones and face rollers make exactly these movements, just with a smooth, cool surface. It feels different, but whether it achieves more has not been studied well. For this guide you need no tools at all.

It is a different matter for the eye area after a long day at a screen. An eye massager places air cushions and warmth over your eyes, temples and part of your forehead, without you having to lift your hands. What it can and cannot do is explained in What does an eye massager do?. You will find the models under Eye massagers. For the neck, which often adds to jaw tension, there are neck massagers with heat.

What is supported by evidence and what is not

Mood and stress: In a Japanese study, 32 healthy women received a 45-minute face massage. Afterwards their scores for anxiety and negative mood were lower. Measurements of heart rhythm held a surprise: it was not the calming part of the nervous system that became more active, but the stimulating one. The authors interpret this as a refreshing effect. A face massage therefore tends to wake you up rather than make you sleepy, which makes it a good fit for the morning. The study is small and some years old.

Jaw: A review analysed 48 studies on manual techniques and exercises for jaw joint disorders. Manual techniques at the jaw or the cervical spine showed promising effects on pain and mouth opening. The quality of the evidence was low, however, and the authors speak of great uncertainty.

Wrinkles: Here the honest answer is no. We are not aware of any controlled study in which a face massage measurably reduced wrinkles. The work often cited in this context is a 20-week pilot study with middle-aged women. What it examined, though, was facial exercise, meaning active muscle training, not massage. A pilot study shows whether a larger study is worthwhile. It proves nothing.

Detox and depuffing: Light strokes towards the ear and down the neck can feel depuffing after a short night. How long any visible change lasts has not been studied. Claims about detoxing are not supported by evidence.

When to skip it or ask first

• Inflamed skin, pustules, eczema, cold sores, sunburn or open areas: leave out the affected spot, otherwise you spread germs.
• Recent fillers or Botox: ask the clinic that treated you how long to wait before pressing on these areas.
• After surgery on the face, jaw or teeth, only massage once you have been given the all-clear.
• If you take blood-thinning medication, be especially gentle, as bruises form more easily.
• Facial pain of unclear cause, shooting pain, numbness, swelling with fever or a jaw you can barely open: have this checked by a doctor or dentist before you massage.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I massage my face?

A few minutes every day is fine as long as your skin stays calm. If it turns very red or starts to burn, take a break for a few days and use less pressure.

Which oil is suitable?

Whatever your skin tolerates. For blemish-prone skin, a light cream is often a better choice than a heavy oil. Test anything new on a small area of your chin first.

Does a face massage help with headaches?

Tension in the temporal and chewing muscles is often felt as a headache at the temple, and massage there can feel pleasant. Please have new, very severe or unusual headaches checked by a doctor.

Sources

• Hatayama T, Kitamura S, Tamura C et al. (2008): The facial massage reduced anxiety and negative mood status, and increased sympathetic nervous activity. Biomedical Research. doi:10.2220/biomedres.29.317
• Armijo-Olivo S, Pitance L, Singh V et al. (2016): Effectiveness of Manual Therapy and Therapeutic Exercise for Temporomandibular Disorders: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Physical Therapy. doi:10.2522/ptj.20140548
• Alam M, Walter AJ, Geisler A et al. (2018): Association of Facial Exercise With the Appearance of Aging. JAMA Dermatology. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2017.5142

This article does not replace medical advice.