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Jaw Exercises for TMJ Relief

Updated: Aug 30, 2023


**Transcript**

If you're having pain, clicking, or grinding in your jaw these TMJD exercises are for you. Did you know that TMJD the dysfunction of our jaw joint is the number two musculoskeletal complaint that people go in to get corrected after lower back pain? And as a chiropractor we see a lot of this, so these exercises are going to help you get some relief.


Number one is going to help with the realignment of your jaw so let's get started. The first one is called relax the jaw muscles and so what we're going to do is really super simple you're going to open your mouth and you're going to hold it open at about 75 for about 20 seconds. Then you're going to close it but you're not going to let your teeth touch. Did you know your teeth shouldn't touch together during the day more than like six or seven times. So you want to be sure that you're not grinding or clinching during the day. And if you are clinching and grinding at night you might want to see your dentist to get a night guard because that's going to help too.


I'm going to put all of these exercises in the description below so be sure to download it because I'll have all the timing and the reps and you'll be able to do these at home. So remember this first one you're going to open your mouth 75 keep it there for about count to 20 and then you're gonna close and you're gonna not touch your teeth all right. Just touch your lips together. The next one is for strengthening the jaw opening muscles, the muscles that open our jaw. This one's a resistance or sometimes we call it P and F so you're going to be pushing up with your hand and pushing down with your jaw at the same time like this.


Now don't do it too hard we don't want to hurt those muscles but you also want to slowly close the jaw open slowly so that resistance triggers this masseter muscle that's the strongest muscle in our body. It's a muscle that we chew with that we talk with and that is a big trigger in this problem. The muscles that are involved in TMJD are going to be our master muscles, our digastric muscles, our temporalis muscles, and pterygoid muscles.


These exercises help all of those and guess what we have another really huge muscle and that's our tongue right. Our tongue is going to help us shift our jaw so on the next exercise that we're going to do this is going to help prevent side to side motion. I have a problem on my jaw and I want you to see when I open and close you'll see the one side pops out more it's actually on this side. Can you see it it's because the Jaws shifted like that and so what we want to do to whatever your bad side is if you're hearing clicking or popping or grinding on your bad side.


I want you to put your tongue behind your teeth on the opposite side behind at your hard palate right there and you're going to open and close like a guppy and when you close don't let your teeth touch. That will help shift it you might even hear different crunching noises and it's because it's trying to shift it back into that joint. Now the next one is to help with drop protrusion or sometimes the jaw can come out like this so we want to get that jaw to sit back in its proper joint. You're going to use your tongue and you're going to put it all the way back to your hard palate and you're going to open and close right like a guppy.


You can do these at stop lights you can do them if you're just resting but it's going to help. Remember all the reps and descriptions are going to be in the description below the video so be sure to get that. The last one is posture reset and I'm going to tell you how to do this one because I'm sitting down and I want you to do this standing up. I want you to stand against the wall with your head against the wall your butt your feet and your arms and you want your thumbs to be out and stand straight against the wall. And when you come out that's where your posture should be.


We'll do another video and talk about forward head posture and how it affects the jaw but we want to keep that neck and that head back so that jaw is not shifting forward so that's it. I want you to do these every day and it will really give you some good relief. Be sure to subscribe to our channel because we have great videos and exercises to help you with all types of musculoskeletal issues and functional medicine and we release them at least multiple times a week. We want to make sure that everybody has the best best health and wellness possible. We'll see you soon bye-bye.

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