Your Essential Daily Face Massage: A Step By Step Guide

At LINNÉ, we strongly advocate for daily facial massage to enhance the absorption of products as well as relieve tension, promote lymphatic drainage, oxygenate cells, and improve skin tone and texture. Whether you are using your hands or the myriad of tools available, incorporating facial massage is sure to enhance your self-care routine. And it’s an especially timely technique to embrace during a pandemic if we aren’t regularly seeing an esthetician.

While there are wonderful tools to improve your at-home rituals, you truly need nothing more than your hands for a quick but effective facial massage. The beauty of this routine is that you can do it anywhere, anytime. All you need are your hands and a bit of product to prep the skin. We always recommend our mist, serum, and oil for the job. They create the perfect lubricity as we never want to tug on the delicate facial tissue. 

Be generous in your product application, making sure to cover the face as well as the front and back of your neck. When you are ready to begin the massage, we recommend starting at the back of your neck using circular motions to warm up the muscles. If you’d like more pressure you can use your knuckles in a gentle kneading motion to break up any tension. Slowly start to work around your neck, lessening pressure as you near the front. Be mindful of the throat and apply only gentle gliding touch or skip the area entirely. 

Generally speaking, you want to practice lifting motions, however, to first clear lymphatic channels you're going to use the flat side of your hand in gliding downward motions, starting at the jawline, moving down the neck towards the collarbone. You can tap along the bottom and top edge of the collarbone to promote further drainage. 

Next, put your pointer fingers in a hook shape. Starting on the right side, you will press your thumb along the underside of your jaw and glide your hooked finger from chin to ear. This is a great technique if you have been stressed and clenching your jaw. Loosening the muscles of the mandible can oftentimes help clear and prevent blemish development in the area.

After several strokes on each side, it’s time to lift the cheeks. You will use the inner length of your pointer fingers, between the pointer and thumb. Starting along the sides of your nose, press, and drag them up towards the hairline. You can use more of your palm if you would like to add additional sensation. This will help with product penetration and boost circulation and oxygenation. This technique will also help to “iron out” any fine lines.

Then, you can move on to the eye area. For this area, we like to do one side at a time. We use our opposite pinky or ring finger to anchor down the skin near the inner eye while the other ring finger gently traces the under-eye area moving from the inner towards the outer corner of the eye. Apply minimal pressure as you glide over the area several times and then treat the other side.

Return your pointer fingers to a hook motion and press the flat part, from the second to the third knuckle, against your nostrils. Drag your hooks from the sinus area to the ear, applying moderate pressure as you define your cheekbones. Follow by rubbing your middle and pointer fingers in circular motions along your temples. I also like to take a moment to let gravity sink the inner orbital bone into the soft tips of pointer fingers - this is great for relieving headaches and relaxes many of the upper facial muscles. Last, but not least, you’re going to lift the forehead using upwards gliding motion with the palm side of your fingers. Use this motion to iron out any creases in this area. To complete the massage, trace the edge of your face, gently guiding any accumulated lymph down from your forehead to the base of your neck.

REFRESH mineral mist is a wonderful multi-vitamin hydrator for the skin that aids in the absorption of subsequent product application. Our RENEW serum is an antioxidant-packed, skin-refining serum formulated to keep skin clear, bright, and youthful. We recommend coupling these hydrophilic products with our hydrophobic face oils. BALANCE is our recommended choice for oily or blemish-prone skin and REPAIR has been formulated for dry, stressed, and mature skin.