Recently I have become aware of a lot of tension in my jaw. Not only do I constantly clench my teeth but my tongue is often glued to my palate.
Do you know that clenching your jaw may cause tension in your shoulders and arms. Our facial web communicates every local muscle tension and it reduces the responsiveness of the whole body.
Take a moment to check how your jaws feel and what your tongue is doing when you are not using it. And keep checking throughout the day. Gaining awareness is half the work of releasing the tension in the jaw done.
Here are some things that you can try:
- Open and close your mouth several times. Do a big yawn.
- Interlace your fingers behind your head and gently press the head towards the hands. Take three deep breaths. Turn the head to the right and repeat. Then turn left and repeat again.
- Open the mouth slightly and gently massage the cheeks with your fingers.
- Put two fingers on the edge of your lower jaw and slide the up towards the temples. Every time you can move your fingers a tad to the left or right at the starting point and experiment what feels good. You don’t need too much pressure, make it pleasurable.
- Take a deep breath in through the nose. Then open your mouth wide, stretch your tongue out toward the chin and exhale the breath slowly out through your mouth with a “ha” sound. If you want, you can look up and in toward the point between your eyes. This is a yoga pose called Lion that has many benefits besides reducing tension in the jaws.
- If you notice that your tongue is sticking to your palate again, gently invite it to lie down in its bed.
And again, check regularly if the tension has crept back. It won’t go away immediately but if you pay attention and keep addressing it be sure that results will follow!
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