make your skin glow with yoga

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Poses

How Yoga Helps

Yoga gives your skin a healthy glow by balancing your hormones and boosting the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your skin. This keeps your skin resilient and prevents dryness and excessive sagging. Yoga also tones the muscles of your face and neck. These poses target your facial skin.

What to Do

Practice these poses every day.

Who Found Relief

Silvia Scura, 50, a human resources manager from Essex Fells, N.J., always had nice skin, but she worried that her skin would change as she approached menopause. She was determined not to take hormone replacement therapy, so she assumed that she would see some wrinkles.

She had tried yoga in her 30s, and seven years ago she returned to a regular practice. As a result, she says, three years ago she "sailed through menopause with the yoga glow." Her skin condition didn't change, and only a wrinkle or two has emerged.

Committed to a daily practice of deep breathing and a variety of postures (including those shown here), Scura says yoga is now central to her life. "For me, yoga is the answer to a lot of life's questions," she says. As a bonus, the varicose veins she developed in her late 30s have disappeared.

1 Face Massage

1. Sit on the floor with a tall spine with your eyes closed, and rub your hands together vigorously to warm them. Place all your fingertips on your eyebrows with your pinkie fingers next to each other. Firmly press along your brows, moving your right hand to the right and your left hand to the left, until you reach your temples. Repeat this several times, each time moving up a quarter-inch until you reach your hairline. Imagine you are smoothing out worry lines.

2. Place your fingertips on the bridge of your nose and swipe downward along your cheekbones, as if you are wiping away tears, as pictured. Repeat.

3. Press your fingertips into your temples and make small circles.

4. Open your mouth. Press the heels of your hands into your jaw (near your ear lobes), and make more small circles.

5. Use your fingertips to press your chin up toward your cheeks, as if you were molding your skin into a smile.

6. Repeat steps 1 to 5, this time using a gentler, lighter touch and adding a circular motion to all the steps. Your entire massage should last at least 10 minutes.

2 Lion

(sim-HAHS-anna)
simha = lion

Step by Step

Kneel on the floor and cross the front of the right ankle over the back of the left. The feet will point out to the sides. Sit back so the perineum snuggles down onto the on the top (right) heel.

Press your palms firmly against your knees. Fan the palms and splay your fingers like the sharpened claws of a large feline.

Take a deep inhalation through the nose. Then simultaneously open your mouth wide and stretch your tongue out, curling its tip down toward the chin, open your eyes wide, contract the muscles on the front of your throat, and exhale the breath slowly out through your mouth with a distinct "ha" sound. The breath should pass over the back of the throat.

Some texts instruct us to set our gaze (drishti) at the spot between the eyebrows. This is called "mid-brow gazing" (bhru-madhya-drishti; bhru = the brow; madhya = middle).Other texts direct the eyes to the tip of the nose (nasa-agra-drishti; nasa = nose; agra = foremost point or part, i.e., tip).

You can roar two or three times. Then change the cross of the legs and repeat for the same number of times.

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Anatomical Focus

Knees
Ankles
Abdomen
Chest
Hands/Fingers
Diaphragm

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Therapeutic Applications

According to several sources, Simhasana is a useful pose for people with bad breath or for those who stutter.

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Benefits

• Relieves tension in the chest and face.
• An often-overlooked benefit of Simhasana is that it stimulates the platysma, a flat, thin, rectangular-shaped muscle on the front of the throat. The platysma, when contracted, pulls down on the corners of the mouth and wrinkles the skin of the neck.
• Simhasana helps keep the platysma firm as we age.
• According to traditional texts, Simhasana destroys disease and facilitates the three major bandhas (Mula, Jalandhara, Uddiyana).

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Contraindications and Cautions

If you have a knee injury, always be cautious in flexed-knee sitting positions and, if necessary, sit on a chair to do the pose.

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Beginner's Tip

The hands and shoulder blades are sympathetically connected. As you spread the right palm on the right knee, feel how the shoulder blade spreads across your back. Similarly, as you press each palm against the same-side knee, feel how the same-side shoulder blade presses more deeply into the back, helping to lift the heart.

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Variations

Sit in what's called Mandukasana (Frog Pose; manduka = frog). Kneel on the floor and sit back on your heels; then wiggle your buttocks down onto the inner arches of the feet, which together form a kind of saddle. Then, keeping the inner tips of your big toes touching, spread your knees wide, at least as wide as your outer hips. Now lean your torso forward and press your palms on the floor between your legs, fingers turned back toward your pelvis. Keep your elbows as straight as possible. Then perform the pose as described in Step 4 above.

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Modifications and Props

If you find the leg position described above to be uncomfortable, simply sit in Virasana. Sit on a block positioned between your feet.

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Partnering

Nobody wants to partner with a lion.

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Preparatory Poses

Baddha Konasana
Dandasana
Siddhasana or Sukhasana
Supta Virasana
Supta Baddha Konasana
Virasana

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Follow-Up Poses

Simhasana is a good pose to use to "clear the air," so to speak, at or near the beginning of an asana or pranayama practice. So almost any pose would be appropriate to practice next.

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Deepen The Pose

Some old instructional manuals teach that Jalandhara Bandha should be performed during Simhasana.

3 Forward Elbow Clasp

Caution: Avoid this pose if you have glaucoma, a detached retina, eye or ear inflammation, uncontrolled high blood pressure, or a history of heart disease or stroke, or if you are pregnant.

1. Stand with your feet about hip width apart and your arms at your sides.

2. Keep your feet rooted to the floor as you fold forward from your hips, keeping your back flat. Continue until your torso is hanging from your hips, and then grasp each elbow with the opposite hand, as pictured. If you feel unsteady, stand a few inches away from a wall and lean your buttocks against the wall. Keep your legs strong and allow your torso to spill out of your waist like a waterfall, noticing the weight of your head. Gaze through your legs to the wall behind you. Hold for 3 to 10 breaths. Imagine that you are bowing to your inner beauty.

3. To release, lift your abdominal muscles toward your spine and keep your back flat as you raise your torso to an upright position. Unhook your elbows and pause to notice how you feel. If you are lightheaded, sit or lie down for a moment.