I first learned of the potential benefits of rolling shiz over your face, from facialist Nichola Joss. Joss favours an incredibly full on, incredibly powerful practice, which involves her sticking her latex-begloved hands into your mouth and massaging your cheeks and jaw from the inside. It’s weird, it hurts, but I tell ya, nothing makes your cheek bones pop like a session with that woman! Nothing!
Sadly, I don’t have the time or dosh required to visit the brilliant Joss once a week (as I’d like to), but I’ve taken her beliefs – i.e. that getting properly stuck in to your face with some deep massage techniques improves tone by encouraging blood circulation, temporarily lift cheeks and strengthen jawlines by relaxing some muscles while invigorating others, and generally lightens up all closed-in Grumpy Resting Face issues – and reconfigured them, for my own in-flat DIY purposes.
First, I tool up: I get myself twenty quid’s worth of jade roller from my local Chinese medicine centre. I did this partly because loads of people rave about jade roller brilliance on Instagram, and partly because I still believe the source of eternal youth can be found not in Boots, but in some obscure, half-forgotten ancient cultural practise. I get it home, delight in the beauteous green of the roller head and the authentic feel purple embroidered silk of the box in which it came; then start my first tentative roll (on skin which is thoroughly cleansed and toned in miceller water - if unadorned with serum. Although some people claim jade rollers increase absorption on product, I have it on good authority that they don’t, not really, they’ll just slather it around more).
I roll along my jaw line, up and out over cheeks, and in mini vertical zig zag motions along my forehead, for seven-ish minutes. The instructions tell me I’m supposed to do it for 10 – 20 minutes, but my arm starts getting tired, and my boyfriend starts moaning about the squeaking sound interrupting his telly viewing (NB the roller’s making these, not me). I contemplate my freshly rolled face. It’s so hard not to imagine dramatic results when you’re looking for them but not actually measuring them in any considered, scientific way… But I do think my bone structure looks a little sharper, post-roll. I know that all facial massage is effective because it shifts lymph – a colourless fluid that amasses in unfortunate places, leaving us puffy – encouraging it to drain away from cheeks and under eye areas, so it makes sense that I would see this difference.
I try again first thing the following morning, and become reasonably convinced the rolling helps my sleep-inflated face settle onto its bones more quickly. Eye puff seems reduced, cheeks seem taut and definitely less pallid. I don’t subscribe to the idea the jade itself is somehow more effective than anything that feels cool and smooth against the skin would be – but it definitely does feel smooth and cool, and that’s nice. I carry on jade rolling on a regular basis, eventually switching operations up for a £56 Nurse Jamie Uplift Roller, which I think of as “pro-gear”, although honestly, the Chinese medicine shop jade does precisely the same job.
Would I spend my own money on it?
Why, yes! I did