If you are like most women, then you don't give a second thought to the way you put on moisturizer, especially in these dry winter months. Most of us have developed the quickest possible way to slather that lotion onto our faces and off of our fingers. Unfortunately for our skin, that's usually a top-down motion.
The physical tugging down of our facial muscles combined with gravity takes a quick toll on our skin... making it prone to the signs of aging: wrinkles, sagging, etc. After all, the skin and muscles on our face are the most sensitive! And to think... we do this twice, sometimes three times a day! And if you take toner, make-up remover and foundation into account... that's almost 5 times a day of pulling down on our facial muscles, stretching out our skin.
Kick in a new habit in the coming year: apply your moisturizers, night creams and foundations in an upwards motion. Start with the jawline and use your fingers to spread the cream upwards into the cheek, then use your fingers to "fill in" the rest of your face like the forehead, chin, and especially the throat.
And now for the delicate eye area: there are a gazillion theories about how you should apply eye cream. First of all what most people don't know is that you don't need to apply the eye cream too closely to your eye... just around the eye area (about 1 cm away from your lashes) is enough for your entire eye area to suck in the moisture that it needs. So you should never get eye cream too close to your lashes! And #2... you have to be even more careful about pulling the skin around your eye area. The best way (at least for me) to apply eye cream is with my ring fingers and patting it on gently. This way I never use more than I need and I use the most gentle pressure possible. You'd think it was the pinky right? Nope- I've learned that the pinky can actually exert more pressure and it's actually more inaccurate (yes, I've poked my eyes a couple of times testing this).
