Dry Brushing for Lymphatic Drainage of the Face, Head, and Neck - By a Lymphedema Physical Therapist

[Music] dry brushing is a simple inexpensive technique that can help you boost your lymphatic system reduce lymphedema while improving your skin health with exfoliation my name is kelly and i am a physical therapist and i specialize in lymphedema as well as oncology and women's health i created another video for dry brushing for the entire body and i will place a link for that down below or up above but i was requested by so many of you to show my dry brushing routine for the face head and neck area as well so in this video i'm going to show you a routine that you can correctly stimulate the lymphatic system in your head neck and face area using a dry brush so first what is dry brushing using a natural soft bristle brush dry brushing will help you stimulate the lymphatic system to help reduce lymphedema or other skin conditions your lymphatic system plays a major role in your immunity or your immune system so stimulating and improving activation of the lymphatic system can help reduce pressure from something like allergies or a cold or other illnesses it's very inexpensive and really easy to do i placed links for the brush that i'm going to be using in this video down below it is a softer brush for a little bit more sensitive skin which you want to consider when you're doing the face and the neck area but i also put links down below for the one i use for more for the body or ones that you can get a package deal that you can get all of them in one this brush is fairly soft however if it is too intense for you you can find something a little bit softer or i would consider doing something like lymphatic drainage massage instead i have created videos for lymphatic drainage massage for the head neck and face area as well as one for sinus pressure so if dry brushing is too intense you can go ahead and check those out i'll put a link for those down below or up above here so you can do dry brushing daily but it's best right before you do a shower or bathing it's always done on dry skin before you put any lotions or oils on it you want to make sure you avoid areas that are really sensitive or you have any broken or open skin as well as if you have any signs of infection your pressure will be firm but you should not have any pain you don't want to think about scrubbing the skin but you're rather lightly brushing it so if your skin turns red or appears irritated or get scratched up you want to make sure you lighten up or switch to a softer brush or again discontinue talk to your doctor and maybe switch to something like lymphatic drainage massage so we're going to get into the routine and show you but i want to give you a visual so you understand what you're doing the lymphatic system is a one-way system so all of your lymphatic fluid will have to work through the vessels to your lymph nodes then at the lymph nodes they are filtered and detoxed and then the fluid will return back down towards the heart so let's look at an anatomy picture we know the vessels in your head neck and face area run outwards towards the side around where your ears are and then work its way down the neck towards your collarbone or your clavicle so when we do our dry brushing we want to follow the pattern of the lymphatic vessels so i've seen the videos on youtube for other dry brushing routines and they'll use a lot of circular patterns yes this will likely exfoliate the skin but it doesn't always encourage the fluid moving in the right direction so instead i will take the dry brush and use short little strokes following along with the lymphatic vessels there are no set guidelines on how long you need to do your dry brushing routine for but in general it will probably take you about two to five minutes so we're going to start our dry brushing routine so using your dry brush you want to think about stimulate the lymph nodes around your clavicle or your collarbone first all of the fluid in your face your head and neck area have to get through this area to then get back to the heart or out of that area so we want to start down low around where your collarbone or your clavicle is and we're going to just start by doing small circles in the area i'll do about five to ten little circles or about 20 seconds or so and you can just do those little circles you can do both sides or one side at a time and then from there we're going to think about the lymph vessels running down the neck and so we want to clear this area especially if you feel like you're swollen under here it wants to get out but if this area is backed up this fluid then can't get out so we'll work our way towards around the back of the ear and small strokes down towards the collarbone i will usually do about three to five straight swipes down and maybe a little bit more if some area is a little irritated but you can kind of work towards a little bit more on the front of the neck and then you can also work in the back of the neck again working your way downwards towards your collarbone or your clavicle so after you've done a little bit there that's where your lymph nodes are back here so i will do some more small circles around right below where your ears are and i'm still kind of thinking about working it downwards with my pressure but eight to ten times with there and then we can work more into the face area so you know when you feel a cold coming on you have swollen lymph nodes under here so we want to think about working underneath the jaw area and then back down if you look in the mirror it almost makes a seven so coming across towards the bottom of your ear and then down so you want to guide the fluid with your dry brush towards that bottom of the ear and doing about three to five there or again you can spend a little bit more time if you want and from there you can just bring some of that back down again doing a couple strokes so a lot of people will spend most of their time in this area if you want to look more into sinus pressure you can also do the face again make sure that your brush is soft enough if your skin is really sensitive in your face but you're thinking about drawing a line down the middle of your face and everything working out towards its own ear so coming around the chin you can work across the jaw towards the ears doing three to five there and then you can work kind of a top of the lip or above the lip and working across the cheek and you can spend a little more time if you want i'm just going pretty quick for the video and then again kind of below the eye just make sure you're careful around the eye area for sensitivity but looking at the sinus pressure through here and then you can also do out to the side towards the ears from the forehead area doing about three to five or a little more if you'd like after you've worked everything out towards the side towards the ear you're gonna go back and try to guide all of that fluid back down the neck towards the clavicle or the collar bone and after you've made it back down to your clavicular collarbone you are done you can do both sides at the same time or you can just do one and then the other or one at a time and again if you're looking more for exfoliation you can do the small circles however if you're looking more for lymphatic flow you can do more short strokes and it's just fine to do small circles around the area and then finish with the short strokes guiding it along the way but you just find whatever works for you and after you've completed the whole routine then you can go ahead and shower or wash your face to get rid of any extra dead skin cells that the brushing may have helped exfoliate from your skin make sure you pat dry your towel rather than rub it and then you can use your lotion or moisturizers from there dry brushing in general does not have a lot of research behind it but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence a lot of people will find that it works really well for them so it's worth giving it a try again if it's too intense then i would suggest going back to lymphatic massage which then you can go ahead and check out my other video with a link down below dry brushing for the head neck and face area is really simple it can be short and easy and quick i hope showing that was helpful for you all and if you have any other topics that you'd like to see covered feel free to comment those down below thanks everyone

Channel: Cancer Rehab PT

Views: 460,189

Keywords: dry brushing, dry brushing for lymphatic drainage, dry brushing face, dry brushing face and neck, dry brushing lymph drainage, dry brushing skin, dry brushing lymphatic drainage, dry brushing lymphedema, dry brushing skin technique, how to dry brush, lymphatic drainage massage, dry brush, dry brushing technique, dry brushing for neck, face dry brushing, lymphatic drainage face, lymphatic drainage face and neck, dry brush face, face brushing, how to dry brush your face

Id: KjljIFpuEQU

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020