TMJ, Head and Neck Pain

The way you use your jaw can affect your neck, your voice and your sleep. Got pain? Think about TMJ. TMJ stands for temporomandibular joint, the joint between the jaw and the skull. It gets a lot of use. TMJ health is necessary for speaking, biting and chewing, even for communication both intimate and superficial. The babe sucking at her mother’s breast, as well as the hunter waiting in a copse for a deer, is unconsciously using the TMJ. Yet, ironically, it’s only when it’s not functioning well that we tend to notice it. That’s when it’s actually called TMJ syndrome, a general diagnosis meaning pain in the jaw joint and in the muscles that control jaw movement, according to sources at the Mayo Clinic. What’s going on is that the joint tissues get inflamed due to compression and friction. Unequal tension in the muscles surrounding the joint causes pressure, pain and diminished circulation. Sometimes there is disease involved, but that is a different issue. For most people, TMJ discomfort and popping grows more common with age.

Some people have so much tension in the neck, that it pulls the jaw backwards impeding normal use. It may not be visibly different, just uncomfortable. Living with huge stress or grief can also generate unconscious tension so dramatic that it causes an imbalance in the relative length of all the muscles surrounding the joint. This can also lead to grinding the teeth. There was a young woman in one of my classes who had moved away from home for the first time. She was living in the city, and so afraid of living alone that she would not open her windows, for fear of someone coming in to attack her. She clenched her teeth so hard while she slept that she actually cracked a tooth. 

A dentist might give such a person a mouth “guard” made of acrylic. This may well protect the teeth from each other, but it will not change the habit. What it does do is create a normal space between the teeth while you are resting. Just notice as you read if your teeth are clenched or if there is a small space between the upper and the lower jaw. This is normal. Yet, “normal” is actually unusual, since most people have excess tension that shows up as clenching of the jaw. What we think of as normal is actually ideal. It would be ideal to have space between the teeth at rest. Perhaps, rather than trying to prevent cracking your own teeth because of tension, it would make sense to find a way to manage the tension. This is my invitation to you. Join us for a free Awareness Lesson to Relieve TMJ. Your Life Matters Learning Resources and Compassionate Dental Wellness are two new businesses in town working together to offer real solutions to improve your quality of life. After all, quantity is worthless if it doesn’t feel good. 

Open House on Tuesday, May 14, 5-8 pm. Light refreshments and a Flight of Essential Oil for Oral Wellness will also be available for the sampling.

     2 3 5  W.  M a i n St , Jacksonville, OREGON. Come Relax Wit h Us!

How FELDENKRAIS Works

How can something so subtle really work? How can something that often looks like nothing is being done be effective? How can movements so small and slow create lasting, effective changes for people?

How does FELDENKRAIS work? It reduces the constant stimulus of the nervous system. We live in an unconscious state of hypermobilization, distraction and pain from old injuries to the body and the psyche. It offers learned self awareness that gives you immediate access to ease, possibility and a new alignment. Polyvagal Theory explains why what may appear to be doing nothing, or so little that it's almost imperceptible, can have such an impact on the sense of well being. Because we get stuck in one way of responding to life due to injury, or accident, or a lifetime of little, additional shocks to the system, only a sense of safety can allow us to move out of that place. 

The polyvagal part of the autonomic nervous system includes these 3 stages of development: Immobilization, mobilization, and social communication or social engagement. By working to reduce the excessive stimulus of the polyvagal system, the body is able to come out of living in a perpetual state of unconscious hyperarousal. New neuroception allows neural circuits to distinguish that one is finally safe, and can resume normal function. It feels like greater awareness, comfort, stability and mobility; it feels like the absence of restriction, the sense of spontaneous well being. It offers an improvement in function that addresses even restrictions you were previously unaware of, in addition to the ones you are actually acutely annoyed or hindered by!

Hip Pain

Yesterday, I led my first Awareness Through Movement Class after a hiatus from teaching.

One woman showed up with hip pain. The most obvious difference between her stance and the other women in the class? She stood with her feet really close together. Not functional, in space or in life. Talk about women being trained to undermine their own success, aliveness and sense of place in the world. Conscious or not, we women have taken in the subtle message to keep our legs together. Especially women who have grown up in the fifties and sixties.

But what other toxic messages have we imbibed from visual media alone? Looking at this photograph, I hear whispers that it's more feminine, that we are here to be pretty, not powerful, that we if we comply, then we get to take advantage of the commandment to manipulate: the only power women are allowed. Why? Because its a form of shadow power, it's not real. Real power emanates from a sense of connection to one's inherent right to be in the world. You would not be here if you were not completely unique, a part of all that is, even as the waves are an intrinsic part of the ocean. You are here to express your unique gift, not to manipulate men into desiring you or your 'services' whatever your skills might be.

So, back to the hip pain thing. Her idea, this lovely woman who showed up for the class, was that she was always trying to do her best, to do the right thing. In this case, she had learned the right thing, or so sh thought, in yoga. She had learned to stand with her feet together in a yoga pose and assumed the famous American axiom that 'more is better' must be true. In some cases it is, in some cases it's not.  Sorry, there are no absolutes in life. Be easier if there were, but until that time, you'd do better to trust your own sense of what feels right. Yoga is an amazing practice for opening the heart - in that realm it's powerful like no other. Yoga is great for strength and stamina, but it's not meant to be practiced with the rigidity of a boot camp. It's not about standing at attention, it's about standing with awareness. If you stand in a Pilates stance all the time, the same thing holds true: you will exhaust yourself and be more stressed. There is a time and place to practice and neither of these excellent exercise methods are meant to teach you a way to stand all the time.

In fact, any fixed idea about how to be that we impose on ourselves is an external construct. Free yourself of the imposition of conceptual ideas about how to stand and I can pretty much guarantee that most of your hip pain will go away. Make it your practice to listen to your body, not the ideas others have taught you, for they are meant to help you, not direct your life for you so that you don't have to.

With respect, I no longer believe it helpful to tell people what they want to hear, but rather, I stand for the truth. And that's just the truth as I see it. You have your own. Live it.

Namasté,
Gabrielle

3:15 pm PST 4/15/13 “The Boston Marathon Bombings just happened 10 minutes ago…Grief is a physical experience. It just makes sense to work through it using a somatic, or an embodied approach.” #ATM Boston (twitter hashtag discussion)

Writer Natalie Goldberg tells a story about how she first met the local Zen Master and found him less than impressive. At some point afterwards she went to a wedding in Hawaii where he was also in attendance. Then, a few weeks later, she went back to the Zen Center to find him wearing a vibrant pink Hawaiian orchid from that very same reception. When she commented in surprise, he said, "Yes. When you take care of something, it lives a long time."

Even so with ourselves. We are conditioned to ignore this small detail that can prolong both life and joy. Taking time, taking time out, none of these are encouraged. Instead, as a society, we are admonished to strive. As children we are prompted to succeed. As young adults we are shoved out the door and told to sink or swim.

This is all such a given we hardly even notice it.

Conditioned to strive, to succeed, to get it done, we have to actually give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves, to nurture ourselves or to do what brings us joy! This leaves a vague sense of stress, of feeling depleted, of being unappreciated. Yet, the choice is ours. We can choose to buy into this subliminal social conditioning to produce, or we can enjoy the process of our lives. In a complicated world, it's a simple choice really. To take time out to savor being in a body, to take care of our bodies, to enjoy being embodied?

Awareness Through Movement Provides a clear path to enjoyment on the physical plane. The fact that it also helps maintain smooth functionality in the body at the same time is icing! Its just that 'when you take care of something, it lasts a long time!'