Transcription
In relation to our appearance, the main muscles that are impacted by anxiety are the trapezius muscles and the neck muscles. When you are anxious, your body goes into fight or flight mode. Everything is on fire and the body tenses up. See how this is a state of anxiety. If I do it to an extreme degree, I look like I am stressed out.
Now, what happens when we hold ourselves that way? The shoulders tense up. All of these muscles that connect to the face via trigger points, via tissue lines, they are impacting the way that our face feels and functions. If you have facial tension, it may be resulting from further down the bodily chain.
Anxiety also leads us to pull into ourselves in the face, in the lower face in particular. Pulling in, you get all of this tension here in the lower face. This is going to increase smile lines. It's going to make your lower face look more recessed. It's going to create tension around the mouth. This can create lip lines and it also can deepen the nasal labial folds.
You may also be making your eyes smaller because we wse, we slightly tense up the eyes in the expectation that something is going to come at us. And even if your anxiety has nothing to do with physical impact, your body doesn't really know the difference. We respond physiologically the same as if we were actually in danger.
So all of this results in looking and operating completely differently. Your posture is more hunched. You are tense in your neck and shoulders. This is making your face look more clamped down. The neck is the superighway to the face. When the neck is tense, we are puffier in the face. And this is sending a signal to other people. Other people see you and they subconsciously can tell that you are under this constant state of anxiety. And then people treat you differently and then you feel more anxious and then you are stuck in your tension cycle even more because your body is sending the signal to your brain that you're anxious.
I know this all too well. This is what happened for me. And I'll tell you that I felt like a completely different person when I was in these photos. I was constantly on edge and I just did not feel free and loose in my body. So, I'm going to give you three easy techniques that you can use to start to feel better and see those visible changes show up as well.
First, we're going to release the trapezius muscles with a progressive relaxation technique. So, on an inhale, you are going to fully tense those shoulders up. Just allow your body to go to the fullest extent. Let it be anxious. Let it fully clench those shoulders up. And on an exhale, you completely release. Okay, great. So now we've reset that contraction pattern and then we're going to take our hands and we're going to grab up the muscle. You can see how I'm just grabbing up that muscle there. So pinch that muscle up fully. Let your fingers grab up as much tissue as possible. And then we are going to slowly slide off the muscle. So the fingers are just coming forward while the thumb is in place. And we slide it forward until we're all the way off the muscle. Get the necklace out of the way there.
So, the thumb is going on that muscle. See how it just goes right in front of that trapezius and then the fingers slide up. You're using enough pressure so that you just naturally slide off the muscle. And now with a little bit of oil on your knuckles, you're going to start at the collar bone and then glide up all the way back to here where there is that bony protrusion at the back of the skull. So, I often teach releasing the SCM by pinching it, but I find that people with a lot of stress and anxiety can barely even grab it. It won't pop out when they turn the head. So, this can help loosen it up. And we're following those natural tissue lines by taking the knuckles up. And as a side benefit, we are also working on the scalines, which also can be very activated in anxiety. And to amp this up, make sure that you go slow. You can also lean the head over a bit, create some slack, and get a little bit deeper into those muscles. And the slowness is going to help your body feel calm, and it's going to help you lessen your anxiety as well. These nice slow movements. Loosening up this area is also going to help your vagus nerve function more properly, which is what regulates our sympathetic and parasympathetic responses.
We are now going to use a buckle massage for the lower face, one of my favorite modalities for this area. So you take your thumb behind the fingers and use these wavelike motions across the lower cheeks because it's very helpful for encouraging that tissue to create space and unwind. For the lip and mouth area, you can use your thumb and index finger to really focus in on those little muscles that purse in and make the lip and mouth smaller and let them open up. And now we're going to focus on the jaw area. So your thumb is as far back as it can go. And then use circular and or wavelike motions all across the massitor to really allow it to release. and use slow, consistent, medium pressure.
Okay, I know I mentioned three techniques, but I talked about the eyes, so I wanted to give you a technique for that area as well. I have this slowed down so you can really see what I'm doing. I'm taking the knuckle and I'm working all along the rim of the orbital bone. And as you do this, actually visualize your eyes becoming more open, wide, and lifted. It will make a difference in helping your body let go and release. And you will see and feel the difference when you are done.
I truly hope that that helped you. Please let me know how it felt for you. And if you would like fully guided routines that are almost always 10 minutes or less and in a convenient app format, you can check out True Face. The sign up is available on my page, and it also includes a 7-day free trial.