How to Relax Your Face Muscles: A 5-Minute Routine

If you’re wondering how to relax face muscles, the simplest answer is a short sequence: notice where you’re holding tension, tense and release those muscles once on purpose, smooth your forehead and brows, unclench your jaw and tongue, then breathe slowly with a soft face for a minute. The whole routine takes about five minutes and needs nothing but your hands. Below are the steps, quick resets for busy days and an honest answer on whether relaxing your face does anything for wrinkles.

Short answer: notice, soften, massage, breathe

Face relaxation works best as a simple four-part habit you can repeat anywhere.

• Notice. Scan your face from forehead to jaw. Tension you can’t feel is tension you can’t let go of.
• Soften. Briefly tense each area, then release it, so you can feel the difference. This is the idea behind progressive muscle relaxation, adapted for the face.
• Massage. Light strokes over the forehead, brows and temples give busy muscles a gentle cue to let go.
• Breathe. Slow, steady breaths through the nose may help your whole body, face included, feel calmer.

Where the face holds tension

Most facial tension sits in a few predictable places and comes from expressions you make without thinking. The muscles of facial expression sit just under the skin and move it when they contract (StatPearls: facial muscles), which is why a tense face often shows.

• Forehead (frontalis). This broad, flat muscle raises your eyebrows. Many people hold their brows slightly lifted while reading, listening or worrying.
• Between the brows (corrugator). The small muscles that draw your brows together and down. They switch on when you frown, concentrate or squint.
• Around the eyes. Squinting at a bright or small screen tightens the ring of muscle around each eye and often pulls the brows in too.
• Jaw (masseter). The thick chewing muscle at the back of your jaw tends to clench under stress or during focused work.
• Tongue. A tongue pressed hard against the roof of the mouth or the teeth often travels with a clenched jaw.
• Neck and shoulders. A head leaning toward a screen loads the neck, and that tension often spreads up into the jaw.

If your jaw is the main problem, our jaw tension relief guide goes deeper, with masseter massage, gentle jaw movements and the signs that mean it’s time to see a dentist. If your neck is stiff after long screen days, see our tech neck exercises.

A 5-minute face relaxation routine

This routine moves from awareness to gentle tension and release, then to massage and breathing, in five one-minute steps. Sit comfortably with your back supported and your feet on the floor, or lie down if you prefer. Wash your hands first. A drop of facial oil or moisturiser helps for the stroking steps, but you don’t need it.

Safety: keep every movement gentle and pain-free, and stop if anything hurts. If you’ve had recent facial surgery or injectables, or you have a jaw, neck, nerve or eye condition, check with your doctor, dentist or physiotherapist first. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health notes that relaxation techniques are generally safe, but suggests people with heart disease talk to their provider before trying progressive muscle relaxation (NCCIH).

1. Body-scan style awareness (1 minute)

1. Close your eyes, or rest your gaze on a point in front of you.
2. Take two slow breaths, then bring your attention to your forehead. Is it lifted, tight or smooth?
3. Move your attention down slowly: between the brows, around the eyes, the cheeks, the lips, the jaw, the tongue and finally the neck.
4. Don’t fix anything yet. Simply notice which areas feel tight, warm or busy.

This is the same idea as a body scan, focused on your face.

2. Tense-and-release for the face (1 minute)

Progressive muscle relaxation means tensing a group of muscles briefly, then releasing it and noticing the difference. Mayo Clinic describes tensing for about five seconds and then relaxing for about 30 seconds (Mayo Clinic: relaxation techniques). For a one-minute face version, keep each squeeze short and gentle:

1. Forehead. Raise your eyebrows for about five seconds, then let them drop completely. Notice the smoothness.
2. Eyes and brows. Squeeze your eyes gently shut and draw your brows together for about five seconds. Release and let your eyelids rest heavy.
3. Cheeks and mouth. Press your lips together and lift your cheeks into a tight smile for about five seconds. Release and let your mouth go soft.
4. Jaw. Close your teeth lightly (don’t bite hard) for a few seconds. Release, letting your lips stay together and your teeth part slightly.

Use about half your strength, not maximum effort. Skip any area where tensing feels uncomfortable.

3. Forehead and brow smoothing (1 minute)

1. Place the fingertips of both hands at the centre of your forehead, just above your brows.
2. Stroke slowly outward toward your temples with light pressure, as if smoothing a sheet of paper. Repeat about five times.
3. Move your fingertips a little higher and repeat, until you’ve covered the forehead up to the hairline.
4. Finish by resting two fingertips between your brows and making small, slow circles for a few breaths.
5. End with gentle circles at your temples, about five in each direction.

If you often frown while you concentrate, this is the step to come back to during the day. For more forehead moves, see our guide to forehead wrinkles and face yoga.

4. Jaw and tongue release (1 minute)

1. Let your lips rest together and your teeth part slightly.
2. Let your tongue rest softly in your mouth, with the tip lightly behind your upper front teeth, rather than pushing against the roof of your mouth.
3. Place your fingertips on the masseter, just in front of your earlobes below the cheekbones, and make slow, light circles for about 30 seconds.
4. Let your jaw hang a little looser and breathe out slowly through your mouth once or twice, like a relaxed sigh.

This is a short version. The jaw tension relief routine has the full massage, gentle jaw movements and neck release.

5. Slow breathing with a soft face (1 minute)

1. Rest your hands in your lap and keep your face as soft as you found it: brows down, eyes resting, teeth apart.
2. Breathe in gently through your nose, letting your breath go down toward your belly without forcing it.
3. Breathe out slowly and let your face soften a little more on each exhale.
4. If counting helps, breathe in for about five and out for about five, without holding your breath in between.

The NHS breathing exercise for stress uses a similar steady count and suggests regular practice for the most benefit (NHS: breathing exercises for stress).

Research on relaxation techniques is mostly small-scale, but it is encouraging. In one randomised study of 60 healthy students, a single 20-minute audio session of progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing or guided imagery raised self-reported relaxation compared with a control group (Toussaint et al., 2021). That’s a reason to try it and see how you feel, not a promise of any particular result.

Quick resets during the day

You don’t need five minutes to relax your face; a 20-second check between tasks can help you catch tension before it builds.

• The 20-second desk reset. Drop your brows, part your teeth, drop your shoulders and take two slow breaths. Pair it with something you already do often, like sending an email or opening a new tab.
• The screen squint check. If you notice your eyes narrowing, look away from the screen at something far away for a few seconds and let your eyelids soften.
• The tongue-off-the-roof cue. If your tongue is pressed hard against the roof of your mouth or your teeth, let it rest softly instead. A pressed tongue often means a clenched jaw.
• Sunglasses outside. Squinting in bright light tightens the same muscles around the eyes and brows.

Phone reminders or a sticky note on your screen that says “Brows down, teeth apart?” can help in the first few weeks.

Face relaxation before sleep

A slower version of the same routine can become a calm part of your evening wind-down. For a full in-bed sequence, see our bedtime face yoga routine. (Thinking of taping your face overnight instead? Read does face taping work? first.) Lie on your back, do the body scan and tense-and-release steps more slowly, then spend a few extra minutes on slow breathing with a soft face.

Think of it as a pleasant way to end the day rather than a sleep treatment. If you regularly struggle to sleep, talk to your doctor. And if you tend to wake up with a puffy face, our guide on puffy eyes in the morning covers gentle morning steps.

Does relaxing your face prevent wrinkles?

There’s no good evidence that face relaxation exercises prevent or reduce wrinkles, so treat any benefit as comfort and calm rather than a skin result.

What is known is that repeated expressions play a part in expression lines. The American Academy of Dermatology notes that repeatedly contracting the same facial muscles, for example when squinting or frowning, can contribute to lines over time, and suggests wearing sunglasses to reduce squinting (AAD). The AAD also lists daily sunscreen and not smoking among the main ways to slow premature skin aging.

It’s tempting to conclude that relaxing your face will stop lines forming, but that hasn’t been studied in any meaningful way. Face yoga research in general is limited: the best-known study is a small 2018 pilot with 16 women who completed 20 weeks of exercises, with no control group (Alam et al., 2018), and larger controlled studies are needed. Our roundup on whether face yoga works covers the rest of the evidence.

Relax your face with Gluvy

If you’d rather follow along than read, Gluvy turns routines like this into short guided sessions. The face courses include Relaxing Face Yoga, Forehead Relaxation Yoga, Jaw Relaxation Routine and Nose Area Relaxation, each a timed follow-along video. For the awareness and breathing steps, the app’s interactive Body Scan, Mindful Breathing, Stress Relief and Sleep Ritual sessions use gentle haptic cues to guide you. You can set reminders for your daily resets and build morning and night routines. See everything Gluvy includes, or browse more relaxation guides. If you’re new to facial exercises, our 5-minute face yoga routine for beginners is a good next step.

Sources

• NHS. “Breathing exercises for stress.” nhs.uk
• Mayo Clinic. “Relaxation techniques: Try these steps to lower stress.” mayoclinic.org
• National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). “Relaxation Techniques: What You Need To Know.” nccih.nih.gov
• Toussaint L. et al. “Effectiveness of Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Deep Breathing, and Guided Imagery in Promoting Psychological and Physiological States of Relaxation.” Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2021. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• American Academy of Dermatology. “11 ways to reduce premature skin aging.” aad.org
• StatPearls. “Facial muscles” (anatomy). ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Alam M. et al. “Association of Facial Exercise With the Appearance of Aging.” JAMA Dermatology, 2018. doi.org