Food for Thought

Last week I was teaching a class on “How to Experience Great Freedom: Movement, Meditation and Nutrition”. Bill, a pleasant older man, had only one question, “Can you fix my neck in two hours?”
I pulled up a chair, “ Bill, have you worked inside you mouth?”

“I do Feldenkrias and Yoga regularly, I get massages, but I have not done anything directly inside my mouth,” Bill struggled to look up; because his neck was very stiff and immobile, he could only look down. “Can you really help me?” he pleaded.
“Well, you know what they say, Bill, miracles can occur in a very short period of time,” I laughed lightheartedly. And in the next five minutes I shared with Bill something he has never thought of before.

Neck Pain and Dental Work

For the last three months I have been chewing food mostly with the right side of my mouth because of the dental work I was having in the left molars. The right jaw muscle was always working double shifts, becoming tense and grumpy. The neighboring neck muscles got involved, trying to help even out the imbalance in the mouth; of course they too got tight, because after all their function is to support the spine, not emaciate food. And no amount of Yoga stretches for the neck and shoulders that I usually do were going to relieve this growing pain until the root of the problem – the jaw – was given proper attention.

In Freudian philosophy it is believed that on a psychological level any work in the mouth deals with one’s roots, the family issues. One’s jaw/teeth relate to one’s “grip on life” and the neck muscles are responsible to “keep the head above water.”

Have you ever had the experience of clenching you teeth in an attempt not to yell (or maybe cry) at your ____ (boss, neighbor, husband)? Congratulations, you held it together as you were taught to do. Now massage your jaw, if you want to avoid the future pain in the neck. Do you grind you teeth when sleeping? If yes, what is it that you are not saying in your waking life? Struggle with poor vision, migraines? Please check the tension in your jaw and read farther.

Hands On

This is how you release tightness in your jaw: place your pointer finger (with gloves on or not, depending if you’re working in your own mouth or not) on your top two front teeth and slide across the teeth all the way back to where the top jaw connects to the bottom jaw. Apply gentle-to-medium pressure with your finger to the rope-like vertical muscles you never knew were there. Now just breathe! Three slow breaths, pressing on the muscle, feel it softening, melting like snow. Allow you bottom jaw to hang down loose. Note: if you don’t feel a little pain when you do this, you’re probably in the wrong spot. Move your finger around and once you find an especially uncomfortable spot, stay there and take three slooooow breaths.

* * *

“Bill, do you know what is the strongest muscle in your whole body?” I asked.
“The legs or the butt, right,” Bill tried to smile with his hand still in his mouth.
“No, Bill. It’s the jaw muscle. Think of the size of this little guy and the pressure he has to exert to masticate a piece of meat.”
Bill’s eyes started widening, like he was making connections in his brain.
“Now think, Bill, the jaw muscle being so powerful, would the other less powerful muscles, like in the neck, the head, the face and eyes, organize themselves in accordance to how tight or lose the jaw was?”
Bill started to drool, “I can feel my right jaw is much tighter then the left. And it’s on the right that I experience most of my pain in the neck and shoulder, and I get my migraines on the right side of the head too.”
“That’s great clearity, Bill. Now BREATHE.”

Neck Pain and Righteousness

Ideas adopted from Luule Viilma

One might consider himself to be an honest righteous man/woman, but has neck pain. The neck pain might be saying, “Your opinion of yourself is incorrect.” Feel the tightness in your neck. From a spiritual perspective tightness is associated with fear. Fear can cause unnecessary muscle contraction and spasm; also shallow breathing. The cracking in your neck means that the spinal vertebras are too close together. They are pulled too close together by the tightened contracted muscles. A dissatisfied person’s neck is short and becomes shorter in proportion to the dissatisfaction/stress in his life.

Out of fear of disapproval and dissatisfaction, we absorb that dissatisfaction; and as a part of us, it continues to do its work. (Dissatisfaction is simply an energy current that exists. A dissatisfied person is not good or bad, he or she is simply experiencing this energy current.) Our neck shrinks into the shoulders as if we are ashamed to show ourselves. This is what shame is - shame of admitting our own dissatisfaction.

Humans are social creatures and it is not nice to be dissatisfied, one should never show it. Support groups for those (especially women) who can’t say “no” are growing across America; seemingly nice and easy-going, we carry the shame of being “secretly” dissatisfied. Shame is guilt. In the dissatisfied people the feeling of shame is so great it overflows into blame and guilt trips. That’s when we act out the “passive/aggressive” model - we don’t openly say what bothers us as to avoid the other person’s disapproval of us, yet we are fairly aggressive in our blaming the other for our dissatisfaction (even if only in our thoughts).

Who stubbornly insists on changing the world out of their dissatisfaction grown into righteousness becomes rough and inflexible. The mobility of his neck decreases to the degree of his ability to yield to life. Life demands from us agility toward change. Who does not yield to life, breaks.

Now dear reader, with all this new information to “chew on”, first and foremost BREATHE and this journey of self -discovery shell be a lighthearted one.