Lift One Eyebrow

Animating the face by raising an eyebrow may not be worth a thousand words, but it’s worth several. With just the lift of one brow, you can drop hints about what’s on your mind without saying a word. Raise a brow to indicate surprise or do it for attention. Lower it to express annoyance or displeasure with something, but remember this task may take a bit of an effort. It doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Animating only one side of the face takes a little bit of work and a few facial exercises to get the hang of it.

Steps

Using Your Hands to Train Your Eyebrows

  1. Determine which eyebrow is more dominant. Before beginning your training, you will want to figure out which eyebrow will be most easily trained. Typically, this will be your dominant eyebrow.
    • Stand in front of a mirror, and try to lift your right eyebrow. Then try to lift only your left eyebrow. Which one do you feel that you have better control over? This is likely your dominant eyebrow, and the one you should try to focus on.
    • Don't worry if you feel you don't have control over either, just pick one and go from there.
    • Make a note of which eyebrow you will focus on. This way you won't get mixed up and waste time trying to train both eyebrows at the same time.
  2. Push and hold the dominant eyebrow up with your hand. If the other eyebrow comes with it, use the other hand to hold the other eyebrow down. This will help you learn what it feels like when just one of your eyebrows is raised. Keep practicing this in the mirror so you can detect the correct muscle movement to move one eyebrow up.
    • Place tape over the raised brow instead of using your hand if this feels more comfortable. Doing this gives you more muscle control since you're not relying on your hand to lift the brow. It also forces you to assist in the process of holding the brow up by straining those muscles.
    • With your eyebrow still raised, trace your finger over the muscles along the brow bone. They should feel taut. These are the muscles you want to focus on when you're lifting the brow. Even if you are primarily using your hand to practice, this is a good exercise to help you remember where the brow muscles are located.
  3. Hold only the lower eyebrow down. After you understand how it should feel to raise your eyebrow, release the brow you want to raise while holding the one you want to lower.
    • Practice this for 2-5 minutes each day.
  4. Hold only the upper eyebrow. After you have practiced raising one brow, you’ll want to practice lowering the other. Do this by holding the raised brow in place with your hand. Practice lowering the other eyebrow.
    • Again, do this for 2-5 minutes each day.
    • It is conceivable that some people simply may not be able to individually lift a brow without using the hand as a guide. However, you'll probably need more practice to be able to tell if this is the case. Even people that eventually are able to do it usually require some form of training, so you won't know until you give it a try for a little while.

Practicing Without Hand Assistance

  1. Stand in front of a mirror. When practicing, it is important to stand in front of a mirror. Sometimes we may feel like we are doing the correct movements, but when you look in the mirror you may find that you are not doing what you intended.
  2. Practice raising and lowering both brows. Spend about a minute raising and lowering both brows. This helps you get in the right frame of mind, and helps to get your eyebrow muscles warmed up.
  3. Focus on raising one eyebrow. Spend five minutes focusing on raising the brow you have chosen without the use of your hands. Don’t worry about the other eyebrow right now, just focus on raising it as high as you can.
  4. Focus on lowering the other eyebrow. Spend another five minutes where you focus solely on lowering the other eyebrow. Again, don’t worry too much about what the opposite eyebrow is doing.
  5. Spend five more minutes trying to raise one eyebrow while lowering the other. Hopefully, by this point, you have gotten the hang of it. Take some time trying to simultaneously raise one brow, while lowering the other.
  6. Practice every single day. You don’t need to practice for hours, but you do have to practice every day. You will not be able to get good at doing this if you do not practice consistently.
  7. Try raising the other eyebrow. Once you get good at raising your dominant eyebrow, you can switch to trying to raise the other one, if you wish. Hopefully, spending time strengthening your eyebrow muscles will make the process go faster, but don’t give up if it takes longer (which it may, since it is your non-dominant brow).

Tips

  • Be patient! This may take a long time to get right, but it is a skill that can come in very handy sometimes.
  • Practice in a mirror. You may feel silly and strange at first, but it’s the best way to learn this skill.
  • Tilt your head to make the illusion greater. If you are trying to raise your right eyebrow, tilt your head to the left. This will create the illusion that you are raising your eyebrow higher.
  • Learn to do it with both eyebrows. For some people, there is visible muscle definition on one side that actually makes the eye appear smaller. Practice on both eyes to even this out.
  • Don't get frustrated! This can take a long time to master.
  • Do not worry if you cannot do this at the beginning or even at all. Some people can do certain things while others cannot.

Warnings

  • Be aware of when you use this expression. While in certain situations it can be useful and entertaining, there are certain situations (e.g. in front of your boss), where it is not appropriate.

Things You'll Need

  • Mirror

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