Who would have thought there could ever be a connection between a tense jaw and bad teeth? Well, I am going to share my own personal experience with my tense jaw and my bad teeth (yes bad teeth, breaking, chipping and just not strong). As always I will also share what I have uncovered with the tense jaw point.
When I started to become a “man” and my jawline started developing and became visible to the ladies, I got some comments that my jawline is great. I also saw the older guys who had jawlines that were visible that they got more attention, and some of them just looked tough/hard and thus was respected.
I remember I started focussing on popping out my jawline more by making my jaw tense, this I did though biting down on my back teeth, kind of like letting my teeth hold onto each other real tight. This allowed for my jaw muscles to pop out and be more visible, to be more pronounced.
I remember specifically when there was a male type of moment of competition or challenge sub-consciously going on, where I would specifically focus on popping out my jaw muscles to look tougher, to look like a man that is hard, like my jaw can take a punch, this game was played out for a long time during my school years, and there were ample opportunities to play this jaw popping game.
Besides the male ego challenge point, for the ladies, I would basically keep it popped all the time, as to show a little something manly.
Playing this jaw popping game meant I had to place a lot of pressure on my teeth for many years and within this, I also had to not just bite down on my teeth to pop the jaw muscles, but I also had to grind on my teeth to move it. It was NO different than how bodybuilders compete, you have to pop the muscles and move them, show them, those actions in themselves are stressful on the jaw and teeth.
NOW, after reading that we have to take a step back and look at WHY oh why did I participate within that construct to be a man, to be seen as hard and tough and having something manly or nice, like a sculpture. The answer goes a bit deeper, it goes to an insecure point within myself that has two sides to it, where this one point was an outlet for these two points.
The first point is, I felt insecure within my environment as a man that can handle the other men, to compete and to not lose, and thus to not be bullied, to not be harmed, this placed a LOT of stress on me specifically in the line of survival – Biting on my teeth and grinding my teeth was an outlet, and also participating within the manly construct and winning sometimes made me feel more relaxed and thus I could release some stress, I felt safe and secure, unless I lost. So I already taught myself that tightening my jaw and biting on my teeth was a great way to deal with stress in relation to survival.
The other dimension is even deeper and this one goes way back to the point where it eventually led to me feeling insecure and playing this game and participating in this construct. This goes back to when I was young when I was still just a child, and this point of when I was still a child is still now playing out as it is now obvious since I stopped the male ego game of jaw popping.
I cannot pinpoint the exact age and what happened when I was young, but I know it is ancient this point, and all I can do is explain how I experience it right now, the design is right or wrong, where I am mostly living in the anticipation/stress of doing the wrong thing, doing something for what I will be shouted at, or get spanked for (again survival). I am always in this state of “fuck I did it again”, I am doing something wrong, I am in someone’s books not doing things the right way, and I am probably going to hear about it later or in some form or another.
I have a great example of today, where there was an accident. I was wearing slip on shoes to go walk in the field, I knew my partner was going to wear these shoes later on, so I went out to walk in the fields, within this I noticed the whole fields were wet and there were lots of puddles of water everywhere, and so the WHOLE time I was walking with the clenched and stressed jaw around, in the anticipation that I am going to do something wrong with these shoes, and so it happened, I stepped in a puddle of water and the shoes got all wet inside. After that, my jaws and teeth were so tight against each other that even after making myself aware of it, breathing and relaxing them, it took two seconds and there it was back to how it was, it has become so normal for my body to just have my jaw tense and my teeth grinding and biting down.
That is but one example, now take that and place it throughout an entire day, all day, all the time, with anything I do. That is the state my jaw is in, and the pressure my teeth is under. It feels like I am constantly under camera surveillance and god is watching, and god is fucking ready to tell me what I did wrong and that I am and will never do the right thing.
The imagery I have is of me as a child literally playing with my toys in fear of even playing wrong with them, and getting punished for playing with my toys, never mind playing wrong with them, so I am a child that simply does not play with his toys because of fear of playing wrong with them, even though no one ever came to me and said, you are playing WRONG with your toys, it came from other parts I feel in my reality as a child, the impression and signature I feel within me is that of I can only do wrong.
The Jaw is a fascinating design. By just having my jaw muscles tight I am clamping down my teeth, and within this grinding them, placing incredible pressure on my back teeth, and within that, I am tensing and tightening the muscles around my jaw that leads to pain and stiffness, I also form mini headaches because of the constant tension. It does not stop there, it now goes to food, not wanting to spend time eating or taking food in with my mouth, and throughout the years from all the jaw clenching and grinding I have made my teeth sensitive, so eating solid food becomes an annoyance. It can also be painful sometimes, especially if a piece of the tooth has broken off. This overall effects my health, my body, everything, so the jaw really has a lot of power. so here we see how I play out this point/illusion of strength and how the physical is showing me the consequences of being weakened.
I have written about this point many times, but not specific as I am now in mentioning the points. Previously I took on the topics of Stress, anxiety, the bad boy character and so forth. This time I am going straight to the physical, the signs and designs and seeing what is here.
I am a very HIGH energy person (according to previous input from others), as I was referred to in my younger days, I was FULL of energy and excitement. I used to LOVE anything that had to do with adrenaline, I always thought it was a damn good thing, people enjoy it, and I deceived myself mostly with telling myself that me being that way is me being ALIVE and living. I fooled myself as I could never really see where and what the energy really was, I cloaked it as positive when in fact it was negative. This high energy was me not knowing how to deal with stress/anxiety and kind of me rebelling against it, which only, in the end, enforced it, as we can not really do anything "right" when we are in high energy, mistakes and accidents are bound to happen, and thus reinforcing the belief that nothing I do can ever be right. a vicious cycle.
Since I started applying the Desteni tools of breathing, slowing down and becoming aware of me here as the physical, as my body, dealing with the points that exist within me, I have stopped this point of seeking adrenaline, of being in high energy to a certain extent. I say certain extent because it gets reactivated each time something happens, something takes place and then it feels like I am dealing with this point all over again, just when I thought now I can be a monk walking in calm and breathing, something happens and I am right at square one, another dimension opened up at this point.
And here is where the two points of the childhood experiences and the jaw popping experiences come into play. When a situation/event takes place, may it be a big once in a life time thing, or a thing that can occur on a daily basis where I feel my survival is on the line (jawLINE) – I activate the JAW popping game of making myself feel strong in a moment where I belief I am to weak to actually do the "right" things, as the experience of myself is that of weakness, the weakness I am experiencing is that I feel I cannot make the right decision ever, so I have to be strong to make the wrong decision regardless and live with it regardless of the feedback I get from others, and to deal with others I have to be strong, I have to be able to stand for the sake of my survival.
So, while my jaw and face may look strong on the outside, on the inside my teeth and my mouth and my jaw muscles are weak and suffering. It is by the very actions of wanting to be strong or put forth a strong sense of self that I am weakening myself, as taking on this strong character that always does everything wrong I am reinforcing the belief that I am weak, and no matter what I do always make the wrong decisions.
It is like being a sponge, and believing that by putting a stone on top of yourself and squishing yourself flat so that only the stone is visible will suddenly make you the stone, just because you aren’t seen or visible, but in the meantime that pressure of the stone is destroying the sponge, you.
For an immediate correction of this jaw clenching point and releasing pressure from my teeth, I have been focussing a lot on relaxing my entire face, it is a consistent focus and awareness to do this, as it takes two seconds and I am back into the old habit, I also support myself by placing my tongue against the roof of my mouth and keeping it there in awareness. I do feel a LOT of other points being challenged within this relaxing of my entire face, I have to multi-task and correcting points within myself as energies I am holding onto, to let them go and to stop certain ways of looking at life through facial expressions that are automatic.
To be continued.
