CYNTHIA ROWLAND

Here, Cynthia Rowland, author of Facial Magic, teaches us a facial exercise to erase crow’s feet with no procedures at all.

Looking in the mirror only to see a tired, droopy eye lid peering back at you is no fun at all. How do I know? When I was 40 years old, my mascara began to migrate to my left eyebrow. At first, I didn’t realize what was happening or why, but then I caught an unintentional glimpse of myself in the mirror and all of a sudden I knew that I was seeing the first look of age in my face—and it scared the heck out of me. 

There were, and are, so few choices to “correct” aging features. Oh, sure, there’s plastic surgery that cuts perfectly healthy tissue and substantially alters your face. You may or may not like the final outcome, and there are no refundable fees if you are dissatisfied. There are many unknowns with surgery. And there is recuperative time that includes pain, swelling, drugs, and the risk of infection. Surgery can be dangerous.

There are injections that plump and paralyze facial features. But guess what? Some of these untested injections are beginning to show negative side effects. Remember, sticking a needle in your face is invasive and, yes, while these injections are considered “non-surgical” when you allow an unsafe product to be injected into your face, you are subjecting your body to an invasion that may impact your long-term good health. Willingly allowing a toxin to be injected into your body goes way beyond the usual warnings that one may experience redness at the injection site.

My path of anti-aging began early on with lots of exercise in the form of basketball, volleyball, softball, and track. As an adult, I worked for Jack LaLanne’s Presidents & First Ladies Health Spa as an exercise instructor, then manager. I also took lots of karate classes to maintain my physical fitness as I matured, but maintaining my facial skincare was paramount when I saw a droopy eye lid that persisted day after day.

As I began exploring how to “age gracefully” without spending my children’s inheritance, I was introduced to a woman from France teaching a specialized facial exercise program in Denver, Colorado. At first, I was highly skeptical that exercise could and would act like a face lift but after meeting many women, seeing their beginning photos, and witnessing their youthful faces first hand, I was willing to give this program that employed isometric contraction with resistance techniques a whirl.

I truly saw remarkable changes over the next few weeks and I want to share my favorite exercise with you: Take a close up photo of your face before you begin. Stand in front of your bathroom mirror.

This exercise will lift your eyebrows and help to alleviate crow’s feet: Place the three middle fingers of each hand underneath each eye brow. Push the eyebrows up. Hold your eyebrows high, and begin to use your forehead muscle to push down into your fingertips. Keep your eyes open. Look straight ahead. (Make certain you are not creating lines between your eyebrows; push slightly outward towards the temple area after pushing up if you see them). Count slowly to five. Remove your hands, take a deep breath, and again position your fingertips underneath your brows. Push the eyebrows up and slightly outward. Hold them high and begin to use your forehead muscle to push down into your fingertips. Count to ten. At count seven, close your eyes. (This action forces oxygenated blood to the eye lids.) Remove your hands and repeat this two more times for a total of 35 seconds of exercise. If this exercise is performed once a day for six days in a row, in less than three weeks, the eyebrows will have lifted, and crow’s feet will be less noticeable.

See how easy that was, and you saved $3500! You can lift your entire face and neck with simple isometric and resistance exercises that require 35 seconds for each movement. No pain, no anesthesia, no risk and great results—at home and in hardly any time at all.