Fitness Gurus: Funny Faces Help You Laugh Off Wrinkles

No pain, no gain is just as true for people fighting wrinkles as it is for body builders pumping iron.

There's a breed of fitness instructors across the country teaching facial exercises to stave off droopy jowls and crow's feet. One of the latest is in Brookline, Mass., where spa owner Lavinia Borcau recently started a five-session class called "From My Neck Up," intended to iron out wrinkles and keep facial features taut, The Boston Globe reports.

The customers, mainly women in their 50s and 60s, learn a muscle-toning routine of funny facial contortions as an alternative to Botox and face-lifts.

"Press teeth and lips tightly together, and press cheek muscles to your teeth,'' the instructor told the Brookline class. "Use your upper lip to smile as far upward toward your earlobes as you can.''

It's part of a craze among Americans who are looking for healthy ways to maintain a youthful visage.

Gary Sikorski, a New Orleans-based yoga instructor who teaches "Happy Face Yoga" at gyms in the Big Easy and at seminars around the country, said it's important to keep your face in shape.

"You exercise your body to keep looking good," Sikorski told the Sun Sentinel before an exhibition in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2008. "You can make your face look better and younger too."

Novices who want to get buff can watch a clip of Annelise Hagan, author of "Yoga Face," sculpting her mug on a video that's been viewed more than 543,000 times on YouTube.

She demonstrates "the Satchmo," to firm up cheeks by puffing them out a la trumpeter Louis Armstrong, and "the Prom Queen," a prolonged toothy smile.

"Believe it or not," Hagan said, "but I used to have really big sags."

The late fitness guru Jack LaLanne was a believer in the benefits of facial gymnastics, but some doctors dismiss them as a fad and say that exercising actually causes wrinkles.

"These exercises would have the opposite effect," Dr. Francis Papay, chairman of the Dermatology and Plastic Surgery Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, told the Los Angeles Times.

Read more at The Boston Globe.

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