Overcoming jaw pain takes a lot more than massage and stretching - it takes awareness.

I’ve been working with a client who had both sides of her lower jaw reconstructed last year. 

What’s become most clear to me in our time together is that the jaw surgery, exercises, pt, massage and acupuncture she’s been doing aren’t fixing the problem.  The problem isn’t that her jaw was deformed, the problem is that she has years of habits that need unwinding.

Subtle habits… Like how she pulls her mouth sideways when talking, or the way she pushes her tongue against the roof of her mouth, or the way she juts out her lower jaw when thinking.

Habits that, if left uncorrected, will likely cause the same structural issue she was trying to treat with surgery.

So the bulk of our work hasn’t been on stretching or exercising or massaging the tension away.  The bulk of our work has been on bringing awareness to all the times and all of the ways she’s bringing tension into the muscles.

And the hardest part about building new habits is bringing awareness to the old habits that are now longer serving you.

This is work that takes time and iteration. It’s not a one and done solution. Each week I bring her attention and focus back to those patterns and slowly, but surely, those habits are shifting.  Seeing her be more aware and proactive in releasing her jaw has made this latest surgery much less painful and allowing us to go deeper in unwinding those patterns that have not only affected her jaw tension, but have kept her from singing the way she wanted.

The bulk of the work I do is guiding you to a deeper level of awareness in your body.  

What do you notice?  How does that feel?  What’s different about that?

Because without that awareness, you can get stuck on this hamster wheel:  your jaw hurts, you get a massage, you do the exercises and stretching, but when you don’t know where the tension is coming from or how to create a new movement pattern for less tension, your jaw starts hurting again…

Lather rinse repeat.

But when you have awareness you can disrupt the wheel.

“Oh, I can feel my jaw tightening.  Can I release it instead?”

And overtime that jaw pain and tightness that felt like a constant problem starts to shift.  One day you realize that your jaw massage wasn’t as tender as it normally is or it’s been months since  you felt like you needed a massage.

In many ways, the work I do is about giving my clients agency in their own bodies so that they don't feel dependent on outside support to feel normal.  Which isn’t to say that you’ll never need or want a massage again, but that you won't feel like you need one just to do your day-to-day living.  That you have more tools in your toolbox for feeling comfortable and safe in your body.

Because pain is tiring and keeps you from living your life.  It takes you out of the moment and costs you time, energy and money in the process.

What becomes available when you’re not fighting that pain or tension all the time?

I don’t want to see you on the hamster wheel of pain, I want to see what happens when you step off of it. If jaw pain, tightness, or tension has felt like a constant you can't shake, I'd love to help you find a different way through it. Send me a message or book a session and let's see what a pain free jaw can look like for you.