Gentle Face Massage To Start Your Day

A gentle self-massage to wake up the face at the start of your day, moving from the eyes and temples to the ears, forehead, jaw, neck and chest. As you massage you are invited to look around, tune in to the sounds in the room, make a few faces, and use your voice with a long sigh or other sounds. Emily learned this practice from her teacher, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, and it ends with a moment to notice how your face, breath and voice feel. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

Hello, Beautiful people. Today I'm going to share an exercise with you called the Polyvagal Massage. That was taught to me by one of my teachers, Dr. Diane Poole Heller. Now in the polyvagal massage, The purpose of this exercise is to stimulate our social engagement system, Or our ventral vagal complex, If you want to get really sciencey about it. This is all based on the polyvagal theory by Dr. Steven Porges. But a few words on the vagus nerve first as we've come to understand it from Dr. Steven Porges and others very important work. The vagus nerve has two major branches. One of those branches goes to all the organs below the diaphragm and is responsible for mediating our freeze response or our shutdown. So you might hear, Oh. You're feeling more of a dorsal vagal state, That means you're more in your freeze response. Things might be a little slower, A bit more shut down internally in the body. But the other part of the vagus nerve has a lot to do with our rest and digest system, Our calming part of our nervous system. And that's the ventral vagal complex. And it's the part of the vagus nerve that goes to the muscles of the face, The eyes, The ears, The nose, The mouth, The eyes, The ears, The nose, The mouth, The eyes, The nose, The mouth, The eyes, The nose, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The mouth, The Thanks for watching! Including the heart and the lungs. So all of these components, All of these muscular systems that we use to engage and connect with other people. And as we know, Through trauma healing, When we're able to engage and connect with others in a safe way, It's one of the best things we can do for our internal healing. So today we'll be gently massaging some of these areas the vagus nerve innervates above the neck. Helping the face, Muscles, The voice. The ears, These different components of our social engagement system to come online. So that we can show our face to the world, We can feel fully present in our expressions, And so we don't walk around with too much of a frozen look on our face. We're actually able to express and bring all of ourselves all the way up to the surface. This is a great exercise for anyone who deals with social anxiety as a part of your trauma experience. Because social anxiety, Oftentimes we have such an internal experience that kind of coming out of the body to meet another person can be really overwhelming. So before you start your day, If you have social anxiety, Before you go to work or go out and about, Do this vagus nerve massage and see how differently you might be able to respond to all that stimulation from other people. We'll begin the exercise now. So I'll invite you to just get comfortable wherever you are. You can sit or stand or even lay down. We're going to begin just by closing the eyes or lowering the gaze down towards your lap. Bring your fingertips outside your eyes, Just around the temples, And start to make small circles on the temples. Take your time here to really explore what amount of pressure feels the best for you. And we're just going to start to further move the fingertips and really start to bring those circles all the way around the eyes. So we're starting with the eyes. Eyes are really important in our social engagement system. And we're just going to gently massage and wake up all those tissues and muscles. All the way around the eyes. So you can go up to the eyebrows. Taking your time, Just moving that skin around on the forehead. Little bit in between the eyebrows where we always get that furrowed, Worried brow. Let's massage and rub that area. Maybe cupping the eyes, Letting the eyes just rest into your hands. Letting the eyes relax. Into the palms as you feel the warmth of your hands supporting your eyes. When you feel ready, Just coming back to the massage, Maybe slowly blinking the eyes open now. Let's continue that massage around the eyes. The cheeks, The temples. And maybe now you start to look around a little bit as you're massaging. So we're waking up all those muscles and nerves around the eyes. What's it like to look around a little bit? As you massage around the eyes. Notice when you notice that there's no danger in this immediate environment as you gaze around. Is that message of safety able to go down from the eyes down into the body and relax you just a little bit more? We notice, Oh, I'm safe here. There's no immediate threat. I can relax a bit more. Now let's start to move those fingertips over to the ears. We're going to work with the ears a little bit now, Really massaging the ears. Taking your time here, You can pull on the ears, Wiggle them, Get your fingertips in all those nooks and crannies and just gently squeeze. Lots of pressure points in the ears. Entire acupressure system in those ears so little pinching and pulling and massaging can really start to shift things internally. Spend a little more time there. We filter sound through our ears. They attune to the sound of the human voice. And different tones of voice send different messages. When we hear a calm and relaxed tone of voice. It can send a little bit of message of safety into the body. So just tune in for a moment, Notice. Any sounds in your environment? The sound of my voice. And anything else you notice. As you just massage your ears and wake up that part of your vagus nerve. Again, Listening and feeling for that message of safety that goes down into the body when we listen and we hear. No threat. But safety. When you're ready to leave the ears, We'll come back to the face and just explore. You might go up to the forehead a little bit. You might move into the jaw and those big jaw muscles. Letting the mouth open and close a little bit. Noticing your breathing, Maybe making some faces. Just let any expression come to your face. What's it like for you just to rub your own face, To feel all those muscles that you use to frown and smile and laugh and cry? Feeling all of them moved. Let's start to come down the neck a little bit. Remembering that vagus nerve goes down the neck from the brainstem. Down the back of the neck. Up through the throat and the front of the neck. So again, Just. Waking up those tissues. Hey there, Nick. How you doing today? Would you like a softer touch or a little firmer touch today? Maybe the chest a little bit. So you can just see, You can explore here as long as it feels comfortable and good enough. And when you're ready to release those hands, Just let your hands rest. And I'm going to invite an option here. If you want to actually involve your voice a little bit, That can be very helpful to further waking up that ventral vagal social engagement system. So you might just take a long breath in and audibly sigh on the exhale, And I'll demonstrate that. Sigh. And maybe another one. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa And there might be some other shapes and sounds that might be interesting to let just express, Just to come out for a moment. Move sound, Move energy through the voice box, Through the throat. Whee! Wow Why? Wooooow! No wrong or right way to do that. Just making some noises, Different shapes with the mouth and tongue. And again, Just let yourself rest. And let's take a moment or two here to really feel into the body, Into the face. Being curious, What effect did this vagus nerve massage have? Have on your body and your mind. I know for me, My face just feels a bit more awake. I feel a bit more present. And I'm a bit more aware of these, The shapes my face is making as I express. My emotions and I feel myself smiling and I can really feel my muscles on my face a little bit more now. I'm also noticing the tone of my voice a little bit more now than I was before and noticing a little tickle in my throat.