Unclench Your Teeth
One of the most common areas of tension and pain is in and around the jaw. Thousands of people, when under stress, clench their teeth together or grind their teeth. This often happens at night but also may occur regularly during the day when under pressure.
TMJD is caused by the way you react to stress. It can cause tremendous pain and suffering.
Why this is so common is unclear but I can think of at least two possibilities. Many of our stress relieving habits were instilled in early childhood and clenching the teeth together may be the child’s way of preventing themselves from answering back to their parents. Children who are often told to be quiet and shut up are likely to develop excess tension around the jaw as they force themselves to stay quiet even when they are anxious for their voice to be heard.
Another possibility may lie much further back in our ancestral past. Clenching the teeth together and baring them may have served to scare off potential attacking animals or competitors for our resources. A strong set of teeth can be a very dangerous weapon so it would make sense to show them in a potentially dangerous situation.
The health risks
Whatever the cause consistent teeth grinding or clenching can play havoc with your health (see the article in The Mail online here). Constant grinding can lead to any of the following:
- damage to or loss of teeth
- jaw pain
- headaches and migraines
- TMJD
- loss of hearing
- tinnitus
- insomnia
- referred pain anywhere in the upper body
Clenched teeth can cause severe, long-term pain
If you are a teeth grinder or clencher you will have developed a serious amount of tension around the jaw muscles and this will make opening your mouth wide a real problem.
Try it now. Open your mouth as far as is comfortable and then see how many fingers you can fit between your teeth. If it’s just two or less the chances are that any of the symptoms above may benefit from you learning how to release that jaw tension.
Releasing your jaw tension
One powerful way to release that tension is to use the expansion principle (explained in more detail in my book “Stress Proof Your Body”
The expansion principle uses the mind to create a feeling of expansion in the body that releases the contraction of tension. In the case of jaw tension the process is simple:
- Focus your attention on the inside of your mouth and imagine their was a ball in your mouth that was slowly filling with air and expanding.
- As you visualise this you will soon feel your mouth begin to open up from the inside. Keep focusing and expanding that ball.
- Allow your mouth to open and keep expanding until your mouth cannot open any further.
- You have now stretched your jaw muscles just as far as they can currently go so, just like any stretch, you should hold your mouth open for at least 10 seconds to start with. Practice regularly during the day (preferably when nobody is watching you)!
Also try massaging the area under your chin particularly the underside of the jaw line. You’ll find painful areas along there and that can release a lot of tension enabling you to open your mouth wider.
Tip: This is a great exercise to practice in bed before you go to sleep. Nobody can see you and it will relax your jaw enough so that it becomes far less likely that you will grind your teeth during the night. If you had difficulty sleeping before, I’m sure this will help.
Another thing you can try is manually moving your jaw around by grabbing your chin and moving it up and down and side to side. This will help loosen up the area and ease some of that tension.