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Level: BEGINNING
Area Worked: FACE
Type of Excercise: ISOTONIC |
Tip: Your
epidermis renews itself completely every thirty days. That’s
how long it takes a newly formed skin cell to migrate
through the five layers of the epidermis and
be sloughed off in the course of bathing, dressing, exercising,
or just sitting reading a book. (Taken from biorap.org
and medterms.com).
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Orientation
Always
start your exercises with clean hands and a clean face. Wait until
you’re finished with your workout to apply any kind of cream
or moisturizer so your face isn’t slippery. Before you begin,
you will need a mirror and a straight-backed chair. The chair should
be straight-backed because you can’t achieve correct facial
posture without correct body posture. When your body is lined up
properly, your head and neck rest at a comfortable angle, free
of stress and strain. Correct posture not only maximizes the benefits
of your workout, it helps prevent injury.
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Body Alignment
The rule of thumb here is to keep six feet on the
ground at all times. Two of the feet are yours, and the other four
belong to the chair you are sitting in.
Sit up straight, your body at a ninety-degree angle to your legs.
Make sure your hips are pushed all the way back in the chair.
Your feet should be flat on the floor and parallel to each other.
Lift your shoulders
in an exaggerated shrug, roll them back, then let them fall.
This will put your body into the correct position.
If your hands fall naturally into your lap, you’re all set.
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The
Mirror: Your Assistant Coach
While
the straight-backed chair is essential for good posture, don’t try to learn these exercises without a mirror.
Total facial discipline is essential to your success, and to achieve
it, you need to know immediately when your face strays out of alignment.
Beginning students make all sorts of strange, extraneous movements.
For example, while concentrating on the forehead, many people unconsciously
make odd movements with their mouths. How will you know you’re
making unconscious movements unless you can see them? Let the mirror
be your assistant coach, showing you how you are doing. A wall-hung
mirror is best. You don’t want to have to look down, or up,
to see your reflection.
If you wear glasses
or contact lenses, you need to remove them prior to performing
any
of the eye exercises. If you can’t see the
mirror well enough to tell how you’re doing, ask a friend to
coach you a few times, or do the exercises with a buddy at first.
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Note
On Breathing
Pay attention to your breathing as you work out.
The flow of breath is important to any workout routine. As you inhale,
you are taking in fresh oxygen to be carried in the bloodstream.
As you exhale, you are eliminating contaminants (free radicals),
which have the potential to age every inch of your body. A single
breath does all this. Remember to breathe slowly and steadily as
you continue with the program. Beginning students often focus so
intensely on the exercises that they forget to breathe in and out.
Normal breathing is key.
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Duration
You’ll
notice that the instructions for each exercise tell you to repeat
the exercise until you feel your muscles burn. This
is very important. If you don’t work
the muscles until they tingle or quiver, you won’t
be making progress. Some people will need more repetitions to reach
this level of exertion than others.
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