SaveYourself.ca • Sensible advice for aches, pains & injuries
published 1/05/09
Does anyone go to the dentist anymore and not get a prescription for a mouth guard? 
Apparently nearly everyone has some kind of jaw-clenching problem. I do not know if this is actually the case. Sometimes I feel suspicious that the problem is greatly over-diagnosed, because mouth appliances are profitable. Then again, many people have actually cracks in their molars from clenching so hard for so long — kind of hard to argue that there isn’t a problem there!
The truth is probably in the middle.
Jaw problems are not a subject I’ve tackled in any depth on SaveYourself.ca (so far), but I do routinely work with patients who seem to have (or claim to have, or their dentist’s claim it) a need to relax their jaws. The problem is that no one really knows how to do it. A nice massage (or any other relaxing experience) is a helpful start, but it doesn’t do much for long. And simply willing yourself to stop clenching seems almost completely ineffective. I’ve known many people who have tried to get serious about reminding themselves to stop clenching, using egg timers and so on, with rather underwhelming results.
So what can you do? How can you possibly learn to clench less?
Here are two ideas that I think work better than simply trying hard not to clench:
Slur your speech as though you are so sleepy that you can hardly form words. You know that lovely feeling when you’re waking up slowly, in no hurry, and your conscious yet not even remotely ready to move or speak yet? That floaty, delicious feeling of happy paralysis? Of complete contentment to just lie there? Don’t just visualize that feeling, actually act like you feel that way, in your mouth. Try to say, softly but out loud, “I’m so relaxed I can hardly talk.” But slur your words. Literally slur them. Slur them like your mouth is so relaxed you are having trouble making words! You will find that this is quick and effortless way to relax your jaw. It won’t necessarily last, but it is a most helpful way to quickly get back to the state you want.
I use this technique even when there are people around. I find that I can easily just mouth the words “I can hardly talk,” making no noise, and immediately access the sensory experience of jaw relaxation, with no one around me having a clue about what I’m to.
Spend long periods of time with your jaw wide open. Hold your mouth open at least wide enough to fit a finger between your teeth for one full hour. Not just open, but open wide — the exaggerated reversal from clenched to wide open helps to break the habit of clenching much more quickly. Every time during the hour that you catch yourself with your teeth together, simply calmly stretch your mouth open again. After an hour of this, clenching starts to feel abnormal, and you will find it much easier to keep your jaw relaxed for some time afterwards.
This intensive approach is generally a much more effective method of breaking the clenching habit than scattered self-reminders to “stop clenching,” which just never really take. If you are really determined, spend an hour a day doing this — if you put in the time, you really can’t fail. I estimate that most people need 5–10 hours of practice in a week to put a good dent in a clenching habit. Of course, life is likely to regenerate the problem back sooner or later … but you will know what to do when that happens.
Good luck!
From Massage Therapy for Bruxism, Jaw Clenching, and TMJ Syndrome:
Your masseter muscle is your primary chewing muscle, and it covers the sides of the jaw just behind the cheeks. It’s also the muscle that makes you clench your jaw and grind your teeth, unfortunately, and it may be the single most common location for trigger points (muscle knots) in the entire human body. It is an accomplice in pretty much every case of chronic jaw clenching, bruxism (that’s latin for “grinding your teeth”), and temporomandibular joint syndrome (a painful condition of the jaw joint).
