Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1515580
With his team, Ekman concisely documented how 30 facial muscles have the potential to express 3,000 emotional states. 1 In the course of isolating and controlling each facial muscle, Ekman and his colleagues found they were having spontaneous emotional releases and became severely depressed when exploring negative expressions. They also made an unusual discovery—that a person might display an emotion they didn't know they felt. Ekman recognizes the central role that facial muscles serve in human relationships—how they can enhance our positive and healing connections between people. This is a primary motive that drives his work, which is essentially to teach compassion and empathy in human communication. To this end, Ekman collaborated with the Dalai Lama to create the Atlas of Emotions, a creative and interactive online tool for cultivating a calm mind and compassionate heart. It offers a detailed map for expanding and refining our emotional vocabulary and for processing negative emotions in a healthy and positive manner. 2 We usually think of emotions as creating facial expressions, but the opposite also holds true. Ekman's research emphasizes how changing your facial expression can change your physiology. When you're feeling down, you can lift your spirits by smiling, which triggers the production of feel-good hormones like dopamine and serotonin, and simply sharing a smile with another person can do the same for them. 3 THE RESULTS ARE IN THE FACES A great way to study the muscles of the face is to isolate each muscle with active movement. Practice this "facial yoga" in front of a mirror for feedback. I address the face in every treatment and am always amazed at how five minutes of slow, systemic, and rhythmic tracing of the facial muscles can have a deep and healing effect on receptive clients. They tend to drift into that healing twilight between waking and sleeping, and when they wake up, I can see their face is deeply relaxed and they look rejuvenated. I also added facial muscle tracing to my morning ritual—a routine that takes only a few minutes and has been well worth the time for its anti-aging effects. Notes 1. Paul Ekman, Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2009). 2. The Atlas of Emotions, accessed January 2024, https://atlasofemotions.org. 3. Daniel Goleman, Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama. (New York: Bantam Dell, A Division of Random House Inc., 2004). Mary Ann Foster, a massage therapist and educator in practice since 1981, is the author of Therapeutic Kinesiology (Pearson Publishing, 2013) and Somatic Patterning (EMS Press, 2014). She can be contacted at info@emspress.com. A B M P m e m b e r s ea r n F R E E C E h o u r s by rea d i n g t h i s i s s u e ! 51