Face Yoga with Ranjana Khan

Ommmm. Say it with us now…now roll your tongue back into your throat, close your eyes, and stretch those eyelids. That’s right, ladies and gents, we’re doing facial yoga. And we’re doing it at Ranjana Khan’s SoHo loft.

Khan, a former model and current jewelry designer (and wife to Naeem Khan), pooh-poohed all forms of the ancient exercise for years until a fortuitous visit to her native India, where a wise yogini told her: “I’m going to show you how you’re going to age.” Say whaaat? Is what we can only imagine Khan said. (I mean, that’s what we would say.) Since then, the 57-year-old mother of two finds three minutes here, five minutes there, to pause during the day and work out, not her mind, body, or soul, but her head.

In this disarmingly charming video, Khan walks us through how to wake up our faces, tighten the skin around problem areas (crows feet, laugh lines, jowls), and to stimulate blood flow in our scalps. Not only does the practice of facial yoga relieve stress—if only for the utter ridiculousness of opening your eyes as wide as E.T.'s while simultaneously curling your tongue like an orca whale at Sea World—but it also counteracts the skin-sagging effects of gravity. Yes, you look slightly bonkers while doing it, but when your heart rate accelerates and, after a only a few minutes of “working out,” a sense of buzzy calm falls over your body, don’t say we say we didn’t warn you. And if doing this for five minutes a day is the secret to looking like Khan at nearly 60, we’ll take the annual membership with automatic renewal and a locker, please.