Gua Sha is a beauty technique from China that means skin scraping. That can sound pretty intimidating and even painful, but the process is anything but.
This was originally a technique for healing but has become popular in the west as a beauty regime. Taking a stone, like jade or quartz, and applying medium to heavy pressure while pulling across the skin helps increase blood flow and lymphatic drainage.
Although scraping and pulling sound bad, they are not much different from a massage. Not only is this an excellent method for your skin, but also your facial muscles. Using a cold gua sha tool works best when kept in the refrigerator. The massage is refreshing, loosening, plumping, encourages glowing skin, and reduces puffiness.
Gua sha tools come in various shapes but always have smooth edges. They will not be too intense or rough on the skin. And they are meant to be used with oils to ensure they glide across the skin without dragging. You start in the center of the face and work outward and upward to promote a more lifted appearance. You want to hold the skin taught and then drag the tool from the center outward. This promotes elasticity and allows you to be gentle while seeing results.
Gua sha can help treat acne, dryness, and other skin conditions. It can help with wrinkles as well as jaw tightness and clenching. Similarly, using a gua sha tool on the temples, behind the ears, or neck can help relieve headaches, swelling, and even fatigue. You mostly see gua sha used on the face in social media clips because that has become the new fade.
Many influencers share their techniques and results showing a glow and less puffiness, but gua sha can even help with sinus pressure by relieving tension and inflammation.
Using a stone tool to essentially force the toxins in the skin towards the lymph nodes encourages drainage and release. This immediately shows in reducing facial puffiness and, with time, can help with wrinkle, dryness, and acne.
Although using a jade roller is easy and trendy, this method is not as intense or beneficial. It feels nice, but rolling back and forth on the skin only does so much. It may be a good option for more sensitive skin, but gua sha goes deeper into the skin and even the muscles.
Essentially gua sha is a workout for your face. It improves the look of skin tone and texture as well as the muscles. You may have seen chiropractors or physical therapists scrape the muscles to promote stretching and relaxation, and the benefits are similar. Naturally, scraping the back with a metal pole will result in some bruising, but using this method on the face is a lot more gentle.
But if you don’t keep up with it and take a few minutes to really harness the practice each day, the results will only be temporary.
What makes gua sha so versatile is that you can use it at home or have it done professionally. Both are relaxing, but at home will save you money and time while going to a spa for a gua sha treatment offers unique methods.
If you want a luxury experience, getting a gua sha facial massage could be ideal for you, but you can keep up with the practice at home as well. You can buy a gua sha tool for a pretty low price online. And experts suggest not to over-invest because the quality of these tools tends to be the same. You just want to ensure it is of good quality and isn’t cracked or broken. You can then clean it with boiling water or even a gentle soap and water.
