my anxiety lives in my jaw, how about you?
I still remember when I was sitting with a coach who was teaching me how to do the somatic coaching method I now use with almost every client.
He was walking me through a work scene from my past that I found stressful and that evoked anxiety in me.
As I was describing it, he reminded me to go slowly, slowly, slowly so I could notice every little physical sign along the way.
I shared that I noticed how I tightened at the first sign of stress.
He nodded with understanding and asked me, “where do you first notice the tightening?”
“My jaw,” I said. “It’s way behind in the back of my jaw muscles….”
I got really present and brought my awareness into those muscles. I could feel how strong they were, I could feel where my teeth clicked together.
I shared with him, “… you know, it often gets so tight that it starts to ache. And I usually don’t even notice until I’m in pain.”
He invited me to do something weird - intentionally increase the tightness in my jaw.
(I learned later that this is a key part of re-training our neural pathways. Without going into the science details of it all, it is incredibly transformative when we can recognize that we have the ability to change our habitual response. Doing something “on purpose” is part of recognizing this.)
I squeezed those small but mighty jaw muscles of mine until they started to throb.
He encouraged me by saying “I know it’s uncomfortable, just hold on for 10 seconds more. I want you to really notice and appreciate what you have to recruit in your body, in your jaw, in order to create this experience.”
After 10 agonizing seconds, he finally said that I could start to slowly release the tension in my jaw, but not all the way - just 50%.
He asked me to notice how I did that. “Really specifically, how do you - Andrea - decrease the tension in your jaw….even just by 50%? Are you doing something in your neck? What about your face? Your eye muscles? How you’re breathing?”
As he asked each subsequent questions, I noticed more and more of the minutiae of what it was like to be me and experience these tight sensations in my jaw.
After a few minutes of this, we then did another round of releasing my jaw muscles, but this time by 100%. There were more questions to help me understand, really intimately, how I did that - how I released 100% of my jaw tension.
He reminded me that, no one else has the answers to this, just I know what it takes to release inside my own jaw.
He then asked me to do yet another strange thing - to go back and forth between the tension and releasing the tension.
As I went back and forth, I started to realize something that was game changing for me and has stuck with me ever since:
I had the ability to shift my anxiety by relaxing my jaw.
As I played between tension and releasing the tension, I noticed how my shoulders were softening, my breathing was deepening, my fingers were more loose and open. My emotions felt more steady, more present. I was able to take in the room and notice more things around me than before (I was much more tunnel vision at the beginning when I was feeling the anxiety.)
My jaw muscles were like the key that softened the other anxiety symptoms in my body.
This was 6 years ago.
Now, I don’t have to do this technique consciously anymore. I have relaxed my jaw in the exact way I need so many times that I do it automatically when I’m in a high pressure situation.
I love using this technique with my clients because:
It gets very intellectual, head focused clients out of their stories and into their bodies
It gets better and better with practice until it gets unconsciously integrated
It’s not verbal. It’s not about talking about why you’re stressed or how to shift it. It’s literally going to your body wisdom and having your body show you what you have to do differently.
I want you to experience a taste of what somatics can give you!
Book a free consult with me and experience first hand what a somatic session is like.
