7 Chinese Wellness Habits that Keep Asian Women Young & Beautiful

Everyone always says that Asian women age slower because of genetics and whilst that helps, it's not the real secret. On my trip back to Hong Kong, everyone is so conscious about staying youthful and the secret comes down to little choices you make every day that makes a huge difference over time. So here are seven habits that anyone can start doing today that makes you feel so much more youthful and the Chinese wisdom behind each. A very popular Chinese beauty saying is swan neck and beauty back because most people think that what makes a woman look young is the fact that they still have a lifted neck and a beautiful back with the toned muscles that makes you look like you're 20s. And if you look at the popular fitness exercise these days, they always have a particular aim of how do you lift the face from working on the muscles of your neck and your back. And there's something that my mom does Every day that makes her look at least five years younger. The first one focuses on your neck, shoulders and back muscles. And when you do it, you can feel like there's a really nice minty feeling on the back of your head and you can feel like it's got the lifting effects on your face. I've done it quite a few times with my mom and I definitely think that it works very well. You can do it at your office, at home or even when you're taking a little break it doesn't take a long time just do it 20 times every day and you can immediately feel a difference to a lifted effect first you want to relax your body a little bit so you don't want to be too stiff for the exercise so whatever you need to do maybe you want to shake it out or just like swing a little bit to relax before you get started then you want to focus on four different positions for this movement and once you know the movements well You can then connect them and just do it for 20 times. So the first move is you go front almost as if you're hunching your back. Then you want to go up on your shoulders, back of your shoulders and down. So front, up, back, down. Front, up, back, down. Front, up, back, down. I'm going to show you in the front is front, front, up, back, down. Once you do it for 20 times, It's enough. And immediately you can feel this minty almost a little bit stinging feeling on the back of your head and you can feel that there is a lifting effect of your head and your head, your scalp is connected to your face. So over time you also feel like your face, your skin is more lifted. Do this for 20 times every single day. It doesn't take long, maybe five minutes or so and you can already feel a significant difference. I've only done it for five, six times. I already feel a little bit out of breath because it does We feel like a proper cardio exercise and it definitely works on lifting the scalp and the face. I started incorporating this extra part to my daily exercise or maybe after ballet or after a walk or after a gym session. Just add this to your daily exercise and again remember we always talk about compounding. All of this will compound and in a week or so you definitely feel a huge difference. This is another exercise that my mom swears by which really helps to boost your blood circulation, relaxes chronic facial tension and overall just gives you a much more sculpted lifted look. So every single morning as soon as she wakes up before she gets off the bed she is doing this on the bed with her front laying down on the bed and you can do this on the table as well if you like. What you do is you put Both of your hands under Your jawline? And this is right under your chin, you see. And you're resisting it with your chin. So you're pushing your chin down against your hands. And you just do that and hold it for a minute or two. You hold it like that. It activates the muscles around this area, which we don't really work on a day to day basis. And overall, you just feel like your face is so much more lifted. And the second one is using your thumb and putting it Just below your brow bone, on the front of your brow bone here, can you see? On the front of your brow bone here, and you also just hold it. for a minute or two and immediately you feel like there is much more stress and tension around your face and immediately you feel like your brow bone is so much more lifted and all of this together gives you a much more lifted and sculpted face over time. You actually learn about these kind of movements in some face yoga too and it makes a lot of sense because if you think about it we don't really use our facial muscles often apart from when we're talking or laughing but there are Are certain micro... Muscles that never gets used and that's why when you're doing this you're activating and waking up the muscles that you don't usually use to release the tension, boost the blood circulation and make you feel more lifted because those areas sometimes just feel dormant. I just got back from Hong Kong and whenever I visit Hong Kong I always pop over to China for the best scalp care and head spa treatments and there's lots of different different kinds that you can choose from so one of my favorite one is the ginger one they rub Raw ginger blended all over your head and initially it feels very very spicy but afterwards you just feel a huge sense of release because it really helps to activate the blood circulation and release lots of tension in your head. The other one that's my favorite is a Chinese herbal tea and Chinese herbal soup where they will dip the towel in the herbal soup. It's always warm and never hot where it's going to hurt you. They dip the towel in the herbal soup and then they twist it dry. Then they wipe it around your neck and shoulders between the head massages and it's the most relaxing thing ever. And if you think about it, your scalp And your face is one skin because whenever you relax your head and release the tension in your head, it also connects to how your face expresses itself. A lot of the time when we feel a lot of tension in our head, you can see that you frown more often. And when you frown and have lots of tension in your face, that's when you have more wrinkles that show up over time. So in Chinese culture, women focuses a lot on the health. of the scalp and the relaxation of the scalp because when your scalp is relaxed your face is more relaxed it's less tense and you look more youthful over time. I have my two new favorite tools that my mom gave me and it helps so much with relaxation. You can probably get this on Amazon or i'll try to see if i can find one to link below for you but what i do is at night sometimes i'm Sometimes I'm doing this as I'm putting on a hydration mask or collagen mask and it's just like the self-care relaxing routine for me so whenever i'm using this it looks like a little claw i literally just comb my head so i go five times per angle inside on each side i comb over it putting light pressure for five times and then i work on the next line and i work all my way through To the other side. Now I have my second favorite tool and you can see the design of it is slightly different. This is more widespread and this one is more round and I use this to go in a circular motion on my head, kind of similar to what I showed you last time with the tool that I was using. So for this one, instead of going in a straight line, I go from one side, doesn't matter which side you start from, I go on one side, on the top of that one side, and I just do a circular motion like this. One, two, three. Do the same thing all the way across again. Sometimes what I also do is I just use this to curve, like what I did with the other tool. All of this helps to lift your face over time. And if you don't have these tools, you can just use your hands. Just go with both of your hands and then as if you have the tool, you're doing the circular motion, and then go to the next spot and work your way down. In the top, second, third. And then... Work your way to the middle and immediately you already feel a big sense of relief. If you'd like to find more daily rituals and habits like this with other women and become more at peace, happy and elegant, you can find a lot of those in our community, Refine. The link is below if you'd like to find it. When I went back to Hong Kong this time, I went to see a TCM doctor and he gave me all sorts of recommendations to how to nourish my qi and my blood better. One of which is using three different kinds of dates that helps to nourish the blood and the energy. He said that it's very easy for my hands and feet to get cold because my body is lacking some of the energy and blood to push warmth to my limbs and that's why using this date tea would be very helpful in bringing back some of that energy. I asked him whether or not you can use this date tea on a daily basis and whether there's any kind of side effect. And generally it is always beneficial for you, especially as women, but there are certain days in the month which you should avoid dates tea because it helps too much with the blood circulation. And also when it comes to red dates, make sure you remove the pits and also don't have too much of it if you feel like there's so much internal heat in the body. And you can usually see internal heat if, for example, you get breakouts easily. That's a very telltale sign to indicate to you whether or not you should be having more red dates. It's quite the common practice whenever you visit Hong Kong or China that people don't really give you cold water. Usually they will offer you warm water, more kind of herbal. ingredient that they're putting in the tea so it could be a herbal tea or it's quite common to also have dates and fruit tea. So this is the kind of thing that you might expect if you go for a hair treatment, a spa treatment, a head spa whatever it is where people are going to offer you a nicer drink instead of just sitting down in a restaurant that is something that they're going to offer you. And it's really interesting to see how much this concept of Yangshen, rejuvenating the body and maintaining your life force, has been emphasized in the past. five to six years in china and even in hong kong it's literally just exploded like every single angle and like street corner you go to there's always a little yangshen shop that they help you with health rejuvenation or body rejuvenation kinds of treatments body treatments head treatments chinese medicine shops there's so much of this and i'm always surprised to find that it seems like every single person in china just knows a little bit about Traditional Chinese medicine. What's the right way to maintain your body and your youth? So I've got three different dates here. I have five of each starting from the red date. The red date helps with your blood circulation and calming spirit and the red date tea is always very popular in Chinese culture. Five of those and then I have five of the black jujube. This black jujube is really really good for your kidney and also it helps with rejuvenating and nourishing your blood without the internal heat. So go for black jujube if you feel like you're prone to high internal heat. And then I've just got two of the honey dates. These are very good for your lungs and it just adds the sweetness to the tea. And then now I'm going to remove the pit of the black jujube because usually the pits are high in internal heat. So as the water is simmering I'm just going to quickly remove the seed, the pit of the jujube. So take your black jujube and what you want to do is predict where the pit is going to be. So usually the pit is quite big right in the middle and you And you want to cut the sides. Around the pit. I really like that the red dates pit is already removed because then you don't have to go through this painful process. So I've got all my dates ready in here and what I've done with the water is four cups of water but you can also add more or less depending on how concentrated you like the tea to be and I'm just going to pour everything inside. I usually wait for the water to simmer as you can see it's already simmering on high heat and then once it's done simmering I will then cover and turn it down to lower heat and then just wait. for 20 minutes. You might wonder why is it that nourishing your blood and energy is such an essential part of East Asian culture when you're trying to stay youthful and healthy. And if you think about it, what makes someone young is their life force and energy. So when you nourish that and rejuvenate that and maintain that rejuvenation, you feel so much more young From your comments on the other videos, it seems like this is also quite Quite a common practice in India and also other parts of the world. So let me know if you guys have a similarity. Care during that time of the month is so important and mostly overlooked or not emphasized on if you grew up in Western culture. And this is all about drinking things that's lukewarm. Instead of ice cold and opting for teas like ginger teas, red dates tea, and avoiding cold things, especially during that time of the month. Whenever I'm not thinking about this, like I drink too much cold things, ice water in summer, or So, um... Maybe having a beer here and there or having wine, for example, white wine, it always makes my cramps much worse. Cold makes things contract and slow circulation. That is why it makes cramps so much worse. I have a cousin who loves having a drink on the weekend. And despite that, every time she's on that time of the month, she always avoids it. She avoids alcohol and she avoids cold things. And this is something that's very religious. for people to do in Chinese culture just because people know how bad it is for your womb when you have cold drinks all the time. There's literally a syndrome called the cold womb syndrome and all this can affect your fertility as well so it's something to keep in mind of. This is something that I noticed over time as well is ever since I started avoiding cold drinks not only do my hands and feet feel less cold all the time but also I feel more calm and nourished in my body. And this is something that makes a lot of sense because when you're shocking your body with extremities all the time, whether it be foods that's very fried or grilled, or you're having ice cream all the time, all of those are extremely shocking to the body. And when you're so much more gentle with it, your body thank you by feeling better. Eat salad the balanced and Chinese way. I mentioned in my earlier videos that I always avoid cold salads at night and it's something that we serve for for lunchtime. Towards the evening, raw and cold foods can shock our body and introduce extremities, which is not good for staying youthful. And that's why if you really want to have a salad at night, and sometimes I do, what I do is just mix it with warm carbs and warm meats so you're not having too cold of a I think this is something that helps a lot of Asian women stay more youthful is the awareness of how food affects our body. And this is very related to that in the TCM world, all the foods are categorized by its nature. You don't want to have too much of either because it throws the body off balance. When you have too much heat, you might experience sore throats, dryness, and break out. Whenever I have too much cold, I feel bad cramps, bloating, and also cold hands and feet. When I was visiting Hong Kong, I had so much. food that's high in internal heat and I didn't I allowed myself to just let go for a little bit because I was back home there's so much food that I wanted to eat especially the really spicy Sichuan food and I had an ulcer. I have not gotten an ulcer in I don't know years and as soon as I told my mom she said it's because I have high internal heat and then I had some herbal soup I'm going to do a little bit of some hao gu cao. And some fruit tea and immediately I found so much better and I felt like my body was so much less swollen. I'm going to give you a list that's high in internal heat and cold in nature so you can see what kind of things to avoid and have more. And the key here is always try to strike a balance between the two. Sometimes after you have something that's too hot in internal heat you might want to balance it with something that's more cooling. This one is often talked about but But I have to remind you one more time, protect Your face, neck and hands from the sun. Reapply sunscreen on your neck and on the back of your hands if on your face It's not as easy because you probably have makeup on maybe you can do a mist of sunscreen I know that you can get those these days, but this is something that I learned from my friend in Asia They always reapply sunscreen on the neck and the back of their hands because those are the areas that show aging first. In Hong Kong People are literally so sun conscious that they carry an umbrella with them on a sunny day out I don't really do that just because I still love the sun but I just don't want the bad consequences of it, so I wear a sun hat to most places that I go to and I feel that my skin feels much better from it because I think my skin has gotten more sensitive over time. I didn't use to wear sunscreen, I can see how it's affected me. I only started applying sunscreen religiously in the past few years or so and I can see a difference between me and other Asian women my age. where they have rarely exposed themselves to direct sun. They've always used an umbrella or used sunscreen since a very young age and I can definitely see a difference. This video is not sponsored in any way but I just want to show you what I usually use for sunscreen. So I have the I don't know what she could say. Melting Milk Sunscreen. I usually use this when I have serum before because it doesn't Peel off as easily as using this one. This one is the EltaMD UV Clear. I really like this one when I'm using a hydration gel instead of serum because it feels super light on my skin. I have this mist to which I can easily reapply on my body throughout the day. It's a hundred small choices made every day but over time it makes a significant difference because of compounding. And always remember that prevention is always, always better than cure. Are there similar habits or practices in your culture? Let me know in the comments below. I always read them. Thank you so much for being here. And I hope to see you in the next video.