With The Eigard Method book in hand, you have some powerful tools at your disposal for changing the way you look and the way you feel. But having the tools and using them are very different. Almost everyone has had the experience of beginning a program of self-improvement only to set it aside when life gets too busy or stressful. More often than not, the program is never picked up again, and all you’ve gained for your well intentioned efforts is a sense of guilt and failure. In this way, self-improvement sometimes does more harm than good.

The Eigard Method is designed for maximum flexibility. The skills in this book, once learned, are forever at your disposal. If all you get from reading it is a new perspective on how your face ages, then the time will have been well spent. If you also learn the correct way to take off your makeup in the evening, then the experience becomes an investment in your future. If you use the method to avoid a face-lift and spend the difference between the cost of this book and major surgery on a trip to Paris or a new wardrobe, then good for you. But remember that the fact that you picked up the book at all is grounds for self-congratulation.

To help you envision the ways in which the various components of The Eigard Method can be integrated into daily life, let’s look at a day in the life of a typical student of the method.

7:30 A.M.

Time to wake up. Instead of hitting the snooze button, you hang your head over the edge of the bed and give yourself a ten-minute Warm Up exercise massage. Before rising, you perform exercise No. 1, the Neck Lift.

8:00 A.M.

After washing your face with small circular motions that mimic the Warm Up exercise massage, you are ready to perform a couple of exercises. Since you have always wanted to have cheeks like Katharine Hepburn’s, you choose to focus on your cheeks. You perform exercise No. 7 if you’re running late or have a morning meeting to prepare for. If not, you also do No. 5.

9:00 A.M.

Instead of coffee, a cup of antioxidant-rich green tea jump-starts your day.

10:00 A.M.

Seated at the cubicle in your office, you get ready to return several phone calls that came while you were in an early meeting. You have hung a small mirror on the wall, next to the picture of your family, and you watch your facial expressions while you talk, taking note of the way your lip curls to the side when you tell a joke.

3:30 P.M.

Working to meet a 5:00 P.M. project deadline, you find yourself developing a tension headache. You pause, and instead of taking a walk to the water cooler, you straighten your chair in front of your mirror and perform three sets of exercise No. 10 to relieve the tension in your forehead, forestall the headache, and restore a sense of calm.

6:30 P.M.

Time for a brief chat with your best friend. You’ve hung a mirror in the telephone alcove, and while you talk, you notice your facial expressions. You tell her the same joke you told at work, and this time you don’t make the sideways motion with your mouth, keeping a slight smile on your face instead.

7:30 P.M.

Dinner is a salad of chopped vegetables and hormone-free, organic lamb chops, cooked rare. Since there’s very little preparation or cooking time involved in this meal, most of your evening is free for reading or watching a movie.

10:00 P.M.

Your nightly face-washing ritual incorporates the moves you learned in the Warm Up exercise massage. With a clean face, you sit down at your dresser and perform exercises No. 2 and No. 3. You perform the Cool Down exercise massage as you apply your night cream. The day’s tension melts away. Some days you will do more than others, to be sure, but isn’t that true in everything you do? The lesson to be learned is that good habits and bad habits are in some ways no different: If you have time in your life for bad habits, or even if you once did, then you have time to practice The Eigard Method. If you have time to eat a pint of ice cream, you have time to practice The Eigard Method. If you have time to scowl, you have time to smile. What’s required of you isn’t a time commitment, but a change of attitude.

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