Temporomandibular joint dysfunction syndrome, or "TMJ", describes a broad range of symptoms in the jaw, neck, and teeth including pain, restrictions in movement and bite, misalignments, noisy joints, and teeth grinding. Often this problem is considerd by medicine and denstristy a structural issue or misalignment.
However, clients practicing Clinical Somatics find many or all of these problems relieved, controlled, or eliminated. These pains, restrictions, and misalignments may be caused by chronic muscular firing from the sensory-motor system and resulting long-held contractions of the jaw, neck, and possibly shoulder muscles. Looking to the even deeper causes, kinesiologically, the chronic muscular dysfunctions in the neck and jaw are frequently caused by even more undetectable and pervasive habitual restrictions in the front of the trunk, primarily the flexor and medial rotators we in Clinical Somatics refer to as part of the "red-light reflex" — a very common bodily response to both physical and mental stressor.
In turn, these contracted abdominal, chest, and other muscles not only further recruit the TMJ muscles into dysfunction, but they also cause postural misalignments that necessariily result in the TMJ muscles being affected. The sol;ution to all of this is the same: The core muscles as well of those of the neck, jaw, skull, and shoulders, need to released and reconditioned to their proper positions and firing through specific hands-on techniques and self-care exercises taught by Clinical Somatic Educators.
More information coming soon. For now, for more information regarding Somatics and this condition, please contact the Somatic Systems Institute.
