Well, ladies
Dani leaned across the table on Saturday night and told me to unclench my jaw, right in the middle of me ordering the fish. In front of the waiter.
Naturally I told her my jaw was fine and I would like the fish now, please. This is a flaw of mine and I know it: hand me advice I did not ask for and I will hold it at arm's length on principle.
The next morning I was reading in my chair with my coffee. ☕ And I caught myself: teeth pressed together, temples faintly humming, shoulders up somewhere near my ears.
My plan, and I am not proud of this, was to look it up and prove her wrong. I read for an hour with my tea and found nothing on my side. The teeth are not supposed to touch. Dani, infuriatingly, was right.
For months now I have had that faint band of ache by four in the afternoon, and I kept blaming the screen, the reading, anything that was not me.
The clenching is not about your teeth. It is where the mental load goes to sit: the jaw ties into the temples and the neck, which is why a tight jaw so often turns up as a headache you blame on everything else.
Try it now, while you are reading.Close your lips and notice where your teeth are. If they are touching, you are clenching, because at rest they should not touch at all.
The resting position is lips together, teeth apart, tongue soft against the roof of your mouth. Apparently there should be a small space between your back teeth all day, except when you are actually chewing something.
Every time you catch your teeth touching today, let your jaw drop a little and breathe out slowly through your nose. That is the whole practice.
Since Sunday I have done it maybe thirty times, and my temples have gone quiet for the first time in months. ✨ My shoulders came down with them, which I did not expect.
Then on Monday evening I caught the mirror and my face looked softer, not braced against anything. I thought, that is a sexy face, which is not a sentence I have said to myself in years. 😌
It turns out a face that is not braced reads as a face at ease, and ease is most of what I was missing.
Clare will want this turned into a system with a timer and a tracking sheet. It does not need one. It is just a question you ask your own mouth a few times a day, and the mouth answers honestly.
Dani does not know any of this yet. She will read it here like the rest of you, and I am aware that this is ridiculous, and I am doing it anyway.
