Review – The Yoga Face

These days, yoga is all about niche marketing, whether it’s “Yoga for People Who Are Definitely Not Hippies” or “Yoga for Young Women Who Don’t Really Have it Together.” The new kid on the block is “Yoga for People Who Think They Are Starting to Look Old,” otherwise known as Yoga for the Face.

In her book The Yoga Face: Eliminate Wrinkles with the Ultimate Natural Facelift, Annelise Hagen promises a lot. Hagen has come up with a series of facial exercises designed to counter the effects of aging, which she recommends be done in conjunction with yoga asana practice.

The facial exercises, which have cute names like Satchmo and Marilyn, are supposed to strengthen the muscles of the face, counteracting the inevitable march of time. Hagen also recommends a skin care regimen, changes to the diet, chanting, mediation, massage and breathing exercises.

There is some good advice in Hagen book – learning to relax your face is probably one of the best things you can do to prevent wrinkles from forming. Becoming conscious of how you hold your face, particularly if it’s in a perpetual scowl, will undoubtedly make you look and feel better. And who can argue with Hagen prescription of sunscreen application and healthy diet?

But if you are looking for the effects of a facelift, as the book’s subtitles suggests, I doubt if you will find them here. Celebrity yoga teacher Rodney Yee recently expressed his skepticism in the New York Times, saying “Yoga will add radiance to your face and relax you, which will make you look younger, but to just focus on the face is too specific and sounds more like a marketing ploy.”

There are some yoga sequences in this book, which are always useful to have around. The book is pleasant reading, engaging, and full of anecdotes, but one is left with the feeling that Hagen has taken 200 pages to say something that could have been outlined in five to ten, tops. Still, Hagen’s prescription may help, and certainly won’t hurt, unlike, say, Botox.