Look at the faces around you. Almost everyone is working muscles that have no reason to be working in that minute: jaws clenched, cheekbones drawn, the face holding its shape as though an answer might be required at any moment. In women it is more noticeable, and it holds for years. On where this tension comes from and what it is connected to, Peruquois, a top World Music performer in Australia, a musician, composer, author and facilitator of personal development trainings for women.
The general observation
Peruquois says that most women have tight cheekbones, and she calls it a characteristic feature of our time.
Her explanation is short. Most women are afraid. Expressing yourself in today's world is a little frightening for many women, because it is built on male rules and the male world is all around them. A restriction on self-expression produces tension in the area of the cheekbones and the throat.
“It is as though they have a mask on the face, and so all the muscles around, the facial muscles and the cheekbones, are very tight,” says Peruquois.
A mask that is not worn for going out
The word mask describes the state quite precisely.
A mask goes on where showing your real face is unsafe. At first these are specific situations: negotiations, a boss, unfamiliar company, a conversation with someone who can strike with a word. Then it stops coming off at home. Then a woman forgets she ever put it on and takes that tension for the normal shape of her face.
It is easiest to notice by contrast. The muscles around the mouth and the cheekbones release in the minutes when nobody is around and nothing is expected of you.
The link between cheekbones and hips
Here Peruquois names a connection that is rarely said out loud.
The cheekbones are directly connected to the hips, where a woman's sexuality and sensuality rest. If a woman carries a lot of clenching and tension connected with her sensuality, the cheekbones tighten as the reverse consequence.
“It is like a mirror. The hips and the cheekbones, it is mirrored through the level of the diaphragm,” she says. The upper body repeats what is happening below.
The voice belongs here too. The vocal cords in a woman, in her words, are also a reflection of the lower center.
From which a simple thing follows. Working on the face in isolation is ineffective: the clench is held in what those muscles are reflecting.
What breath does
This is why the work begins with breathing, and Peruquois describes it in detail.
In tension a person breathes only with the upper chest, in short inhales. In deep breathing the whole belly expands, filling with air. She describes it even more physically: as though a force rises out of the earth, fills the lower belly and then spreads through the body.
Then comes what her vocal yoga begins with: releasing from the body the tension accumulated over a lifetime.
It is done like this. A deep inhale into the very lowest part of the belly. Tighten the lower muscles slightly, in the area of the perineum. Then an exhale with the sound haaa, with the vocal cords relaxed and allowed to sound.
And as a separate point: release the jaw. Peruquois calls this obligatory, because that is where most of the rest is held.
Why sound releases what massage does not
Breath becomes sound when it starts to vibrate. “The fuel for singing and for all the songs people sing is, of course, breath. Everything begins there,” says Peruquois.
Vibration works from within and passes through the layers a hand cannot reach. It travels the very paths that hold the mask: belly, diaphragm, throat, jaw, cheekbones. Which is why after a few minutes of sounding the face changes on its own, with no separate work on the face.
The practice is short and can be done anywhere, including in a car stuck in traffic. Peruquois calls deep belly breathing a wonderful rescue for exactly that situation.
The jaw in conversation
The easiest place to catch yourself is in the minutes when you are saying something that matters.
A woman is about to speak about her desire, her disagreement, something that does not suit her. And the first thing that happens, happens in the face: the jaw draws in, the lips thin, the voice sits higher than usual. The sentence comes out compressed, and the other person hears that compression before the meaning.
Hence the familiar sense of not being heard although you said it. The body in that moment is reporting the opposite of what the voice is saying.
A released jaw changes the sound as well. The voice drops lower, support appears, and the sentence stops sounding like a request for permission.
A face allowed to be alive
Tight cheekbones are the trace of a long prohibition on self-expression, and they are read on a woman before she manages to say anything.
What releases them is what created them, with the sign reversed: the possibility of sounding, of breathing deeply, of taking up space without wariness. The body in this sense is more honest than any discussion of freedom.
If you want to open your voice and release what the body has been holding, take Peruquois's course Vocal Yoga.
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