YOUR FACE IS A BOOK

“Your face is an open book.”

The bone and the core of the person hold our deepest levels of experience. When we say, “I just know that in my bones,” that really means something.

One incredible place in our bodies where the bones rest just under the skin’s surface is the face. It is, tellingly, also the most expressive part of the person. 

So when we work well with the face, we expand our expressive capacities and restore healthy emotional “range of motion.”  We free the face and the self from the consequences of being stuck in chronic expressions.

Read the face. Our expressions are like scripts. And just like cursive writing, the muscles of our face have a remarkable continuity, because, just as do letters in cursive writing, they insert into each other. The facial muscles are the most conspicuous place in the body where the muscles don’t attach to bones, they insert into each other’s connective tissues. That’s why the face has the most varied capacity for expression and movement.

So this book of the individual face, when we read it, tells us stories. Stories of surprise, of sadness, joy, deep thought, shock, fury, courage, love – are told by the faces of each of us and by every client.

Below these stories are the deepest of stories – those told by bone, which underlies the history of our expressions. The “bone smiles behind our faces when we frown,” said the poet, Richard Tillinghast.

Bones were the first instruments – the ribcage the first xylophone, the humerus the first drumstick, animals’ tibias became flutes - used in melodies, in rhythms, to give some sense of the long song, one we are notes in, one not really limited to one lifetime.

Bone remains after “we” are gone. Perhaps also they were, in potential, what was there before we existed. “What was your face before you were born?” - is a fascinating Zen Koan. 

When we deeply address the face through bodywork or self-massage, wiping off the residue of chronic expressions that no longer serve us, we restore ourselves or the person we are working with to “their face before they were born.”

There is perhaps nothing more beautiful than this open face, innocent, ready to see new things, eager like a young child to encounter the world as they so often do for the first time. When we get back to our original face and approach this world with openness and innocence, we get to experience this world as if today were the first day. 

And this is the first day of the rest of our lives.  And now we really know it…after a great session of therapy or self massage opens our eyes and allows re-vision, the acuity of deep seeing, the telling of new stories written in the ever-changing cursive scripts of our facial expressions.

For therapists we have the privilege to see our clients open their eyes and see the world for the first time.

You can see it in their faces.