the temporomandibular joint is right here that's the actual good girl it's right
right here okay it's right here below that bone right here that's the actual hinge all
right if you just gently rest your fingers you can do both sides at once or one side at
a time you just gently do egg yolk here and I'm going to watch her eyes and her
mouth and watch for responses and sometimes this is another boring one but I'm going to
just gently the blink stay with me big girl I'm going to just gently rest on there and
have one finger right you'll feel a little bump sometimes just gently rest on it like egg yolk
and this is this is another one you got to take a minute you can feel see your breathing change
I'm going to stay on it you got to stay with us Rose there we go we're getting a little release
there so that softens that joint up a little bit the ligaments and the tendons on the joint and
you'll do both sides and you can leave it at that a lot of times that's good I mean that's very good
just to do that but I like to move the jaw around a little and just joint moving a little bit and I
do that by with one hand on her nose softly and then the other hand on her lower jaw here where
there's no teeth and I'll wait for her to stop the trick is you don't pull on their nose you've
got to just kind of and I'm going to ask her to come this way a little bit and I'm going to just
push away from me with the lower hand and towards me with the upper hand a little at a time just a
little bit that it's a long lever there if you force it you know it's a small joint and a long
lever you could cause some damage I just want to get her mouth moving side to side a little bit
and check a little movement there I'm looking up in here and I'll see and you can actually
see when there I'll back her up so she doesn't hit her head or she goes up back up here but
you soften it up first with that there there's a little more movement right here now and I'm going
to wait like that like that okay and you bring the head over to the side that you're working
on it actually helps flex the poll the atlas a little bit now that feels much looser first she
resisted just because she doesn't want me moving her jaw around but huh so that's how you release
the TMJ and you do lots of horses you start to feel this one's really you know tight and this
one feels good you know the key is you don't force it you're just trying to get a little bit
of more movement in it than they normally do okay there's any questions on that does anybody want to
try okay so it's really cool cuz I can see this on the other side of moving yeah I got bigger is
okay she did it and that right in here is can you feel that joint that TMJ itself there's there's
an L there's here and here and it's right here in the inside of the L okay yeah a little knot
you'll feel there and if sometimes you just hold that knot you when they look and chew the knot
will soften and get smaller okay yeah okay oops so we're going to go and I just asked her to go
to the side and then let her come back again and then ask her to go over see that little lateral
yeah yeah just there that was as far as we want to go as we did you feel it go sideways yeah you
sure you're not just saying no yes no okay okay does everybody want to try it or do you have it
you want to go practice at some simple tips and techniques to release tension in the TMJ which
is the temporomandibular joint the TMJ is the is the joint between the the mandible and the skull
and it's a little hinge joint it's right in here I mean there's a lot more to it all down here but
this is basically the point where the the joint is you can feel a bump here if you want to come
in close and take a look here there's you can there's a lump here and then there's a little a
little deficit here a little valley here and then there's another little bump here between those two
is the actual joint so with the Masterson Method® we use the whatever level touch it takes to bypass
the horse's survival response which is a bracing response and with the TMJ here the best level of
pressure to start with here is what I call air gap which is barely touching or egg yolk which
isn't probably just that much pressure I'm demonstrating down here on his cheek that's
the that we want to use the lightest pressure we can and I'm just going to rest my my fingertips
flats my fingertips right here on the joint and I can use one finger tip or two finger tips to
cover that area and I'm just going to rest let me do my left hand rest my fingertips here now
if I do it softly I'm waiting for the signs of release and relaxation response would be blink
see as i soften and start to blink and I'm using the air gap pressure here which I'm barely barely
touching now this is you have to give the horse a minute his nervous system to start to respond to
this but you can see as there we go he his eyes softened now he starts to lick and chew so that
happened pretty quickly with him and he's starting to release tension in this joint already and this
is just by me barely touching the the skin and you want to resist the temptation if you're you
have to have patience you have to resist this temptation to push harder because when you push
harder the horse just blocks it out if you want him to do anything you want to do even lighter
there we go see even lighter he softened now I'm really air-gap barely touching you see how that
works I was going too hard even though I was he had learned to kind of block out that really light
I mean where I was and by going even lighter his nervous system had to yield a little bit
now I'm not touching
just bringing his awareness there
I'm an inch off his skin half an inch and his nervous system it brings awareness to that
area and I bring circulation there whereas just touching he had learned to guard against that
so I'm going to move right on to the next step of after you release tension in the TMJ itself
here with this light touch you do both sides and I'll often do both sides at the same time
but you'll give that a minute and look for the really the this first releases in the softening
and then I'm going to just ask him to gently move his jaw side-to-side and I'm not going to
use a lot of force here I'm just going to stick my thumb in here where there's no teeth I'm just
going to gently as he opens his mouth just kind of ask him to move it to the side now he's very tense
there we go he moved his jaw to the side a little bit that's all we need and I'm going to turn him
this way step over buddy step over one and I'm going to do the same on this side I'm going to
just gently stick my thumb in here with my hand on his nose just as he opens his mouth now he
throws his head up I go with him I don't pull down and I'm going to ask him as he opens his
mouth see he moves his jaw to the side a little bit right there that's all we need did you see
that lateral movement of the jaw that's all we need to do after we soften up the TMJ with our
fingers doing the very light touch well then we just ask him to move his jaw side-to-side
right buddy you starting to relax into this a little there we go a little he released a
little air so he's not a big talker but he is a head-shy horse with a lot of tension in his
poll and in his TMJ and these techniques these these basic very light techniques staying under
the bracing response is going to allow him to move to release tension in those areas in his TMJ and
his poll in his neck with just gentle movement in a relaxed state that's the key to releasing
the tension in the horse is gentle movement softening up gentle movement in a relaxed state