Headache? Free your jaw

If you’re experiencing neck pain or headaches, you might be clenching your jaw.

Release your jaw hinge (this joint is just in front of your ear).

Lay your fingers gently along the length of your chewing muscle. This is your masseter muscle and it’s one of the strongest muscles in your entire body. It runs north/south from your cheek bone to jaw bone.

Soften this strong muscle. Allow your fingertips to gently swipe down along the length of the masseter muscle, encouraging an unclenching you might find that your molars part at the back, or that your lips part. This is okay.

Allow the release to trickle down through your neck and shoulders.

How does your neck feel? Your head? Can you type from this released place? Text on your phone? Sing a phrase?

🦒 Unscrunch Your Neck🦒

When you spend as many hours in front of the screen as you’re doing these days, it doesn’t take long before you’re feeling stiff, stuck, and in pain.

Your shoulders are up around your ears, aren’t they?

Your head is reaching out toward the screen, right?

Your brow is furrowed, for sure. 

One simple thought can help you get unstuck: UNSCRUNCH. 

Remember: your head rests on top of your spine, roughly behind your nose. (Yes, waaaay up there!)  

Do this: 

Take your hands off the keyboard. 

Stand up. 

Look out the window so you can see far. 

Let your shoulders release away from your ears. 

And unscrunch your neck. 

Pause. Unscrunch. Each moment is an opportunity to start fresh. 

Special thank you to Cathy Madden for originating this wonderfully helpful (to me) word: unscrunch.

🪑 Finding Freedom In Sitting

~ VIDEO ~

https://youtu.be/I-z_pEcQCtc

🪑 Here are some helpful landmarks that can offer more freedom and ease in sitting. 

🪑 Sitting bones

While seated on a firm surface (ie: not a couch - unless you have a wooden couch?), explore some movement in order to feel your sitting bones making contact with the chair.  As you rock side to side, forward and back, can you sense these two bony landmarks? 

🪑 Here’s what I want you to know:

While sitting, these rounded bones at the bottom of the pelvis are the base of support for your torso.  

So you can let go in your tail bone, release any holding in your hips and lower back, and unclench your thighs.

You can allow your heels to drop into the floor and release your calf muscles.

Can you hinge forward and back while allowing the hips, knees, and ankle joints to be free and easy?  

Can you do “vaudeville legs” while you hinge forward and back?  (In-joke from the video!)

🪑 Play around with including your head-spine joint while you rock and roll on your sitting bones.

Notice that your spine grows upward out of your pelvis.

When you hinge forward and back from the hip joints, your WHOLE TORSO PLUS HEAD comes out n the journey.

Add some 🎶 - what do you notice?