Hey there tired yogis,
Get ready to dive into this week’s juicy topic: the jaw! 💪
And if there’s one thing about me, it’s that I’m a really bad tooth grinder.
As in, I chomped my way through a set of retainers in a year kind of bad.
So I have first hand experience in how much of an impact tight jaw muscles can have on the rest of your body. Headaches, neck pain, worn away enamel to name a few.
Mine is caused by a misalignment in the jaw bone (once charmingly referred to as a ‘birth deformity’ by a tactless dentist), in other words I have an overbite, or to be even more colloquial, buck teeth.
There are lots of versions and degrees of jaw misalignment but a lot of them can cause your muscles to overwork and get chronically tight as a result.
Other causes of tight jaw muscles can be stress, poor postural habits, tiredness and staring at screens too long (uh-oh I think I might have just described modern living).
So what can we do to help?
Well luckily I happen to know something that’s great for posture, tight muscles and stress relief.
Drum roll please…. Yoga!
(You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?)
Neck and Shoulder Stretches
Poor postural habits can cause us to spend a large portion of our day in with our shoulders rolled forward and our head in a forward tilt position, which over time can put a lot of pressure on jaw muscles.
Simply checking in with ourselves throughout the day and doing some basic neck and shoulder stretches can have a huge impact in lessoning the burden on our jaw.
Try this…
Sit up straight in your seat, take a big breath in as you roll your shoulders up towards ears then as you breath out let your shoulders roll down and back.
Simples!
Below is a 10 minute video designed to do before bed (you could even do it in bed after you’ve cleaned your teeth etc, it would be heavenly!) to reduce the causes of jaw tension and teeth grinding. Obviously I’m not a miracle worker so if it’s caused by jaw misalignment there’s only so much we can do without surgery.
But even then the other causes can exasperate symptoms so you may find quite a lot of relief just from the exercises (I certainly do).