Little miss (or MR / Them pending on your pronouns) “TMJ”, the temporal mandible joint is a great little guy – when it works well for you. When it doesn’t, boy – do we know about it! It’s a place that stores a lot of stress, especially of you are someone who typically experiences neck pain. Quite often the two areas are linked, kind of like Thelma and Louise. It’s a ride or die together scenario.
There are a couple of tricks to overcoming TMJ tightness, easy to do on your own.
- Silly Faces
Yep, forget about the old saying that the won will change if you stay that way – just go right ahead and pull some crazy looks on you dial. The weirder the better please. I want you to feel the pulling in your face as you do the silliness. Make it more fun and do it with some, get them to count how many faces you can pull in the space of one minute.
What we are doing in creating movement in a way that not usually created. We are stretching both the muscles, the skin tissue, which by domino effect, affects the connective tissue. With movement, comes blood flow, which is something that will assist in the relaxation of those tired muscles, as it’s in the red blood cells that carry the oxygen, and oxygen is what your muscles need to function well.
So, you now have permission to be a silly billy. You’re welcome.
- Next, lets do some self-massage (see video). What you will want to do is use the tips of your first three fingers, and the tip of your thumb.
Place your fingertips on your temples, which will be on the temporalis muscle, which assist the functioning and movement of your TMJ. To know you’re on it, open and close your jaw – you should feel the muscle move under your fingertips.
Whilst your fingertips are on the temporalis muscle, place your thumb on your masseter muscle, which is located under and behind the cheekbone and just above the jaw line. It will feel ‘meaty’. To test you are on it, do the same process of moving the jaw which on it and you will feel it move under your thumb.
Now for the fun part. Applying some pressure – 6/10 if 10 is the most intense – do some wee circular motions. 10-times clockwise, 10 anticlockwise. Repeat if needed. One side may feel more tender then the other, so you will need to re gauge the pressure you’re adding to keep it around that 6/10. Seriously, its not necessary to go over this number, its NOT a case of no pain no gain.. This concept needs to be dropped, but that’s a whole other blog post in itself.
After you have completed the circles, apply perpendicular pressure on these same areas whilst opening and closing your jaw. Do this 10-15 times.
Repeat the above two steps if needed. This self treatment really only needs go for 5 – 7 minutes, no need to do a heck of allot more than that. Less is more.
And there you have it – two very cool techniques to assist in the relief of your TMJ tension. If you need some further help, it can be great to see your myotherapist for assistance in overcoming this issue and its annoying pain cycles.
So often in the business of life, we don’t realise how much we are holding tensions, the jaw is no exception. In fact, when I get my clients who DON’T experience jaw pain, to do these exercises, they’re amazed at how freed up their face feels afterwards, which tells them how much they were holding themselves in the first place. So, TMJ issues or not, give this a whirl and let me know how you go!!
