Can Yoga Improve the Look of Your Skin

As both your largest and your most visible organ, your skin is likely to be the main focus of your beauty regimen. Chances are that you most desire to preserve youthful, radiant skin and as such you are always looking for ways to improve the look of your skin, which includes protecting it from damage and slowing the various signs of aging. You have probably learned that what you put into your body can be just as important as what you apply directly to your skin, and you work very hard to maintain a fine balance between these two things.

The professional aestheticians at the Clearwater’s Botanica Day Spa can help you to resolve troubling skin conditions and issues by finding the correct beauty regimen and products for your needs and by teaching you what is needed in order to ensure that every day is your best skin day. With all that said, it’s time to go even a step further and look at how certain exercises you perform can also improve the look of your skin.

Yoga and Your Skin

While there are many different aspects to yoga and there are certainly many different ideas about how to practice yoga “correctly," there are also some basic common points. For example, the main focus of yoga is to connect an individual’s body and mind so that they are able to breathe deeply while moving through gentle exercises and poses. There are many wonderful benefits to practicing yoga, not the least of which is helping you to achieve your best skin by relaxing your mind and body and improving your overall circulation. More specifically:

• Yoga postures like the cobra pose, fish pose, plow pose, shoulder stand, triangle pose, and child pose focus on the head and face and are especially good at helping to increase blood circulation and reduce toxins in the body. This is mainly because these postures are all inverted or include forward bends, which increase the blood supply to the face and makes it glow.
   
• Yoga breathing exercises like sheetali and sheetkari can have a cooling effect on a hot body. Heat can cause acne breakouts, especially for those individuals who suffer from oily skin conditions, which means that summer may be a time when many women simply “give up” on having healthy, glowing skin. By using yoga breathing exercises, however, where one places the tongue at the back of the palette, keeps the lips open, inhales through the teeth, and exhales through the nose, an individual can successfully help to cool their body and protect their skin’s natural glow.
   
• Yoga postures like the kneeling pose or bow pose, performed along with nostril breathing, can work to improve the body’s digestive process when performed on an empty stomach. Kapal Bhati, which literally means “forehead glowing," includes forceful exhalations that drive a physical detoxification which is accompanied by glowing skin. Sun salutation, performed quickly several times in a row, can help to raise an individual’s body temperature and cause perspiration, both of which can contribute to healthier, glowing skin.
   
• Yoga teaches an individual how to calm and focus their mind. Yoga postures only work well when an individual is able to successfully calm and focus their mind. This is a practice that can be incredibly useful in other areas of life, especially since stress can have a marked impact on your skin.
   
• Yoga exercises can help to tighten the facial muscles. Even twenty minutes of yoga facial exercises can help skin to look tighter and healthier. Massaging jaws and eyebrows can be wonderfully relaxing while pushing your lips out like you’re kissing a baby and then drawing them back into a broad smile can help to ensure that the mouth and cheek area remain firm and plump.

Yoga is viewed by many individuals as an ideal physical exercise method as it is gentle and effective, with fast and remarkable results. In your never-ending quest for how to achieve more youthful, radiant skin, yoga just may be another invaluable tool to partake of.

Love,

Gen