By Vanamala Mayr-Reisch
We all are creatures of habit. You might always brush your teeth with your right hand, open the door with your left, apply your moisturizer first on your left side, then on your right, and so on. That means your muscles are used on one side of the body more often for certain activities than on the other. One of the main reasons why we lose the alignment in our bodies and faces are these habits. We repeat these movements hundreds or thousands of times without ever thinking about it.
The other day, I noticed that within seconds while walking through the kitchen, I had grabbed a pile of plates standing on the counter and stored them away in the drawers before I even started to think about what I was doing. My husband stared at me in disbelief because he had just taken out these plates for dinner. This is the perfect example of how much our lives run on autopilot. I am still giggling about this peculiar incident.
The first step for Face Yoga is to become aware of unwanted habits. We repeat many facial habits hundreds of times per day. For example, you are frowning, pulling down the corners of your mouth, or lifting your eyebrows. The repetitive nature of unwanted habits eventually creates wrinkles, deep lines, and asymmetry.
Face Yoga teaches you to bring awareness to your habits. You will learn to stop repeating these movements endlessly during the day, giving you the power to choose when and how to use your muscles.
How to break a habit quickly?
There’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. If you perform all your daily tasks the same way every day, your brain may have developed strong neural pathways, but much of your brain remains underutilized. When you start changing your routines, such as applying moisturizer with your right hand instead of the left, sitting in a different seat at the dinner table, or getting into bed from the other side, your brain becomes more active and adaptable and learns.
These small changes will activate previously dormant pathways. They will also stimulate the right and left hemispheres of your brain to work together, which will help you improve your balance, vision, coordination and other crucial functions in the body. It is as if you open a dusty and forgotten wing of your house, which you haven’t used for a long time. When you open the door to this place in your brain, a fresh breeze “sweeps away the dust and cobwebs”, and you will experience your surroundings differently.
Changing your habits stimulates your brain to learn and establish new neural pathways. You might find creative ideas start to surface, or you feel happy and refreshed as your mind sharpens.
Small changes in your life can change how you experience the world. You might discover that seeing your surroundings from a different angle is exciting.
Furthermore, the new movements will use your muscles on your right and left side more evenly, which could improve your posture and realign your body and face.
Try it today and implement small changes. Brush your hair with the other hand, carry your bag on your other shoulder, take a different route to work and stop frowning.
Face Yoga increases your awareness and gives you opportunities to recreate your life. It opens doors which you didn’t even know existed.
2 thoughts on “How do I get rid of unwanted habits?”
Hi Vanamala, Like the neural pathways stuff. I reference it all the time in my yoga teaching which is a lot about the spine, hips and balance which is my thing….But have realised through looking at what you do that the weird thing is my teaching stops at the spine in the skull, just behind the palette, and doesn’t take in the face at all !!! And having just turned 58 with a fit body and a saggy face…beer possibly (haha)…I should address this with a couple or three of on-line classes. If yoga can sort my back out and give me a fit, fluid, active body I have no doubt that it can do fitness for my face xxx Will pm for a video thing xxx
Hi Peter, Thank you for your comment. Many people are training there body but never think about their face. You certainly can achieve remarkable results with Face Yoga. You have over 60 muscles in your face and neck, and there are around 70 facial exercises. That allows me to create a personalized program specifically design for your needs. Because I work as well with your body alignment, which gives you the foundation for a balanced face, you will feel the benefit of face yoga not only in your face but in your entire body.