Hello everyone today we are interested in jaw tension and bruxism. We will
explain how physical, emotional and mental stress and bad posture can lead to
cranio-mandibular dysfunction. We will bring you solutions with data from
modern science and the ancient science of yoga. Today I am with Doctor Djavaneh
Zamanian who is also my cousin and it's been 30 years since we spoke, we found each other
after about 30 years and from the start we knew we were teaching the same thing but in
totally different areas. So we decided to create this video for you and at the end of it
you will have access to some exercises that you can do every day for
maximum benefit . So Djavaneh, can you tell us your specialty please? So I am a doctor
of dental surgery, I am a general practitioner and I take care of patients with
cranio-mandibular dysfunction. So the people who come to see you,
normally what kind of problem do they have? So the people who come to see me are first of all
in physical mental and social suffering. So there are a lot of symptoms but mainly
they will come for pain in the teeth, jaw, head and also
ears. These pains can be disabling to the limitation of opening the mouth and
real difficulties in chewing. So they will also complain of tinnitus and they
will report episodes of bruxism to me. So I will also tell you all the same
pell-mell about the symptoms that are specific to cranio-mandibular dysfunction that all this
is the patients who report it to me: like cracking, clicking in the jaw,
the sensations of the ear clogging. , also a burning skin sensation, sore tongue,
difficulty swallowing. Yes I think I've the tour. And in your opinion,
in your opinion the main cause of all this, if there was one main cause what would it be? So
the cause is in fact a tension of the muscles of the jaw which is due to an accumulation of
toxins. And I think the crux of the matter is physical and mental stress. So you
talk about the jaw tension, in fact as soon as we have tension here we go into a vicious
circle , because we have tension in the jaw we can't breathe properly.
And you might try it now, just bite your teeth back just a little bit, but
just a little bit, and watch the breath. And you will see that in fact it is tight, the diaphragm
cannot come down. But if you let go of the jaw you will see that the diaphragm
can move much more easily. So if, as you say, there is tension in the
jaw and every day, every time there is a difficulty during the day,
even a little bit, we clench our teeth, it becomes chronic and toxic as you say.
So then what to do? In fact, if the patient is not taken care of as a whole there will be a
worsening of existing symptoms and if not there will be the appearance of new symptoms such as
gastro-oesophageal reflux of impatience especially in the legs at night and then
fatigue of a chronic fatigue that will set in because of this poor ventilation and
at the end there will also be wear of the teeth and of the articular surfaces of the
temporal mandibular joint. So we've taken a good tour of the e problems here. We are going to look at the
solutions. Because there is hope still!! Ah yes and how. So we're going,
we're going to get the patient to relax the whole muscle chain. The head is not resting on the body.
There is a continuity, it will be necessary to relax the tongue, the eyes, so that the jaw is
also relaxed, so that he can breathe well that the diaphragm relaxes and
that finally we can release the vagus nerve which is the nerve of relaxation of our whole body.
Ok no great! Yes absolutely, I am actually up to there, we are, I know very well very well that we
are well in agreement with everything that is happening here, because it is the same as yoga in fact.
All you say, on the physical level, is the goal of yoga. That is to say to recreate or re-establish a
very good connection between the head and the body, and therefore a very good communication
between the head and the body. So let's go back to solutions. How to enter a virtuous circle?
So you have to restore a healthy lifestyle first of all. You have to drink water because
people forget to drink water. Then you have to play sports, you have to stretch,
you have to do yoga of course :) and you have to eat balanced food to respect the intestinal microbiota.
And also we have to be careful during the day because sometimes we will clench our teeth,
we will bite our nails, chew gum, we will bite a pen and the problem is that the
brain will hold on to these movements and afterwards at night by positive biofeedback it will
send us tightening messages. But people shouldn't be worried, people shouldn't
feel guilty because when we grit our teeth it lowers stress hormones, so
it destroys part of our body, but it's still a call. So obviously you have to
condition the system and develop good habits. Yes, then, to help my patient with
an easy reconditioning, I will give him a small bracelet, which will be a bright colour,
which is orange, and like that as soon as he sees it he will just let go of the teeth and become consciousness
that teeth don't have to be clenched all day. Because in fact, sometimes
they will clench their teeth while cutting vegetables or at the computer or driving the car. You
never know. It is in fact a habit that the nerves, the nervous system it has developed and
to re-condition, what I do as a yoga teacher is as soon as we start doing a posture that is either difficult or new, I ask, I ask them to
let go of the jaw, to leave space between the teeth at the back to recondition as you
said. So you were saying earlier, you were talking about a whole muscle chain including the tongue,
do you want to talk about it? The tongue? Yes, the tongue is very important. In fact, it must
have a special position. It must be in the high position, its tip must be on the
palate behind the teeth of the upper jaw and that is a sign of the relaxation of the jaw,
good breathing and good ventilation. I remember the first
time you told me that, I told you that, I explained to you, I had a hard time with
that. I had a lot of trouble because I had teachers telling me, in yoga we say the same thing,
we say that the position of the tongue must be there. And at the beginning, I had trouble because
if I tried to put my tongue there, I made an effort, it was not relaxed relaxed
and I had other teachers who told me that the tongue must be relaxed. So I couldn't, between
the two, I didn't know what to do and I remember once listening to a tai chi
master Bruce Francis saying actually what you say. That when the tongue is
relaxed it puts itself in a good position but I also think that it is important that the tongue is
toned. I think it must be toned if it has strength, if there is power
in the tongue, if it has tone there, when it relaxes, it can position herself correctly.
So you were also saying, I think you also wanted to talk about the eyes in this muscle chain.
Yes yes exactly we do not talk about it a lot but it is very important. So I am not talking about
sight but I am talking about motor skills because the eye muscles are inserted in the same place
as the chewing muscles and if one of the muscle groups and contracted the contraction
will simply be spread to the other group muscles. So we must actually diagnose
if there is a problem with the muscles of the eye. It's so interesting when you say
that, because in yoga we do eye exercises, we do exercises, we do all that
but in fact I didn't know I didn't know at all that in fact , What did you say? Did
you say it has a common nerve or muscles? The muscles or rather the insertion of the muscle,
the place where they are inserted. Great! You also know what is important is that in all the
muscular chains that we are talking about, the position the posture is very important because
if we put ourselves like that, when we look at the screen or when we drive, well we bring a lot of
stress to that area including the eyes, tongue, and jaw. And I think that what's
very, very good , the softest way to bring the head to the body is to gently
bring it back, instead of being like that, instead of trying to do that, which in fact requires a
lot of muscular effort. Instead of doing that, it is to gently bring the neck above
above the torso. Yes, in fact that is it. It is in fact the bodily attitude, the postural the attitude that matters.
Well you see, then you speak attitude you speak posture you speak attention me I
always say to my patients be happy, your body speaks to you. It sends you signals,
if you have trouble take it as a call. You will be able to reposition yourself, you
will refocus on yourself and you will simply improve, you improve mentally
and physically. Absolutely, improving mentally, because there you speak of being positive
in fact, not to take the pain as being something negative or becoming negative with it. Because in fact,
we know very well that beliefs and thoughts can also create stress. And in fact,
you have to be able to manage them and at the same time it's very important not to see stress as an
enemy. You have to understand it to be able to tame it. And I really want to note,
because and especially as a yoga teacher, the tension the stress becomes oooo, it is not necessary,
it is not necessary. It's not true! There is no life without tension. There is no life without stress.
Life is not the absence of stress but rather the balance between stress and relaxation and
that is what we really want to learn. Moreover, we have developed
a sequence of exercise for stress management that you can do every day every day, every
day a little bit. And it is the regularity, it is really the regularity which counts and which
will recondition the system. So we have come to the end and we hope that this short video,
this short video has brought more clarity and encouraged you to become more aware of the body and to listen to it.