Читать книгу The Face Lift Massage: Rejuvenate Your Skin and Reduce Fine Lines and Wrinkles - Narendra Mehta - Страница 18

Facial massage is a valuable tool in resisting age-related changes. First of all, massage helps to relax the facial muscles. Muscular tension can restrict the blood vessels and obstruct the free flow of blood and other fluids to the tissues, so reducing the amount of nourishment the skin receives and preventing the removal of waste products. With massage, you can work the connective tissue to make space for the muscles to return to normal size, so releasing tension. After a few sessions you’ll feel the tension ebbing away and notice a big difference in the condition of your skin.

Massage can also restore skin suppleness by helping to untangle collagen and elastin fibers, which then improves skin elasticity and helps to lift up the face. When you massage your face, or someone else’s, feel with your fingers for signs that might indicate restricted tissue. This may seem difficult at first but, as with all things, practice makes perfect!

While muscles create the power to produce facial movements, connective tissue provides the structure and form to do so. For example, if you were to strip a body of its muscles, you would still be left with a clear shape of a human. But if you kept the muscles and stripped away the connective tissue, you would be left with a shapeless blob. When you look at diagrams of the muscles it’s easy to see where they start and finish, but this isn’t so straightforward with connective tissue.

Rather than beginning and ending at specific points, connective tissue is like a continuous sheath that surrounds the body. When massaging you have to develop the subtle skill of tracking the connective tissue. You’ll find you have to untwist and rearrange it along several different planes at a time in order to release the tension. Because connective tissue forms a continuous network, when there is a restriction in one area, the impact of this can be felt in another area.

To understand this concept, imagine you’re putting up a tent and securing it with pegs. If the pegs are spread evenly around the tent the canvas is smooth all over. But if you have more pegs on one side than another, the tension is uneven and one side becomes more taut. In much the same way, when massaging you are trying to ease restrictions in the connective tissue and even out the tension. The effect of this is often noticed elsewhere. For example, releasing a restriction in the neck can make the whole face look more relaxed.