Now that Herman Cain has dropped out of the 2012 presidential race, the news is full of surprised commentary about how quickly support is turning to Newt Gingrich rather than the assumed frontrunner, Mitt Romney.

But if you know face reading, you may not be so surprised. The reasons may be written in their faces.

The thing is, everyone’s face communicates certain messages to the world. Even if you don’t know how to read faces, you still have an unconscious reaction to every face you view, and it affects your perception of that person’s character, including how much you trust them.

And this can matter a lot in a political campaign. For example, even Western psychological research has revealed that we tend to trust people with wide faces more than people with narrow faces. The conclusion was that people unconsciously feel that a wide-faced person isn’t hiding anything because you can see more of their face.

A narrow face subliminally makes you feel that there are things you can’t see about that person, and that makes you uneasy. So when you look at Gingrich’s wide face and then at Romney’s much narrower face, this may be one reason why voters are swinging toward Gingrich.

What Chinese face reading  adds to this is that people with wide faces generally have more stamina than people with narrow faces and thus have a more gung-ho attitude toward life. It’s said they can’t bite off more than they can chew – in other words, they can tackle big problems and not be swayed.

People with narrow faces are said to be more cautious overall and prefer to take things step by step because they’re less comfortable diving in the deep end of a project. Romney’s narrower face may be making people feel less sure he’s up to the task.

But that’s not all. Western studies have found that it’s almost always the politician with the strongest jaw who wins the election. Gingrich has a massive jaw compared to Romney.

In Chinese face reading, the jaw is called “The Roots of the Tree.” A tree with strong roots can’t be easily knocked over by the wind. So like the tree, a person with a strong jaw can’t be easily influenced by other people. In other words, they have strong beliefs and will stand up for those beliefs.

We naturally feel safer around someone with strong beliefs, thinking that if we align with them, they’ll stand up for us too. When we see someone with a weak or narrow jaw, our perception is that they may be more wishy-washy – too easy to waver or change their minds.

You may be thinking back to the last presidential election and remembering that John McCain had quite a large jaw, so how is it that he lost? In fact, McCain’s jaw was deformed by scar tissue from illness, and wasn’t what Chinese face reading would define as strong. In that election, Barack Obama had a healthier, better-defined jaw line.

I’m not saying that politics should be a beauty contest! It’s not about how pleasing someone’s appearance is, but that in fact the information their face presents is a valid representation of who they are inside.

Of course, you can’t know everything about someone by reading just one or two details of their face. Instead you need to understand the combined messages conveyed by all the features.

I often compare face reading to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. You don’t get the complete picture by putting just a few pieces in place – you have to fit them all together to see the entire view.

In a future newsletter, I’ll be doing a more thorough “read” of the candidates’ faces. Make sure you’ve subscribed so you don’t miss it! http://wisdomofyourface.com/newsletter.html

I just spoke with a woman who said as soon as she turned 50 her life seemed to have taken an emotional downturn, and she asked me if the reason could be read on her face.

In fact, along with revealing your inner nature, your face is also considered to be a map of your journey through life. You can read the experiences of each year and each decade overall. It’s the transitions between each decade that are the most powerful times, and so this is one reason why she noticed a distinct difference in her experience at this point.

But it’s also believed there are four different stages in life that are particularly important – these are called “The Four Gates” – and she’d just passed through one of them. These are special passages in life, times when you make a powerful transition, and when your attention is drawn to life choices and direction. Each gate introduces you to a time when there will be a new focus and each has some specific “homework” you’ll do in that time period.

The first gate marks the time when you enter the decade of your 40’s, and it’s located at the top of your nose, in the area between your eyes. Your 40’s is a time when you naturally begin to feel strongly about living more authentically, when you sense it’s time to finally stand in your power. You may feel driven to find work that’s more meaningful to you, and to have relationships that support you for who you really are.

The second gate is the transition to the 50’s, where this woman now stands, and is represented on your face by your philtrum, the groove between your nose and upper lip. Here your attention takes another powerful turn.

The theme of the 50’s is about looking at how you don’t yet feel fulfilled in life, how you haven’t yet gotten what you wanted, and you’re especially compelled to look at the balance of giving and receiving in your life. This often means confronting how you may have been over-giving.

Often by the time women reach their 50’s, they’ve developing a pattern of taking care of everyone else before themselves. If they’re wives and mothers, this is an easy rut to fall into, but even if they’re single, our culture supports women being the caregivers in all aspects of life, so they may be too other-directed and have neglected the importance of their own self-care.

The decade of the 50’s can bring up feelings of anguish about how you wanted more in life, and even anger about your current circumstances. The homework for this time of life is to look at how it may have been appropriate to be a “giver” in the past, but you’ve gone too far down that road, or times have changed.

You’re also required to look at how you may have developed a pattern of negative thinking, a belief that because you’re been disappointed in the past, you will continue to be. Any negative affirmations will of course simply continue to create your future based on your past.

The basic cure for this dilemma of the 50’s is to get selfish! The work is to look at what you haven’t yet received, and to go out and get it; to put yourself at the top of your “to-do” list. The lesson is also to pay attention to enjoying life, to relish what you’ve received so far rather than feel bad about what’s missing.

And lastly, it’s to honestly examine how you may have developed a pattern of expecting that you’ll be let down or not get what you need. Are you receptive to life loving you or are you so stuck in feeling disappointed that you’ve shut down and can’t even recognize opportunities to receive?

If there are any scars or markings in your philtrum, this can indicate that the year you turn 50 is an especially difficult transition. The decade of the 50’s overall is represented by your mouth, and it can actually be helpful to pay attention to how you’re holding your mouth as you go through your day. Occasionally check in to see if you feel any tension there, and if so, consciously relax your mouth, even creating a little smile. This actually helps to rebuild your receptivity and contributes to bringing your life back into balance.

Your 50’s can be a powerful time of finally receiving the life you deserve. This is what I shared with my friend, and I know she left that conversation seeing her experience in an entirely different light.

The third gate in life is the passage to the 60’s and this transition is represented by the area on your chin, directly under your lower lip. The 60’s is a time when people can feel revitalized and with a renewed purpose in life, especially if they’ve done their homework in the 50’s. It’s not uncommon for a horizontal wrinkle to mark the face here, and this can indicate an important break with the past as they move into this decade.

The fourth gate is the transition to the 70’s and is positioned at the very bottom of the chin. As you enter this stage of life, your focus turns to refining your vision for the future, working on any unresolved issues, examining what you can let go of in order to move into the future free and clear.

When you learn face reading, you can finally decipher your personal owner’s manual to your life. The information is all there – in that reflection in the mirror!

They say opposites attract, but there’s a new dating website that claims to be able to find you true love by matching you with someone who has a face that looks like yours. The theory is that the more you look like someone, the greater the chances of success for your relationship with them. They claim that studies on celebrities’ faces show that the ones who have happy marriages tend to look alike. If you consider this within the context of Chinese face reading, which teaches that every feature on your face has specific meanings and messages, you might think this could make sense. If your date’s features are similar to yours, then wouldn’t it be true that you’d be very similar in personality and therefore compatible?

Well, first, we all know human beings are not that simple! We each have a gloriously intricate pattern of temperament, beliefs, talents and foibles! But also, it seems a bit silly to assume that a successful relationship can only happen with someone who’s as much like us as possible. So this got me to thinking about what relationships might be like if people shared certain similar features….

Ears that stick out: If you have two people with ears that stick out from the sides of their heads, this means you have two very willful and independent personalities! So here you have two non-conformists, who may share some similar behaviors, values and perceptions about the outside world, but at home together, this could at times turn into a nightmare of each resisting what the other wants them to do!

Arched eyebrows: Brows that look like upside-down V’s indicate that person will be quick to react. They can be spontaneous, which is lovely, but they also may be too impulsive at times. When upset, they’re often emotionally reactive – if you say something to upset them, they can immediately bristle or challenge you. At the extreme, they can be very excitable emotionally, and that can make for fireworks in a relationship, in good ways but also bad!

Nose bump: A nose that has a boney bump on the bridge (usually about 1/4 to 1/3 from the top of the nose) signifies the potential to be quite controlling. It usually derives from a very high level of personal sensitivity, which makes this person more aware of little details than other people, and more bothered if something is “off.”

It can be a real challenge to move through life seeing all the little mistakes others have made and missed. So the result often is this person feels a need to make sure the mistakes don’t happen, out of a desire to prevent stress to their own system! This can mean they always seem to be butting in to tell you how to do something, or you get the feeling they never trust you to do anything right. Put two people with nose bumps together in relationship and you can have two controllers driving each other crazy!

Visible nostrils: One way the more superstitious form of Chinese face reading refers to the nose is as “the moneybox.” They say that the nostrils show how easily a person spends money. If you ever look at someone straight on at eye level (not looking up at them or down at them) and you can see directly into their nostrils, this means they spend money easily. Though this may sound a bit farfetched, I do find this tends to be true! So if you have two people in relationship who both have visible nostrils, there’s a better chance they’ll love to spend and will end up with money problems, certainly not the most optimistic trend if you’re hoping for a successful partnering.

Round face: People with round faces often excel in really enjoying all the pleasures of life here on earth. They love the company of family and friends, wonderful meals together, a cozy and comfy home, and relaxing on a big cushy couch with their feet up. They’re not much inclined toward exercise, and so if you put two of these people together, you’ll find they tend to influence each other – to just cuddle together in front of the TV, snacks in hand, and over time, put on weight. They may actually have a good relationship in certain ways because they can get in the same rut together, but worst case, can develop health problems due to poor diet choices and lack of exercise.

It’s definitely important to understand what messages your date’s face reveals, but maybe you should beware if they look too much like you!

I’ve just returned from spending Christmas with my 93 year old mother and my heart is still full. My mother’s always been an amazing woman. When she was 89, I took her to one of the foremost acupuncturists in the world, and she was proclaimed to be a very rare case– a woman of that age whose spirit was still completely bright and vital.

Things have changed over the past year, and her spirit has dimmed considerably. She’s no longer able to live on her own, and is not often even fully conscious. But when she looks at me, there’s such light in her eyes, and such pure love, that I just feel totally cherished by her.

On my flight home, I was reading an interview with Oprah, where she talked about author Toni Morrison saying that what every child wants to know is, ‘Do your eyes light up when I enter the room?’ This is the gift my mother still gives me and I’m so very grateful.

When I was writing The Wisdom of Your Child’s Face, I did a lot of research into the latest discoveries in our Western understanding of child development. I was surprised to learn that the most important thing a child needs from his or her parents is not heaps of praise, and not even frequent “I love you’s,” though of course those things are essential.

But in fact, the single most powerful predictor of a child’s happiness and success in life is how much they feel recognized and understood by their parents.  To me, this is what’s happening when a parent’s eyes light up at the sight of their child.

And I don’t think that need ends with childhood.  I think the people who we feel most connected with and loved by are the ones who recognize us for who we really are, without layers of judgment, and without conditional love, which has strings attached.

This isn’t always easy to achieve. We all have different personalities, different patterns of perception and behavior, and these can really affect our ability to feel that pure love for and acceptance of another person. We misunderstand why someone in our lives is behaving as they are, or has the needs that they do. And over the years, these tiny misperceptions can build on themselves, until that light in the eyes goes out.

My mother and I are not at all alike; in fact we’ve always been very different from each other. Face reading has helped me so much in understanding her as an adult, but also in looking back throughout my childhood to give me insights about why she was the kind of parent that she was, and why I had the experiences I did because of this.  It’s what has allowed me to stay as clear and free of unresolved issues as possible with her, and to just be fully present with her, with that beautiful light in her eyes, and the same reflected back in mine.

Cheeks and Career Choices!

If you learn how to read faces, you’ll never be bored again – there’s such fascinating information available around you every day! Here are some thoughts about how just one feature can indicate potential career direction:

This fall, I spoke at an international conference for estheticians and spa professionals. As I gazed at the hundreds of faces around me, I suddenly noticed that nearly all of them had gigantic cheeks!

In face reading, each feature has many messages for you, about who you really are, what’s important to you, and your special patterns of perception of life. But a few of the things that cheeks represent made obvious sense in this situation:

One of the personality characteristics that prominent cheeks indicate is someone who naturally pays close attention to details, and has an inherent desire to create beauty in life.  So it’d certainly make sense that a person attracted to a career as an esthetician would have powerful cheeks!

In Chinese medicine, each feature also correlates to a specific organ system in the body.  (Face reading originated as a diagnostic tool for health purposes.) Interestingly, one of the things the cheeks relate to is the health of the skin – so again, we see how these cheeks would incline someone to be naturally attracted to a career doing detailed work to create beautiful skin!

But shortly after that conference, I attended another, this time about Buddhist psychology.  I found myself in a room surrounded by therapists and other healers interested in applying mindfulness techniques to help others achieve peace and balance in their lives. The focus was on powerful ways for people to observe their thoughts and feelings and start to take more responsibility for their choices in life.

And as I looked around, I realized that nearly everyone in the room had flat cheeks!  I had to laugh – one of the things that flat cheeks represent is someone who doesn’t want to have to take responsibility for another person’s work. It’s usually taken as a sign they’d not enjoy managing a staff, as they don’t like to constantly have to check up on people and remind them to do their jobs.

But another way flat cheeks can be interpreted is someone who’ll not want to boss another person around – that they want them to take responsibility for their own progress.  This is exactly the way these flat-cheeked therapists would be attracted to working with clients, and why they would be interested in this conference!

It’s amazing what you can discover in the faces around you if you just know what to look for!

School of One!

As I worked on my new book, The Wisdom of Your Child’s Face, I observed so many times how a child’s true nature was misperceived by parents or teachers, how their spirit was already being diminished by the lack of recognition and support for what they personally needed in order to succeed in school.

Chinese face reading shows us how unique each child is in every way, and that includes his or her learning style at school. There are actually simple, effective things that can be done to accommodate a child’s specific needs for integrating information in the best possible way for them. In my book, I have sections for teachers that give them ideas for dealing with different personality types. Things as small as where a child sits in the room, the way they’re spoken to, even how often they can get up and move around can have a surprising impact on their ability to function well in school.

That’s why I was so happy to read an article in The Atlantic Magazine about “School of One” (see link below) that offers a wonderful new way of re-thinking our educational system so that every child’s personal needs are honored without making unreasonable demands on teachers. We can change our schools from the mass-production model!

My only quibble with this idea is that they think they need a mathematical algorithm for this system! If only they knew how to read the kids’ faces! That would give them the information they need to know how each child best integrates information, relates to the teacher, their flow through the day and more. Well, maybe eventually face reading will be an additional tool to make life easier for more educators and parents!

This article is available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-littlest-schoolhouse/8132/ Let’s support innovation in our schools!

No Technicians Here…

Someone contacted me recently to sign up for a workshop, saying he’d studied many systems of personality analysis and was looking forward to adding another tool to his tool belt. I envisioned him arriving at the workshop with a clipboard and measuring tape, ready to get all his charts and forms to fill out!

If you come to one of my workshops, one of the first things I’ll tell you is that I don’t train people to be technicians. I believe there are already plenty of systems out there that keep you firmly in your head and out of your heart. They give you questionnaires full of boxes to check, have you analyzing a thousand details, until you have the appropriate label to stamp someone with. Often you’re then directed to decide what’s wrong with them and how they can be fixed.

It’s not a surprise that most ways of understanding people do this because this is how our culture looks at everything in the world – we’re taught to judge – everyone and everything, in terms of good/bad, right/wrong, or at least look for some little box to put someone in and neatly tie it up with a string!

We even judge ourselves all the time; most of us have our own personal negative talk radio station blaring in our heads about what’s wrong with us nonstop throughout the day. We judge others, which often results in separating us further from them rather than bringing us closer. We see someone’s behavior as wrong, and this allows us to blame them rather than really understand why they acted as they did, or take responsibility for our part in the event. All this judgment serves to keep us locked in to our worldview, perpetuating the story we’re telling ourselves, over and over every day, about who we are, and who the other people in our lives are too.

For me, what’s important is to break out of this limited belief system, and to instead work on expanding our capacity to love. You can’t be truly present with someone if you’re stuck in your head, busy judging and labeling them. But you also can’t help them or have a healthy relationship with them if you’re being swept away by your feelings and reacting only from your emotional self. What’s necessary is to combine both heart and mind, to come to a compassionate understanding of who someone truly is, and to soften toward them in way that respects and supports their authentic nature.

So this is what I strive to do with my own work and what I’d look for in other systems of understanding human beings! Here are a few examples of statements that can alert you to a training or consultation to avoid:

• If someone promises they can teach you how to tell if someone is a bad or dishonest person. (No one is by nature bad or dishonest. Everyone has the capacity to do unkind things or to be dishonest if they’re out of balance in their lives.)

• If they use any judgmental, negative words to describe a personality type, words that have a charge to them or are not respectful, such as: sneaky, mean, stupid, unlucky, angry, domineering, smothering, uptight, etc. (No one is inherently any of these kinds of qualities, and this reveals a very limited understanding of human nature.)

• If they say they can predict when an event will happen or exactly what will happen. (The only thing we know for sure is that everything changes. Choices you make, lessons you learn, experiences you have day by day change the future course of your life, so no one can know exactly what’s to come.)

• If they give comical definitions of personality types, or offer cookie cutter or stereotypical characteristics. (These are not honoring of the human spirit, and don’t understand they myriad of ways a characteristic can manifest in someone’s personality.)

• If there is no identifiable foundation to the work. In other words, if this is a system that someone designed on their own, it will most likely be overly affected by their own personality! (This is why I love Chinese face reading so much, as it has a history of 3,000 years of research and development!)

• If the system seems overly complex or you can’t seem to get a grasp of the logic behind it. (I believe the more sophisticated a knowledge is, the more it has been developed, the simpler and more elegant it becomes.)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m an information junkie, and am always interested in learning new ways to understand myself, others, and life on this planet! But I think any knowledge that’s worthwhile will be obviously affirming and empowering, and will expand your capacity to love yourself and other people.

Botox or Not Botox?

One of the most popular cosmetic procedures out there these days is to Botox away your wrinkles. But before you erase them, it can help to understand what those wrinkles could mean! Every line, every feature on your face has a message for you that can be important.

When it comes to wrinkles, there are basically two kinds: The first forms when you’ve learned a significant life lesson and gained wisdom as a result. The second kind I call a gift, an early warning sign that you’re navigating slightly off course in life. But if you know how to read that wrinkle’s meaning, it also reveals why this has happened and how you can come back into balance.

In the first case, you’d not want to lose that wrinkle, because it’d be a sign of having also lost the lesson learned. For instance, I recently worked with a woman in her late 40’s who was curious why a horizontal line she’d had removed from her forehead 3 years ago had suddenly reappeared.

She’d had a procedure to remove the line because she thought it was making her look old. Her forehead had remained smooth for the next two years, but now the crease was back again. In face reading, there is a point on your face that represents every year of your life, and this line was at the place marking her life experience at age 23.

When I asked her what happened when she was 23 years old, she said with surprise, “Well, that was a huge year for me – I got married without waiting to really get to know my husband and it was a disaster. I really gave my power away in that situation but I always felt I learned a big lesson to never let that happen again. And for the next 20 years it never did happen again. But then two years ago, it’s hard to admit – I did it again – I dove into a marriage too quickly and am now putting my life back together after my second divorce.”

What face reading would say was that the wrinkle marked the powerful lesson she learned from her first marriage. But when she had it removed, it correlated to losing the wisdom she’d gained in that original experience. And one year later, she found herself right back in the same kind of situation.

The wrinkle had returned only as she’d completed her second divorce, a sign she’d re-learned the lesson. My advice to her was to keep and honor that line in her forehead, because as long as she had it, she’d never make that mistake again!

The second kind of wrinkle has a different meaning (the one I call an early warning sign): It forms as a result of a pattern of thoughts and emotions you have on a regular basis. Even if your doctor alters that part of your face, you’ll still keep having those same thoughts and feelings that created that mark, and so eventually it’ll come back. Your face is just a reflection of who you are inside.

But once you learn the message that wrinkle has to offer you, you can use that information to make the inner change, the only kind that’s sustainable. For instance, a woman who attended one of my workshops earlier this year recently shared with me that she was amazed to learn the meaning of the single vertical line between her eyebrows – that it related to her especially difficult childhood relationship with her father.

She realized that experience was still a negative influence in her life, and resolved to actively do some personal work on the issue. Three months later, she was astonished to discover the wrinkle had disappeared!

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard results like this, and people have even had their families accuse them of secretly getting plastic surgery because their wrinkles have disappeared! Now, the goal of my work is not about eliminating wrinkles! But when you see a line ease in this way, you know that you’ve made an important inner change that will affect much more than the appearance of your face. In fact, you’ve been able to release an old pattern that most likely was a limiting one for you, and thus you’ve changed the direction of your life.

In Chinese face reading, it’s the size and shape of the features of your face that give you the most important messages about who you are inside and what you need to be happy. But even a temporary change to your face, like a spot or a rash can have a meaning. Those kinds of marks relate to a temporary life situation, and while they’re not considered anywhere near as significant as the more permanent characteristics, sometimes they can reveal information that can really help you understand what you’re currently experiencing.

For instance, I recently worked with a woman who was curious about a small red area that had suddenly appeared in her under-eye. A few weeks later it turned almost black in color, even though it wasn’t a bruise, and after two months, hadn’t yet disappeared.

Of course any change to the skin like this should be checked by a medical professional, and her doctor had already looked at it and said it was nothing. But when it comes to Chinese face reading, I explained to her that any sign on the face can relate to three different aspects of your life situation.

First it could provide a message about her physical health; secondly, it might reveal something to do with her emotional nature; or third, it could be associated with a certain time in her life’s journey. Sometimes it’s only related to one of those things, sometimes two, and often all three.

In terms of your physical body, the under-eyes reveal the level of overall hydration, and can also reflect how well rested you are, among other things. So for instance, if your under-eyes temporarily become dark, it can mean you’re dehydrated, or haven’t been getting enough sleep.

When it comes to what the under-eyes reveal about your emotional self, marks in this part of the face have to do with what’s called “Unshed Tears.” In other words, some emotions are coming up and need to be felt; tears need to be shed. If a red color shows up in this part of the face, it means a current issue is upsetting you, and if the color is dark, it relates back to old feelings from long ago.

And lastly, the under-eyes have to do with your life experience in the decade of your 30’s. A marking here, especially a dark one, could mean that something significant that happened in that period of your life is connected with what’s occurring for you now.

This was a big “AHA” moment for this woman. She shared with me that when this mark in her under-eye first appeared two months before; it was a few days after her sister’s 26-year-old son had committed suicide. The whole family was devastated, of course, and she flew home to try to help in this terribly painful time. Trying to hold it all together so she could be there for her sister, she suppressed her own grief for the time she was there. So the red marking showing up in her under-eyes reflected the fact that she had “unshed tears.”

But it was the meaning of why the marking turned so dark that really hit home for her. In her 30’s, she and her sister had actually been pregnant at the same time. However, her own baby had died at a few months of age. So now, not only was the grief around her nephew’s death needing to be allowed, but her old sorrow at her own baby’s death was emerging again as well. She said this explained why she’d still been feeling so intensely distraught after two months – it wasn’t just the loss of her sister’s son that she needed to cry about but for the stirrings of her pain from the loss of her own son long ago, as well.

Several days later, I received an email from her. She said the tears had finally been coming and she felt it was a necessary and wonderful release. And the marking in her under-eye was starting to fade as well.

The minor changes you see on your face are a reflection of the ebbs and flows of your inner nature, your personal response to your life experiences. You can use the wisdom presented there to understand what to focus on in this period of time, and as a map to navigate life overall in a more balanced way.

I’ve been traveling and teaching nearly nonstop, and my hope of making frequent blog entries had to vanish for a while, but here I am back again! It’s hard to explain the pure delight of being home for more than a week and being able to do some REAL grocery shopping for a change! I even treated myself to a stop at an Asian grocery and got to buy bitter melon, and duck eggs, and lotus root, and – oh, I could go on and on, but suffice it say that Chinese food is my ultimate comfort food!

Someone asked me recently whether I could still read someone’s face if they’d had plastic surgery, and that’s a common question, so I thought I’d broach it here….

If someone has plastic surgery, I can still read their face, but it’s helpful to know in advance what they’ve changed, so I can read the emotional and energetic consequences of what has happened. Everything on your face has a meaning. If you alter anything about your face, you don’t just make a physical change to how you look, you also alter the meaning that feature holds for you, and this isn’t always a wise thing.

Each of us is born with a unique inner blueprint, an intentional design that is ours and ours alone. Your face reveals what that blueprint is, and how to create a life that is in alignment with whom you were meant to be. Just as a house is built based on a blueprint, it’s not always wise to make changes to it without looking at the original plans!

Often someone wants to alter their face to remove wrinkles they think are ugly. The problem is that wrinkles aren’t just as a result of aging. Many wrinkles are carved into the face as a result of repetitive patterns of emotion. Each of us has certain emotions we feel on a consistent basis, often repeatedly throughout the day. When we feel that emotion, we make an expression – sometimes it’s a tiny micro-expression, and sometimes it’s a longer-lasting expression. But each time we do this, we carve the lines associated with that expression a bit more deeply into our faces.

If you remove the wrinkle, you’re removing the external representation of that pattern of emotion. But most likely, you’ve done no inner work to change those feelings! So you keep having those same emotions with the same frequency, and the wrinkles just re-form. One woman came up to me in a workshop to point out all the deep wrinkles she had, and then told me she’d had a complete facelift 18 months before – the wrinkles had all come back in that short amount of time.

Rather than pay thousands of dollars to try to eradicate wrinkles, and then have them return, it can be very useful to learn what those wrinkles mean! This can help you become aware of the reason you developed the wrinkle. But it can also help you make new choices about what you think or feel. By learning to make these different choices, you can actually watch a wrinkle fade or even disappear. I’ve received many an amazed email from students in my workshops that they’ve done this successfully.

Some people have plastic surgery, not to erase wrinkles but to change a feature they don’t like. Too often, this isn’t because the feature is actually disfiguring, but rather because they’re afraid they won’t be attractive/lovable the way they naturally look. I often have people in my workshops saying they used to hate their nose, or mouth, or ears, etc. until they learned what they mean in Chinese face reading! Every feature reveals something powerful about who you are and what you can do in the world. When you understand their meaning, you’d never want to change them!

At the worst, making severe changes to your face is considered to possibly change your entire destiny. Our recent loss of brilliant Michael Jackson is an example of how someone can actually change their destiny by having plastic surgery. I’ve been worried for years about him because of how dramatically he’d altered his face. Especially as the changes he made to his nose disastrously shifted what his life would be like once he entered his 40’s. (One of the things the nose represents is what your life experience will be during the decade of your 40’s.) His original nose showed that this time of his life would have been one of loving connections with family and friends, relaxed enjoyment of the fruits of his success, and a sense of grounded safety in the world.

But the disfigured nose he ended up with indicated a nightmare experience in his 40’s, along with a loss of personal power, extreme vulnerability of the heart emotionally and physically, and need to withdraw from the world, for solitude due to hyper-sensitivity. I was especially worried about him at this specific time in his life because age 49-50 is represented on the face as the area from the tip of the nose down into the philtrum (groove under the nose). Because the tip of his nose was so disfigured, this would indicate a time of dangerous transition, as well as actual possibility of a heart problem, no matter what the cause. If only he could have gotten real help to restore balance in his life.

I’d encourage everyone to consider that learning to read the face you see in the mirror is a way of recognizing, loving and honoring your soul’s intent.