Dear Patient,
It’s been a while since I shared a video, so today I’m showing you some quick acupressure tips for TMJ and jaw pain. These are super simple techniques you can do on your own to help ease jaw tension and clenching, relax tight neck muscles, benefit the ears, and relieve stress. I’ve been feeling a bit of jaw pain myself recently.
Of course, pain is never just pain. There’s always something deeper at work, layers that overlay and entangle with the physiological signals firing through the synapses of the nervous system.
So when you’re experiencing pain, it’s helpful to ask what else might be going on.
2023 has not quite gotten off to the start I was expecting. Usually I like to spend the first days of the year reflecting on the previous twelve months, cleaning and decluttering the house for a good energetic reset, and pondering my intentions for the year ahead. Instead, it’s been one stressor after another.
Life takes us by surprise, and our bodies react. The mental and emotional strain gets transferred to the physical being, with the body absorbing the load so the head and heart can deal with the crisis at hand. It’s as if the body says, “Here, I’ll hold your bags so you can take on more stuff.” It’s brilliant, really—the body being this container for our psychic burdens, so the mind and spirit can remain nimble, at the ready for whatever new stressor awaits. But it’s only a temporary solution.
The chickens come home to roost, as they say. The body can only take so much.
And so one of the best things we can do for the self, the whole self, the body mind and spirit, is to lovingly and intentionally care for the physical being.
We all hold our stress somewhere. You might be able to point to the exact location on your body where you hold yours. I often hold mine in my jaws, so I’ve been massaging these points on myself lately. Acupressure doesn’t magically erase my stress and pain, but I do feel a little better after I take a few minutes to tend to all those bones and muscles and ligaments and blood vessels and fat cells and layers of skin that make up my physical being. It’s a way to honor the embodied self, and a gesture of thanks for carrying the burden of my many emotions.
Maybe these points will help you too.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist
Acupressure for jaw pain, and then some