It’s tough to look good when you’re getting the inside of your mouth massaged. But all over the internet, aestheticians and spas—usually all about soft lighting, ambient music, and soothing videos of face mask application—are sharing close-up videos of gloved practitioners with their fingers in their clients’ mouths. They claim that this technique lifts, sculpts, and ultimately makes your face look thinner.
Buccal massage, a therapeutic and aesthetic practice that involves both extraoral and intraoral massage, is growing in popularity and being offered more widely in Vancouver. Joy Hong, who has been a facialist for seven years (she is head esthetician at Theory and Essence in North Vancouver) and practising buccal therapy for three and a half, opened Sunday Buccal Therapy in Yaletown in November 2024. She also teaches buccal massage, and she says that other sectors of the beauty industry are starting to incorporate the treatment. Your hairdresser might even offer it.
Hong is originally from Korea, and she notes that in Asia, massage is a regular part of a facial. Vancouverites might be accustomed to a quick neck and head rub to bookend their treatment, but in Korea, the massage length and technique is much more involved. She stresses the importance of “good flow,” explaining that she has a holistic approach to facial care. Around half of Hong’s regular clients go to Sunday Buccal Therapy to relieve pain from TMJ (temporomandibular joint) disorders and other related jaw pain, and the other half make regular appointments just to relax. But does the treatment make their faces look narrower or jawline more pronounced?
“It’s kind of a marketing tool,” Hong reveals. She herself promotes buccal massage as a way to improve circulation, reduce puffiness, and relieve pain. “Personally, I don’t say it’s good for lifting—that’s not my thing,” she says. “It’s not magic.”
Hong’s clients don’t comment on visual changes. Instead, they say that their face feels lighter. The practitioner says that this feeling reflects improved flow—circulation, lymphatic movement, and the release of deep tension.
I’ve had a buccal massage twice: once a few years ago at Enhance Arts spa and the second more recently at Sunday Buccal Therapy with Hong. Both times I had to resist laughing when the massage started—it feels a bit unnatural to have someone touching your cheeks and jaw from inside your mouth. But much like a more traditional body massage, you start to feel the knots in your muscles begin to melt away as the practitioner works through them. I was sore afterward the way you might feel after a workout, and there were some parts of the therapy that were so relaxing I almost fell asleep with someone’s fingers in my mouth. But I definitely did not look as if I’d had a facelift.
Dr. Allison Sutton, a board-certified dermatologist and owner of Vancouver’s West Dermatology, warns about the buccal massage buzzwords so common online. “Social media is not scientifically based,” she says. “Anybody can say whatever they want with whatever background they have.” The before-and-after photos of buccal massage might look convincing, but the normal swelling that takes place after vigorous pressure won’t be permanent.
The facelift-like results prevalent in the world of buccal therapy are also popular when it comes to gua sha. Gua sha therapy is more than 2,000 years old. It’s rooted in Chinese traditional medicine (TCM) and involves using a smooth stone tool used for “skin scraping” or massage. For thousands of years, the practice has been believed to release energy and improve circulation (early Qing dynasty practitioners were not necessarily obsessed with looking snatched).
Some Vancouver spas offer gua sha treatments, but many diehard gua sha fans simply perform the massage themselves. Felicia Brownlee, founder of Vancouver’s Felicia Elizabeth Skin and certified medical aesthetician and holistic facial therapist, has 15 years of experience in the industry. She offers hands-on buccal massage and uses a gua sha as one of her regular facial tools. Brownlee says that results ultimately come down to consistency and managing expectations. “What we are doing is we’re using our hands or other tools to help with treating muscle tension,” she explains.
Felicia Brownlee massaging a client.
Brownlee explains that many of her clients don’t even realize how much tension they hold in their faces. They may first approach buccal massage or gua sha use as an alternative to facelift or laser treatment. “People are kind of leaning away from the big machines, the big devices, injections, and wanting to do a more holistic approach that’s still effective,” she says. Effectiveness is, however, subjective.
When it comes to available research-backed literature, Sutton notes that it’s reasonable to say that science supports that facial massage (hands-on or using tools) can improve circulation and improve lymphatic drainage, moving excess fluid buildup away from tissues and toward working lymph vessels and nodes. That’s it—and there are only a couple of sources that support those claims. “There is not a lot of science to support the use of gua sha or jade rollers or even facial massage in terms of showing a change or an outcome that’s really measurable,” the dermatologist says.
This doesn’t mean that the treatments are bad for you, of course, and the doctor adds that any massage can be good for self-care and mental as well as physical health. “I think it can be relaxing. I think it can be stress relieving. But to make any claims about it improving facial shape or improving wrinkles, at this point, I don’t think we have the science to support it,” she says. Following any kind of “trend” when it comes to your body can be risky, and Sutton believes that, unfortunately, many of the treatments popularized online are at worst harmful and at best a waste of money. But facial massage isn’t all that dangerous. “Thankfully, I think with jade roller and with gua sha, there’s little to no downside,” Sutton says. “You’re not going to hurt yourself with it.” Other than some soreness, I didn’t experience any negative effects.
For practitioners such as Hong and Brownlee, buccal massages and gua sha are part of a holistic facial routine. “Sleep, stress, posture, breathing, and hydration all directly affect the face,” says Hong. There may be subtle visual changes immediately following treatments, but their work is more about settling the nervous system, improving circulation, and being a small piece of the overall health puzzle. Compared to plastic surgery or laser treatments, massage is safer and cheaper. The tradeoff is that aesthetic results, if any, are much less dramatic. But who wants drama when it comes to skin, anyway?
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