Gua Sha — Your Ritual for Radiance
Gua Sha is more than just a beauty trend – it’s a holistic practice rooted in Traditional Chinese Medicine that promotes lymphatic drainage, blood circulation, and relieves muscle tension. Whether you’re looking for glowing skin, to reduce puffiness, or for something meditative to add to your nighttime ritual… gua sha sounds like it could be for you.
In this practice we use a stone or a smooth flat surface and drag it across the skin. Depending on your goal of the treatment, the pressure used will either be firm or lighter. Typically, on the face I recommend using light pressure as it’s best for moving lymph, unless you’re trying to relax tension in the eyebrow area. Firmer pressure also is great when going along the traps for example, and when trying to break up muscle tension and increase blood flow to the area, helping with tension headaches.
When doing gua sha it’s very important to use an oil. This ensures the stone (or whatever you’re using) slides smoothly across the skin, avoiding any pulling on the skin. This is why I do my routine in the evenings just after I’ve done my nighttime facial routine, as my skin is layered with plenty of serums, moisturizers, and oils.
There are a variety of different vessels you can use for gua sha, some examples including:
Jade Stone: This is the most traditional option, jade is used because the stone itself stays very cool, so it is perfect for inflammation.
Stainless Steel: My personal favorite. This stone is amazing for both light and firm pressure, it’s very durable (awesome for bringing travelling), and it can be put in the freezer making it extra cold for those days where you wake up a bit more puffy than usual or have a bit of a sunburn.
Wood: Very soft and the most porous so this is not a good option if you are using it on multiple people as it is difficult to truly clean it.
Plastic: An inexpensive option.
If buying an actual gua sha stone is a bit out of your price range or you’re in a pinch, spoons and jar lids are great options as well!
Does gua sha have side effects? Great question!
The only side effects gua sha tends to have is redness that will go away within the hour, and depending on the purpose of the treatment petechiae could be left behind which will go away within a few days. These will not be painful. This occurs because there are capillaries close to the surface of the skin and when scraping with more pressure it can bring more blood to the surface.
Now, let’s go over a quick and easy facial routine:
Cover all areas that you will gua sha with plenty of oil.
Begin by opening up the lymph nodes by very lightly pumping them using your hands. Start along the upper portion of the clavicles, pump behind the ears in the little hole behind your ear lobes, next make “spock hands” and rub directly in front of and behind the ear at the same time. Afterwards you will move to either side of the nostrils, and finish off by pressing in circular motions at the inner points of your eyebrows. Do each of these movements 10x.
Now, using your gua sha stone I like to start by opening the flow in the neck. Use the longest flat edge of your stone and drag downwards from your jawline to your clavicles. For all these steps, I recommend performing them 3-5x before moving onto the next.
Next, I like using the edge of the edge that will sculpt around the jawline and drag that along it starting at the chin and ending at the front of the ears.
Then using that larger flat side again, start at the outer border of the mouth and pull along the skin upwards towards the front of the ears.
Important: Always pull the stone upwards on the face as if you’re lifting.
Now we switch back to the sculpting edge and start as close to the nose as possible and drag along the cheekbones upwards, ending at the temples.
This is the part you can use slightly more pressure if you would like. Take one of the smaller tips and massage at the inner edge of the eyebrows in a circular motion (like what we did at the beginning when opening our lymph nodes). Then pull outwards to the edge of the eyebrows.
Almost done – Using the large flat side again start at the middle of the forehead, working from middle outwards, starting at upper eyebrow edge and dragging upwards towards hairline.
To finish off I flush out from the neck again, repeating step 3.
The entire routine should only take you about 3-5 minutes. Doing the routine at least 3 times a week is ideal for results.
Beauty is more than just skin deep so pair these treatments with acupuncture from a licensed professional and you will notice great changes in your overall health and skin. Gua sha is such an easy way to decrease puffiness, relieve muscle tension, and much much more.