Natural Face Lift Exercises: What They Can and Cannot Do

No exercise or massage can give you the results of a surgical facelift: a natural face lift in that sense doesn’t exist. What a small amount of research suggests is that regular facial exercise may improve the look of cheek fullness, and that gentle massage can make the face look less puffy for a while. When people search for a natural face lift, they usually mean “can I look fresher without surgery?” That is a fair question with an honest answer: some habits help a lot, face exercises may help a little, and none of them reposition skin the way surgery does. This guide explains the difference, what the studies actually found, and gives you a 10-minute full-face routine to try.

Can exercises give you a natural face lift?

Exercises can’t lift sagging skin, but they may help your face look a little more toned. Facial ageing happens in several layers at once. Skin loses firmness and elasticity, the fat pads of the face thin and shift, and even the facial bones change shape over the years (Mendelson & Wong, 2012). Exercise only works on one of those layers: the muscles.

• What may change: muscle tone in areas like the cheeks, how relaxed your forehead and jaw feel, and, for a few hours, how puffy your face looks.
• What won’t change: loose skin, the position of fat pads, bone structure and deep lines from sun damage.
• What matters more than either: sun protection, not smoking, a sensible skincare routine and enough rest. More on those below.

So face lift exercises are best seen as a pleasant, low-cost habit with modest possible benefits, not as an alternative to a procedure.

What a surgical facelift does vs what exercise does

A surgical facelift and face exercises are different things that work on different layers of the face. The table describes each neutrally; it isn’t a comparison of results.

	Surgical facelift	Face exercises and massage
What it is	An operation, also called a rhytidectomy	Exercise, stretching and self-massage
Who does it	A surgeon, in a clinical setting	You, at home
What it works on	Deeper tissue and muscle are repositioned, skin is redraped and excess skin is trimmed	The muscles of facial expression and the skin’s surface circulation
Downtime and risks	Recovery time and surgical risks such as bleeding, infection, nerve injury and scarring	Low risk; mainly strain or irritation if you press too hard
Evidence	An established surgical procedure	Limited: a few small studies

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons describes a facelift as a surgical procedure for visible signs of ageing in the face and neck, such as sagging skin, jowls and loose neck skin, and notes that it doesn’t stop the ageing process (ASPS). If you are considering surgery, that is a conversation for a board-certified plastic surgeon. Face exercises can sit alongside any choice you make, but they are not a substitute for it.

What the research says

Research on face exercises is small and early. The study most often cited is a 2018 pilot from Northwestern University, published in JAMA Dermatology (Alam et al., 2018).

• Who: 27 women aged 40 to 65 enrolled; 16 completed the program.
• What: 30 minutes of facial exercises a day for 8 weeks, then every other day until week 20.
• How it was measured: dermatologists rated standardised photos taken before and after.
• Result: upper and lower cheek fullness improved, and the average estimated age dropped from about 50.8 to 48.1 years.

It’s one small study with no control group, and the sessions were much longer than most people practise. Reviews reach a cautious conclusion: a 2014 systematic review found no randomised controlled trials and called the evidence insufficient (Van Borsel et al., 2014), and a 2025 systematic review of 12 studies with 321 women again found the evidence insufficient to draw firm conclusions (Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum, 2025).

There are no robust, large randomised trials showing that facial exercises lift the face. Larger controlled studies are needed. For a fuller walk through every study, see our face yoga research roundup or the shorter answer to whether face yoga works.

A full-face routine (10 minutes)

This routine works through the face from top to bottom with one move per area, done slowly with rests in between. Five of the six moves come from the Gluvy app’s follow-along videos. Sit or stand tall, relax your shoulders, wash your hands and use a little facial oil for the gliding moves.

Start with about 30 seconds of light fingertip tapping across your forehead and cheeks as a warm-up. Then spend roughly a minute and a half on each move below, including short rests.

1. Forehead: Forehead Smooth Down

Place both palms flat across your forehead and close your eyes. Glide your hands slowly downward over your brows with gentle, even pressure, lift off, and start again at the hairline. Try 8 to 10 slow strokes, rest, then repeat.

Common mistake: pressing hard or dragging dry skin. Keep it light and keep the pressure off your eyelids.

2. Eyes: Temple Lift

Rest your fingertips on your temples, just outside the outer corners of your eyes. With your eyes closed, glide slowly up and down over the temples in a steady rhythm for about 30 to 40 seconds. Rest and repeat once.

Common mistake: pulling the skin sideways. Let your fingers move with the skin rather than over it.

3. Cheeks: O-Shape Pump

Shape your lips into a firm O. Keeping the O, slowly lower your jaw, then raise it. Aim for 10 to 12 slow pumps, rest, then do a second set. The cheeks are the area the 2018 study reported changing, and our guide to face exercises for sagging cheeks has more moves for them.

Common mistake: opening too wide and too fast, or wrinkling the forehead. Small, slow movements keep the effort in the cheeks.

4. Mouth: Pucker and Smile

Push your lips forward into a soft pucker and hold for about 3 seconds. Then spread them slowly into a wide, closed-lip smile and hold for about 3 seconds. Try 6 to 8 rounds, rest, and repeat.

Common mistake: squinting during the smile. Keep your eyes soft and your forehead still.

5. Jaw: Jawline Press & Pull

Rest your fingertips along both sides of your jawbone near the chin. Press in gently, then draw your fingers outward along the bone toward your ears. Try 6 to 8 slow strokes, rest, then repeat.

Common mistake: clenching while you press. Keep your teeth apart and your lips lightly closed. Our jawline exercises guide adds more moves for this area.

6. Neck: Sky Smile

Sit tall and gently tilt your head back to look toward the ceiling. Smile as wide as you comfortably can with your lips closed and hold for 3 or 4 slow breaths. Bring your head back to level and repeat 3 to 4 times.

Common mistake: dropping the head far back and crunching the back of the neck. Lengthen upward first, then tilt only a little.

Safety: keep the effort gentle, at about a third of your maximum. Stop any move that hurts, clicks or makes you dizzy, and check with a doctor, dentist or physiotherapist first if you have jaw joint (TMJ) problems, a neck condition, or recent facial surgery, dental work or injectables.

If you’d rather follow along than read, Gluvy’s face yoga video workouts guide you through a full-face plan in 5–10 minutes a day, with a timer on every step. You can download Gluvy for iPhone to try it.

Massage and gua sha for a refreshed look

Massage won’t lift the face, but it can make it look less puffy for a while and it feels good. Lymphatic drainage massage uses light, slow strokes that follow the direction of lymph flow, and Cleveland Clinic describes it as a gentle technique that may help reduce swelling (Cleveland Clinic). On the face, that usually shows up as a morning de-puff that fades over the day.

A simple face lifting massage, in the sense people usually mean, looks like this:

1. Start at the neck. Use flat fingers or a gua sha stone to glide from under the ear down the side of the neck toward the collarbone.
2. Work from the centre outward. Sweep along the jawline toward the ears, then along the cheekbones toward the temples, then from the brows up toward the hairline.
3. Keep it light. Use oil, hold a stone almost flat, and do three to five slow strokes per area. Facial massage shouldn’t hurt or leave marks.

For the full sequence, see our lymphatic drainage face massage guide and our step-by-step gua sha routine. If you want to know how much evidence sits behind the stone itself, read does gua sha work.

The anti-aging basics that matter more

The habits with the best evidence for how your skin ages are not exercises at all. If you only have time for a few things, put these first.

• Daily sunscreen. In a randomised trial in Nambour, Australia, adults who applied sunscreen every day showed no detectable increase in skin ageing over 4.5 years, measured on the backs of their hands, while the group that used sunscreen at their own discretion did (Hughes et al., 2013). The American Academy of Dermatology recommends a broad-spectrum sunscreen of SPF 30 or higher every day (AAD).
• A retinoid. Retinoids are among the most studied topical ingredients for sun-related signs of ageing such as fine lines and uneven texture (Mukherjee et al., 2006). They can irritate, so start slowly, and the AAD explains the difference between prescription retinoids and over-the-counter retinol (AAD). Ask a pharmacist or dermatologist which suits you, especially if you’re pregnant or trying to be.
• Not smoking. The AAD lists stopping smoking among its main ways to reduce premature skin ageing, alongside sun protection, moisturising and drinking less alcohol (AAD).
• Sleep and rest. Sleep won’t change your skin’s structure, but tiredness tends to show on the face.

Face exercises and massage fit on top of these basics, not in place of them.

How to judge your own results

The only fair way to judge a routine is with consistent photos taken over months, not a daily look in the mirror. Lighting, sleep, salt and even the time of day change how your face looks far more than any single session.

A simple photo protocol:

• Take a baseline before you start. Front-facing and both side profiles, with a neutral, relaxed expression.
• Keep everything the same. Same spot, same window light, same time of day, same distance, camera at eye level, hair off your face, no makeup.
• Compare monthly, not daily. The 2018 study measured change at 20 weeks, so give yourself a few months before judging. Even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll see a visible difference.
• Track how it feels, too. Note whether your jaw feels looser or your forehead calmer. For many people, that is the most noticeable benefit.

Our guide to face yoga before and after photos covers this in more detail.

Build a full-face routine with Gluvy

Gluvy turns routines like the one above into short guided videos. Gluvy’s face yoga video workouts include 229 guided exercises across the forehead, eyes, nose, lips and mouth, cheeks, chin and jawline, neck and full face, organised into 3-week plans of about 5–10 minutes a day with a timer on every step. For massage, there are about 34 gua sha and facial-massage video courses, including jawline and cheek gua sha routines and a neck and chin drainage massage. Not sure where to start? The AI face analysis gives you a starting-point analysis that suggests focus areas for your plan; it isn’t a diagnosis. For more guides by area, browse our facial exercises by area hub.

Sources

• American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Facelift.
• Mendelson B, Wong CH. Changes in the facial skeleton with aging: implications and clinical applications in facial rejuvenation. Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 2012.
• Alam M, et al. Association of Facial Exercise With the Appearance of Aging. JAMA Dermatology, 2018.
• Van Borsel J, et al. The effectiveness of facial exercises for facial rejuvenation: a systematic review. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 2014.
• Systematic review of facial exercise. Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum, 2025.
• Cleveland Clinic. Lymphatic drainage massage.
• Hughes MCB, Williams GM, Baker P, Green AC. Sunscreen and prevention of skin aging: a randomized trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2013.
• American Academy of Dermatology. How to practice safe sun.
• Mukherjee S, et al. Retinoids in the treatment of skin aging: an overview of clinical efficacy and safety. Clinical Interventions in Aging, 2006.
• American Academy of Dermatology. Retinoid or retinol?
• American Academy of Dermatology. 11 ways to reduce premature skin aging.