The jaw muscle, or masseter, is one of the most powerful muscles in your body, and can apply enormous amounts of force when clenched. This is useful for chewing stale bagels, but inconvenient when chronic stress causes us to chew our own teeth.
I grind my teeth at night, and my dentist has made me wear [...]
Reducing jaw tension
Anxiety and evolution
Anxiety is a uniquely human disease. It’s an unwelcome byproduct of our ability to imagine: to create a world in our minds that does not match the immediate input of our senses. Because we can feed these fabricated images and experiences back to ourselves, and because the less sophisticated parts of our brains lack the [...]
Retension of tension
One of the less fortunate qualities separating us from animals is the way that stress gets stuck in our bodies. Stress is handy for dealing with immediate threats to life or dignity, and if we never experienced it we would have a good deal more in common with cucumbers than with birds or dogs or [...]