*BONUS EP* A Varied Life

[00:00:15] I am having trouble with the left side of my face and I think I've got wisdom teeth coming through and you mentioned earlier in the episode one eyebrow is droopier than the other and I haven't really done, I've never done exercises I kind of press on what I'm doing but it's more painful The left side of my neck is very tight and I think it's literally down to stress Would you recommend face yoga for me?

[00:00:45] Because obviously I'm a wee bit sceptical and like kind of going yeah, mm-hmm is this really going to help? I would 100% suggest it I mean if you think, if you were saying that your jaw was say your knee imagine you were like I've got a really tight knee it's just really AK, it doesn't matter massaging helps a little bit but you wouldn't just leave that knee some days it's fine, some days it's not you would target it, you know, you would stretch it you would work it out, you would manipulate it you would get aids for it if you needed to

[00:01:12] Right enough, why have I never thought of that before? Yeah, and I think that's it with our face we'd just kind of be like, okay it's not that bad like it's fine, it's just in the morning or it's just at night time or because I'm tired but yeah, I mean jaw pain I mean do you cover from TMJ? What's that? That's, it's, it's wear basically do you keep trying at night? I, yeah I wear a guard at night on my bottom but I think I'm, I'm literally chewing through it

[00:01:41] oh god that sounds so awful yeah, I've done it since I was a kid be quite honest I would say you are a prime candidate for TMJ and basically what it is is our masseter muscle here which is your big muscle at the side just under your ear oh god it's really really big and strong it is, yeah and that's what you use to chew with but that is, it's like it's kind of overpowering your face you're grinding at night and you're, when you're grinding at night if you think if you were eating all the time you're constantly moving that muscle

[00:02:10] so that muscle's getting bigger and bigger stronger and stronger and it's causing you pain it's normal because I touch it it's quite sore that normal yeah, we actually carry so much tension in our jaws it's incredible even people like yourself you get, well you get jaw pain even people that are like oh I don't get jaw pain I'm alright you still have tension in your jaw even I do it doesn't matter how much exercises I do I always get relief on my jaw

[00:02:39] another place that we hold a lot of tension which you wouldn't believe is actually our eyebrows and it's something that you would yeah, my eyebrow one's droopier than the other here I don't know what the hell that's about yeah I have that as well I have a naturally eyebrow that's just, you know slightly raised up and I do a lot of tension release and I do a lot of taping on it just to release the muscle underneath but it will take your eyebrows are like perfectly in line and proportion mine, like look at that like I've got I've got a droopy eye yeah

[00:03:09] and it might not be that that one's droopy what it might be is that the other one your actual muscle is just pulling it up a little bit so it's not that that other one's droopy it's almost that oh look you've maybe got a wee bit of an overactive muscle on one side and it's just kind of tensing up so by relaxing that down it'll just make you feel a bit more balanced okay I'm eager please help me no do you want to do you want to do you want to do you want to do you want to make anything clear this droopy eyebrow that I've got on the leg

[00:03:38] we're going to start with just having some tappy fingers just now just to relax your face just to make contact with your face and then we're going to go over the eyebrows and then under the eyes and then we're going to tap over the cheekbones over the mouth down at the chin

[00:04:07] up the jaw and down the neck okay so we've made contact with our face now we're not wearing any face oil or anything like that so I'm not going to do anything that you would normally do with face oil because then that'll drag the skin okay so what we're going to do is we're going to start with the eyebrows first what we're going to do using our index finger and our thumb we're going to pinch at the corner at the start of our eyebrows so just at the start of it you're going to pinch oh that's pretty sore I think I just

[00:04:37] jagged myself with my neck yeah but you know work your fingers around so you're not yeah putting your nail on so just pinch for a couple of seconds and then we're going to release and move your hands a little bit further up the eyebrow and then pinch oh that feels nice yeah oh I'm not saying this will be tiny little wiggle just to release that tension yeah that feels like yeah and that's just the tension that you're holding there we don't think about it but we hope

[00:05:06] where does tension come from though yeah I mean like is it just stress of daily life or yeah it's just expressions over time maybe muscles compensating for another muscle because of how you're expressing and we're just going to do that one more time so go back to the start of your eyebrow pinch down into the muscle and we're not pulling the skin here and this is why it's maybe hurting because we're going to pinch right down into that muscle and our muscles here it's a bit of release though I'm like oh that feels like it's like yeah

[00:05:36] the muscle here this one it's right at the start of our eyebrows this is called our corrugator muscle and this helps you scowl you know if it's sunny outside and you were squinting oh yeah that can hold a lot of tension and it can pull your eyebrows down so it's just good to loosen it off oh my eye feels a bit wider is that right is that like it feels a wee bit like oh wow you just make it feel that little bit lifted and then what we're going to do now

[00:06:05] is we'll go down to the jaw and you might feel a little pain here but we're going to take our two fingers our index and our middle finger and our thumb and we're going to pinch our chin and we're going to go down to the muscle and then we're going to take the hands off and move up another little bit so we're almost that is sore right here uh-huh that's probably that's where I put my mouth guard or I can feel it but there's it's not sore it's just I feel like it's

[00:06:34] releasing something it's like yeah so that's what we're going to do we're just going to pinch it all the way up the jaw and when you get to this mass muscle here it's probably going to be a wee bit painful you're just going to pinch and you're going to go all the way up to your ear just under your ear and then we're going to go back to the chin and do it again so we're just using the first two fingers and our thumb to pinch and then move up with the jaw pinch move up the jaw pinch move up the jaw and you can do a little wiggle

[00:07:04] oh wow yeah and if you hear any crunching or feel any crunching underneath your fingers that is just tension you're working in your muscle yeah I know I sound like I'm probably making weird noises here but honestly why haven't I done this for my face you're right it's like if I had a sore back I would do exercises to stretch them out why am I not doing this for my face I know so what we do now we'll do it one side at a time

[00:07:34] just because you've got a sore jaw so you're going to make like a flat fist so you've got your knuckle sticking out and you're going to use yeah perfect you're going to use the sort of knuckles in your middle finger and your first two fingers and you're just going to go down from your ear to your masseter muscle there muscle pads on it and you're just going to do tiny little micro circles with your knuckles now this might be painful and you might feel just some

[00:08:04] relief I'm feeling a bit why don't you stop talking I want you just to breathe into it and if you feel a bit of pain just circle into it and we're just going to go around that masseter muscle really measuring and kneading it and then you can come down a little bit towards your chin and we're just using our knuckles like that feels it's said you feel my muscle moving around a little bit because it's so tight in my toe here

[00:08:35] and this is an exercise that you can also do with a gland shot if you don't want to use your fingers you and to and to other side I can feel like my ear as well because obviously I clenched

[00:09:05] my jaw there I get eerie and I just feel like there's some release almost in my ear yeah yeah and it's it's just activating all these little muscles that we we often don't think about and then just move it down slightly towards your chin that one's a bit and just keep massaging any little bits of pain or you can feel crunching just kind of micro circling into it

[00:09:36] and then just work down to the chin and then come off and then just to we're just going to do happy fingers up the jaw and you can be a little rougher here just tap tap tap tap tap just really trying and get all the attention when I'm moving my jaw up and down right now and there's little clicks in my ear but it's like a release it's not a pop but it's very it's like stretching my back you know because I do yoga because I have back problems and it just feels like that

[00:10:05] oh that's great right I feel like yeah this is amazing thank you I want you to try this one I want you to make an O with your mouth like this with your teeth with your lips I did it wrong there oh no I'm saying with your lips over your teeth we're making an O shape like this and you're going to try and stretch your face out you know like the screen mask you know when it's like this like oh yeah yeah you could hear my jaw clicking there clicky jaw oh my god

[00:10:35] I just heard I do and that again that's the reason I did face yoga because I have all these issues so for me I've got to work out my jaws so that it doesn't get stiff and sore so you just make a nice O shape and you're your feet I know what you mean about the scream mask it might feel like

[00:11:05] my jaw is long yeah and you can close your eyes if you want just to get a further stretch my jaw just click in a good way wow I've been carrying too much tension in my face wow definitely okay so what we'll do now is we're just going to do a little bit of neck stretches so what I want you to do is just make sure you're sitting equally with your feet on the floor rested so your legs aren't crossed and what you're going to do is you're just going to put your head

[00:11:35] over to one side just gently and you're going to take that hand and just help your head go down a little bit more just pull it down ever so slightly and then what I want you to do with that head you're almost going to turn and look at your shoulder and just move your hands so that you're pulling your head down oh that's a big stretch yep just try and lower your shoulders a little bit looking around and then bring your head

[00:12:04] oh guys listening you have to do this oh it's a nice release isn't it I love doing this I do neck stretch again I get this would be great in the morning yeah I do neck stretches all the time I just get so tight but a neck stretch just I'm going to do the other one let's do it on the other side so head over and then just gently pull it down with your hand and then slowly

[00:12:34] turn your head look at your shoulder whoa it's just moving make sure your hand is just slowly back there I feel a bit taller yeah it's normal

[00:13:03] isn't it yeah yeah wow right we're going to do a funny one to finish a really good one this is a favourite at the events so this is going to work your neck your platysma muscles it's going to give it a nice another thing women getting older have you noticed people's necks just seems to be more the skin loosens a lot more and then because they've been working on so much of their face maybe using aesthetics so

[00:13:33] to prevent that you know what I mean is that absolutely I think as well what you think is that your neck gets baggier and saggier but actually the muscle underneath gets tighter and tighter and that can then pull your face it pulls at your face and that's what creates gel so what we need to do is we need to release I hate that word it's horrible it does sound like a turkey doesn't it it does it's like I just I mean you could have named it a lot better something that men don't suffer with as much but

[00:14:04] it's hard so what we're going to do we're going to put one hand on our chest and the other hand on top this is going to add a bit of resistance we're going to slowly look up to the ceiling and just feel that pull on your neck and then what you're going to do is you're going to almost try and stick your chin out like that it's quite tight yeah feel that muscle that's really tight yep it's much tighter than we think it is we think we have to tighten this muscle even more spitting anchor we need to stretch it out

[00:14:35] stretch out stretch out take a deep breath in and out and then we're going to keep our hands here but this time we're going to do an exercise called kiss the sky all you're doing kiss the sky you're going to look to your right hand side first you're going to look up you're going to feel that stretch in the neck from the side this time and you're just going to do kisses and we're going to do kiss

[00:15:05] it's called kiss the rainbow so we're going to do this and you have to make the noise are you going to go and what this is doing is it's working the neck it's working do you kiss like that Natalie kiss your husband like that like a little goldfish the rainbow

[00:15:35] and the rainbow and and and down and it's just stretching out that neck muscle giving it that little bit more space because we do we always think I always used to think I have to make this neck muscle tighter but actually we have to stretch it out I do feel I don't think I would have been able to do that rainbow goldfish kissing hold on my internet is gone hold on

[00:16:05] I don't think I would have been able to do that rainbow kissing goldfish thing at the start of this exercise because my neck would have been so tight but yeah I mean how long did that take not long like five six minutes wow and I do feel I do feel a benefit of it I don't I mean my face is a bit sore because it's awkward sore from them clenching my jaw but I do feel a wee bit like

[00:16:35] my eye is not as like as I said earlier the side of my mouth was quite numb gone it's not completely gone but it's easing up thank you you definitely would benefit from you know eyebrow get rid of that tension jaw tension get rid of that tension and then just stimulate your face a little bit and then with the neck stretch is actually just release you up a little bit just to make you feel a little bit

[00:17:04] less painful when you're moving your face thank you so much Natalie I'm Natalie McConnell and I am the owner of unfold yoga and unfold face yoga if you want to know more about women's yoga or face yoga then come and visit me at www.unfoldyoga.uk or you can follow us on socials we're on instagram at unfold underscore face yoga or

[00:17:33] unfold.yoga thank you for listening to Scotland's women we would love to hear from you so please visit the website at scotlandswoman.com as every Scotland's woman has a story to tell and please subscribe on wherever you get your podcasts podcasts