I'm writing this at a computer. Like so many of us, I spend my working life sitting at a screen. Bad for your back, your posture, your fitness . . . but had you ever thought how bad spending hours at your PC is for your face?

"Computer work is the most ageing and anti-beauty activity you can ever engage in," says the blurb for Marja Putkisto's "Face School". And I thought it was smoking and sunbathing! The Finnish health expert and Pilates teacher has developed her Method Putkisto exercise programmes for body and, more recently, face, over 25 years, and offers courses and workshops at her studio in west London. For the first time this year, though, she is running an intensive "Natural Face Clinic" at a boutique hotel in southern Turkey.

For a pasty-faced Brit emerging blinking from the harshest winter the UK has seen for decades, April in the southern Med is balm to the soul. And if natural beauty is the point here, we are immersed in it. Our hotel, the Deniz Feneri Lighthouse, sits on a rugged arc of land that juts out into a sparkling blue sea. Its local-stone buildings tumble down a steep hillside to that glorious sea near Kas, on the Lycian coast. It feels a little like a hill village in a remote part of Italy, but these winding lanes, steps and stone archways lead not to rustic dwellings but to luxury rooms and suites.

Daytime temperatures are a delicious 26C, and as we gather at the rocky waterfront for our first session with Marja, I am feeling good about life. I'm a little unsure, however, about what is to come, because this really is not my kind of thing. I had a facial once, years ago. Hated it. It was supposed to be a treat, but I lay there longing for this woman to stop pawing me so I could go and do something else. I've never done spa breaks, I buy my face cream in Sainsbury's, and as for Botox or surgery . . . how can people be quite so, well, self-obsessed?

But it turns out Marja feels the same way about some of this – though I suspect her attitude is based less on laziness. She is certainly a fantastic advert for her method. She's 50, and while many would say she looks 10 years younger, that is not quite the point. Her face is one of the liveliest, most expressive and attractive – in the sense that you want to keep looking at it, interacting with it – I have ever seen.

And this is what Marja's method is all about. Being aware of the muscles in your face, and their relation with the rest of your body, and then using all these correctly, will, she says, free you from habits that make you look old and lifeless. Why, she asks, is there a multi-billion-pound industry selling us creams for our faces, but no mention of exercises? People accept that to get a better body requires a sustained programme of running, weights, Power Plate or whatever, and wouldn't expect applying a cream to do the same job. But we believe the face-cream hype.

"Off for your weekend of gurning, then?" is how my husband put it, and I am expecting some comedy face-pulling sessions. But it turns out that what goes on in your face is all about what's in your brain, which is in your skull, which is attached to your spine, which connects to the rest of your body. We spend much of our time on exercises for the body, not the face.

Marja developed her method after working with the Finnish National Opera. Ballet dancers, she noticed, looked old at 40, but opera singers did not – a result of the singers learning to thoroughly relax muscles in the jaw and neck to produce the required sound.

Positioning your head correctly on the top of your spine (your altas vertebra) is key – we learn that as the head weighs fully 5kg, bad positioning puts strain on the neck and the rest of the spine. If your head is in the right position, she says, your spine can relax and your face changes. We are encouraged to think of our pelvis, ribcage and skull as a series of balls (or maybe bowls – Marja's Finnish accent is sometimes difficult to follow) balanced on top of one another. It is tricky (right now, as I type, I am aware my balls may not be in harmony!) but once your head and other structures are aligned, you do get a glimpse of that poise and fluidity of movement that is so admirable in some people. (Interestingly, Marja cites Barack Obama as a man clearly comfortable in his well-connected body.)

As she points out, people who spend their working lives at a desk don't need a rest, as such, on holiday. Reading on a sunlounger is not that different from sitting on an office chair. For the four of us doing the course – all women over 40 – a change is far better than a rest, and this is what we get. There are two two-hour sessions with Marja each day, and we elect to have the first at 8.30am, heading up for a delicious brunch of bread made on the premises, fruit and muesli in the hotel afterwards.

The afternoon is free for trying the excellent hammam or shopping in slightly hippy-ish Kas town, a 10-minute bus ride away. I do also spend some time soaking up the sun (yes, yes, I know). A second session from 5.30-7.30pm leaves us time to watch the sun set over the sea before we get ready for dinner.

Staying with computers, Marja tells us to think of the face as a screen. What shows on there is a reflection of what is going on behind: "The face lives in the brain." So just as you can't change what's on a screen by sticking things to the surface, you change the mind and body to affect the face.

And staring at the screen for hours we rarely turn our eyes to look at, say, clouds on the horizon, birds in the sky, a lurking predator. This lack of movement, of muscle use, shows in our faces. An exercise involving throwing and catching balls to our right and left encourages use of muscles around the eyes.

There's no real gurning until day two, and this provides the first revelation, when we focus on the muscles that attach the upper chest to the throat and jaw. As we pull down on the muscles below our collarbones on one side, we follow Marja's instructions to stick out our lower jaw and bring the lower teeth and lips in front of and above the upper. It's a real Les Dawson moment, and we're all ready to giggle, but then as we release the stretch, Marja tells us to look at each other's faces. Everyone's mouth is just a little turned up, lifted, nicer-looking, on the side we'd been working on. "Quick," says lovely Irish Sandra, one of the participants, "let's do the other side."

There's a similar moment the next day after we have been visualising the ring muscles around the eyes and the levator muscles from the jaw. Using light taps up the side of the face and away to right and left, we've to mentally encourage those muscles into action. It feels a little airy-fairy, but again, when we look round, everyone's face looks a little tauter, the eye less droopy, on the side we've been tapping.

Marja has "before" and "after" photographs taken of her Face School clients, so confident is she that a difference will be visible. And even though I have just enjoyed four days in a very nice hotel, with sunshine and delicious healthy food, I have to admit I'm astounded at how much better I look in the "after" shots.

So there it is. No Botox or face-lifts. No salon facials or £90-a-jar creams. All I need to do to look better and younger is spend 10 minutes every morning and evening doing the Les Dawson jaw thrust and the airy-fairy face tap – and make sure my skull is never at cross purposes with my altas vertebra. Hang on . . . 20 minutes? Every day? Isn't that the sort of thing only someone quite, well, self-obsessed, would do?

• Exclusive Escapes (+44(0)20-8605 3500) is running Method Putkisto Natural Face Clinics at Deniz Feneri Lighthouse from 2-6 and 6-9 October. The cost is £1,750 for four days or £1,550 for three days, including half-board accommodation, flights from Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester to Dalaman, and transfers