An Eastern Medicine Guide To Treating Forehead Lines With Gua Sha

With age comes changes to your skin—this I know and expect. For the most part, I find my skin transformations are welcome: In my 30s, I've finally figured out how to temper my breakouts and rosacea, fuel my skin so my complexion glows, and don't criticize it too harshly if I have a "bad" skin day or two. But, I do see faint forehead lines starting to etch in. Now, I don't begrudge or bemoan wrinkles. I know I will develop them as the years go by. But I'd be lying to you if I said that I wasn't actively trying to smooth them now as a preventive measure. 

To do this, I use a combination of smart skin care supplements, topicals, and a diligently consistent routine. Part of that routine is facial massage and gua sha, which I do almost daily. So when I spoke with skin care expert Debbie Kung, DAOM, LAc, in a recent episode of Clean Beauty School all about gua sha, I knew I had to ask about the area. (A nice bonus of having your own beauty podcast is you get to talk to all of the best experts about your personal beauty concerns and call it work.) 

As a recap—should you not know the benefits of facial gua sha—it creates microcirculation in the face, which has been shown to smooth fine lines and wrinkles and improve skin quality overall. Traditionally and historically, it is a full-body modality, but in its modern iteration in the West, it's most famous for its facial rejuvenation benefits. And personally, I'm a full-fledged believer. I consider it one of the most valuable parts of my skin care routine.

To treat the forehead, you actually want to treat the scalp. As Kung tells me, in Eastern medicine there's the concept of treating something "local or distal," which essentially means you can tend to something by focusing on the exact area—or you can focus on a corresponding part of the body that is connected by meridian lines. "It's about being smart with your practice and knowing when to go local and when to go distal," she says. For the forehead, Kung recommends going distal. 

Right now you may be having flashbacks of beauty influencers aggressively pulling their skin trying to break up the lines. Scrap that idea, and instead take your gua sha stone to your scalp. 

"There are meridians that run through the forehead that actually go into the scalp," she says. "What you are going to want to do is take your tool, and starting at your hairline right above your eye, go back like you're combing your hair." She notes that you'll want to keep your wrists loose and the stone flat against the hair—but you don't need to worry about applying oil to the hair as you're not pulling directly against the skin.