Most of us are familiar with normal facial massage that being perform in the saloon but how about facial Gua Sha?

Gua Sha is actually an ancient Chinese therapy that involves scraping the skin to promote blood circulation and removing toxic.

Let me walk through on how normally gua sha treatment is being done.

First, liquid medicine ( like olive oil or herbs ) is rubbed on the painful area or acupoints to stimulate blood circulation in the body. Then the skin will be scraped using a jade or horn blade from top to bottom according to the direction of blood flow.

Some blood capillaries break and release the red blood cell, hemoglobin. Such stimulation can promote blood circulation and remove obstruction in the collateral and toxins from the body, which then relieves pain. Though red, purple or black bruises appear after the scraping, during the treatment, the patient rarely feels any pain.

When I was young, our family used to perform Gua Sha once a while where we would use Ox horn ( or spoon sometimes ) to scrape the back of our body. Almost everyone in the family would involve in this activity and we will tease each other at the end of the day on who get the most bruises.

However facial gua sha is a lot different from the gua sha that you perform on your back. Facial gua sha need to be handled more carefully because the skin around the face is more sensitive and thin. Facial gua sha is more relaxing as well comparing to the back gua sha. We believe that there are many benefits of facial gua sha such as increasing blood circulation, reduce wrinkles and dark circles under eyes and even face lift.

Actually I’ve tried facial gua sha once and I can see immediate face lift effect and glowing face but no so much on reducing the wrinkle and the dark circles. Hey, it’s not a magic show ok? You can’t expect the evil dark rings around eyes disappear instantly just after one session.

Here is the only video that I manage to grab from youtube on facial gua sha. Enjoy!