Episdoe 56 - Fix Your Face - What’s Really Going On With Your Jaw

In this episode of Three Questions, I break down why what’s happening in your face is often a reflection of something deeper. From tongue position to head awareness to your sensory systems, we explore how your jaw is constantly responding to the information your brain is (or isn’t) receiving. Because your jaw doesn’t work in isolation and neither does your pain.

In This Episode You’ll Hear:

• Why your tongue position can change your head movement and jaw function

• How your visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems influence jaw pain

• Simple strategies to improve awareness and create better movement patterns

Whether you teach, rehab, or are trying to make sense of your own symptoms, this episode will help you think beyond the jaw and start asking better questions about what your body actually needs.

Links & Resources For This Episode:
Episode 19 - Neuroplasticity: 3 Questions To Change Your Brain
Episode 46 - The Shoulder Episode: Exploring the Truth About How You Move This Complex Joint System
Find a Neuro Studio Teacher Near You
Connect with me on Instagram
Connect with me on Threads

Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king and my opinions, research and stories are only here to support your learning and understanding. Hey, I'm your host Meghann, and I am so honored. You clicked on Three Questions today so we can talk about your jaw. Yes, your jaw, that thing you move around to chew and to talk.

It's pretty important, but I think we don't really think about our jaw all that much unless we're having an issue. Or like we go to the dentist and they're like, uh, your gums are receding, or you're clenching your jaw and you need a very expensive mouth guard that you'll probably never wear because it's really uncomfortable, you know?

Sorry, that might have been personal, but maybe it's happened to you as well. Anyway, the jaw is pretty important and what it's doing or not doing can give us a lot of intel. Now, for me, it's so easy to point out what's wrong with everybody and say, oh, you've got this problem. I would like you to think in this episode and every other episode.

Oh, I wonder why that's happening. And a lot of the things we feel and experience, including pain or the movements, how we do them isn't output. So that's kind of a result. So it's very easy for me to blame my migraines on my jaw post-concussion, but there's a lot more to it. And maybe you've got some pathology that's led to some jaw issues.

So have an open mind and let's just dig into these three questions. Question one, what is your tongue doing right now? Did you move it? Did it adjust? Maybe you're like, I don't know. So what I always say to people, it's just like, say your name and address out loud. Like say a full sentence right now I'm talking, and then just stop talking.

Notice where your tongue is and we're not gonna judge our tongue position. Yes, optimal tongue position is perfectly suctioned to the roof of the mouth. Casually. Evenly, not just one spot. And some of you, your tongue might be there. Maybe you have been doing some exercises in practice for it. Great work.

Some of you might be like, I don't know, my tongue's touching my bottom teeth or my front teeth, or the tip is touching the roof of my mouth. Now what I would like you to do, we're gonna go step by step. Step one, swallow. Where is your tongue after you swallow? Do it again. Don't look for anything. Don't move it.

Just swallow. Now, when I swallow, I not only, it not only resets my head position, but after I swallow, my tongue is at the roof of the mouth. So there's a million combinations here. Some of you might be like me that when you're talking or just sitting casually, your tongue is not resting at the roof of the mouth, but after you swallow and reset your head position your tongue's like, thank you.

Now we can go home. Or maybe you're the opposite. Maybe your tongue was sitting on the roof of the mouth, but then when you swallowed it disrupted your head position and now your tongue's like, I don't know where the heck we're going. So I am not a doctor. I'm not diagnosing with anything. I want you to ask why that could be happening.

Now we're gonna talk about some strategies a little later, but what people don't realize is nobody knows where their head is in space. It's actually fascinating to me, and I really had this huge aha moment after I was working with a professional football player and I was like. I remember I told him, we kind of lined up, he was slower on one side and I kind of was like, Hey, put a head mounted laser on him.

He's like, why is the laser over there? I'm like, 'cause your head's turned over there. He's like, my head's straight. I'm like, no it's not. I had a video him and what was interesting, I guess we assume these professional athletes know where their head is now. He does know where his head is, but there's something football players were specifically on their head and it's a helmet.

And I've actually tried on my husband's football helmet. It's pretty heavy. And then I got to thinking my husband Brian, who played football in college, dude, he's not a baseball cap guy, but he's like a Scully like ski cap guy. He'll like go down into a Peloton. He always has something on his head. And if you've ever, my husband hates being on the screen, but sometimes I need a body for our workshops.

And if you're watching me on YouTube, you'll see what I do. Brian will come in the studio like this with his hoodie on, and what I realized is he really likes something on his head to know where his head is in space. Now, funny enough, do you like to wear hats? Do you hate wearing hats? Do you like wearing headbands?

Do you hate wearing headbands? All these things are giving us proprioceptive information about where our head is in space. Now the other things to consider is our visual and vestibular. So just briefly, I don't wanna assume everybody's a science person here. I know a lot of my followers are, but I know a lot of people have other interests.

So proprioception's your ability to know where you are in space, our brain gets information via our skin, our tendons, our muscles, our joints, our organs, you know. So, when the hat is on our head, you're gonna feel either the pressure of the helmet, the hat, the headband, that's gonna help your brain know where your head is in space in relation to other body parts.

Now, funny enough for me, I often walk around with my head up. Now this is more of a visual and vestibular issue. So briefly, our visual system is obviously our eyes. But our vestibular is our inner ear, and we've got three semi-circular canals. Think of them as like little pipes filled with fluid and hair.

So let's all tilt our head to the right. So when we tilt our head to the right, if we have our eyes open, our eyes told our brain, our head tilted, the inner ear, the fluid moving in the inner ear, told our brain, we moved our head. And there was probably some proprioceptive feedback as well from the muscles, maybe the joints, maybe your hair.

All different things. Now, if we close our eyes and move our head to the right now, we're getting vestibular information and relying on proprioceptive. We're taking the visual system away, but what I want everybody to do is close your eyes, tilt your head to the left and open your eyes. Notice what you're looking at.

Did your eyes go to the right with you or did your eyes stay centered? Just something to notice. Now I want you to tilt your head to the right again. Did you move your head more or less with your eyes open or closed? Now, why I'm making you do all this micas is because, so for me, when I have my eyes open, it feels like I can't move my head.

My eyes are a disruptor. When I close my eyes, I can move my, that's crazy. I can move my head much further. Because I have a visual tracking issue. Some of you might have been like, no. I moved my head better when my eyes were open. Also, another thing to consider is I want everybody to look up and look down.

Look up, look down. Look up and look down and find the center point of those two points you're gonna have to kind of estimate. Of those two points, find it and then move your head to get that into the center of your visual field. Don't worry, I'll say that again. And what I did there is a lot of us based off our head position, so if my head's up I'm to not be able to track down as much as I can up and vice versa.

So if we find the middle point of where our eyes are tracking and then put that in the center of our visual field. I want you to try that again. Eyes up and eyes down. Try to find approximately the middle point. Get that in the center of your visual field. Say your full name and notice where your tongue is.

Now when I reset my eyes and found a better head position, my tongue position was better. So it's easy for me to just use myself as the assessment 'cause I can't see you guys. But let's talk about what this all means for us and questions we should ask further, right? Our visual system, our vestibular system, and our proprio section affect our head position.

Our jaw is a major joint on our head, so if you're having trouble moving your cervical spine, you might be moving your jaw more. If you're having any issues with your cervical spine or you over mobilize your cervical spine, that can affect your tongue movement. And how are these all related? Well, we're using them all now.

And I want you to think we want each area to do its job and not do the job of others. So for me, when I turn my head, everybody just turn your head to the right. Notice what you say. Come back to center and try to do that without turning your body. Now we're gonna bring this into the jaw. I want everybody to touch their cheekbone with their pointer finger and their jaw with their thumb.

And I want you to turn your head again, and I want you to notice with your hand there, could you to turn your head further. I think I just turned my body. Sorry. Okay. I also want you to notice is your jaw moving more than your cheekbone? And what happens a lot, and this happens to me, can also do this to the left side.

So when I turn to the left, my jaw goes to the right. So when I go like this, my head's gonna stop there. But when I touch it, my brain gets that proprioceptive information. I can feel my jaw going to the right, I can bring it back to the left, and my head will move more. Okay, so I want you to play around with this, and I know it's a little weird touching your own jaw, so I'm gonna give you another one to try.

You can try the jaw one. I want everybody to either swallow or talk, which gave you better tongue position on the roof of the mouth. And if you can get your tongue at the roof of your mouth, here's your trick. You're gonna gently bite your tongue evenly, okay? Now we're gonna turn our head to the right, but we're gonna maintain the pressure of our tongue at the top of the mouth, or evenly between our teeth.

Let's try it. Both directions.

And notice if you start feeling your tongue deviate or your jaw deviate, pause and make an adjustment. What I just did there was I gave you some awareness about what your jaw's doing. You might've been like, I had no idea. My jaw was shifting to the right every time I turned to the left and right. Okay.

Now, I don't want everybody to freak out about this, but it's just good information. And if we can fill the brain sensory gaps there, think about how we can remap and improve our movement. So to recap on question one, tongue position matters. So if your jaw is bothering you, let's do this one drill. Clean your teeth with your tongue.

Go both directions.

Swallow. Notice your tongue position, and then I want you to turn your head or move your head in any direction with changing the position and pressure of your tongue. If it's up there a little bit, keep it. If it's up there fully, keep it. If you're choosing to bite it. It do it. Just don't bite your tongue off.

And I love biting tongue 'cause it gives more sensory input. And for me, if I'm having concussion symptoms, I do the tongue bite because I'll be able to feel my jaw shifting. Now why is this important? Well guys, if you've had a concussion or head injuries or getting headaches, craniocervical instability is a huge problem.

But a lot of us, because of proprioceptive issues. Move our head a lot to get vestibular information. So we create sensory mismatches in our head all the time. Our visual, vestibular and proprioception are giving our brain different signals. So if we can bring some sensory awareness, change the movement, we can adjust the proprioception, we can adjust the vestibular system and adjust visual.

Now, if you wanna learn more about this, what I would really encourage you to do is, um. Give Neuro Studio a follow. Check out my friend Missy Bunch. There's a lot of other people who can teach you about this stuff, but to me it's very important. It's individualized, based off what your body needs. Because if you're having a jaw issue, it's usually not in isolation.

There's some other things going on. All right, so that's not all run and think we have jaw issues. Okay, now question two, are you a bit bendy or maybe a lot bendy? What do we mean by that now? EDS, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome or hypermobility spectrum disorder. It's getting a lot more conversation lately, which is I think is great because a lot of these people are having a lot of different health issues and all they're getting is eye rolls.

They are being treated like hypochondriacs. I mean, come on. You think these people wanna spend their time in a doctor's office trying to figure out why they feel so terrible? This is a huge problem. However, I feel like there's a lot of half answers and I feel like people are settling for crumbs when they can have the whole cake.

So if you are hypermobile, I'm not saying you don't feel things, but your proprioception is not often, uh, what I love the term high fidelity. It, it might not be fully accurate. And think about it. If you're very bendy, you might not feel your muscles length and shorten, or your tendons or fascia mobilize until you're at excessive end range and your brain puts a red light on you.

Meaning red lights stop. So what often happens with my clients who are hypermobile, they might not feel this until it's that. Okay. They might not feel their foot pressing down in the floor so their hip doesn't respond. Their hip only responds when they feel so much pressure under their foot or their foot's at their end range to respond.

So I don't wanna, I never want my hypermobile clients ignoring proprioception, but if you are super, super bendy and you are having headaches. Um, brain fog, all this stuff. I want you to see what's happening at the jaw. See if you can bring some awareness via the tongue or the jaw. I worked with, uh, she's like one of my favorite clients now.

Um, this amazing woman with EDS and she might've been the most hypermobile person I've ever seen, and she was having a lot of health issues. Like was at this point where she was not able to walk. And, uh, she's been working with one of our level three teachers. Uh, shout out to Alejandra. Uh, they're doing great work, but what was so incredible is talking about she was doing all this stuff.

They were like, oh, you need to do loaded and weight bearing stuff. And she was, but she was getting injured. And I was like, yeah, but like, you're not responding to the weight. And I would do all these two point differentiation tests. She could lift heavy weights, but her brain couldn't differentiate the joints when she was lifting those weights.

So it was actually creating more fatigue, more tension on her fascial system. And honestly, what got her to have buy-in is she's like, this is how I have to sit down. I just watched her. I'm like, cool. Now what I want you to do is I want you to do it again, and I just want you to notice what your tongue is doing.

She did it again and she was like, oh God, I, I didn't even notice what it was doing. I was like, good. And that was just telling me that it wasn't even in her awareness. So I asked her to clean her teeth. And why I do the teeth cleaning guys is to just kind of like get stuff moving. It's almost like taking the tongue to its end ranges inside the mouth.

You're getting good sensory feedback 'cause you're rubbing your teeth and your skin. So it, it can be good sensation. I don't wanna assume it's good sensation for everybody. But it's just kind of one quick drill. You can also have someone stick their touch the back of their neck and stick their tongue out and suck it back in until they feel their neck shift.

Just wanna get the tongue almost warmed up. Cool. Then I asked her to press her tongue to the roof of the mouth, and I asked her to do the same thing she did without changing the pressure of her tongue. And let's just say there were happy tears. And what I mean was she was like, oh my God. And she stood there and she's like, I'm feeling my body.

What's going on? It's stopping there. This is different. That was pain free. And I said, okay. I didn't cure anything. I mean, I wish I did, but what I did was I gave her brain awareness so that when she had to kick her leg to get up onto the stool that she needed for work, she was really, she really had a.

Mobilize her spine and pelvis and hip. But what was happening is she was also over mobilizing her jaw and cervical spine, so the body just didn't feel safe. So by creating tongue position, it helped her brain know where her head was in relation to her upper body and her leg. Okay. So I developed a triangulation theory that we use for hypermobility specific, but this was the starting point.

So that was her anchor one, her tongue. And that tongue position helped her know where her head was better in space. And guys, I cannot emphasize how important this is, so I'm gonna go back to that professional football player. He didn't come to me for this, but I asked him what side of the field he was slower on.

He told me, we established, well, you're slower to that side of the field because you think your head is straight. Your head is tilted. Your spine was actually in tension, so you weren't able to get as much speed right from go. We adjusted and Reca re, I guess recalibrate his head position using visual vestibular and proprioceptive information.

I actually, Remo tried to get him to not focus on sensation and we used a head mounted laser to readjust the head, and again, we're in my small studio, so it wasn't on a field, but he had much faster reaction time to the left. So yeah, he could have been doing all these drills. But if his brain thought his head was over here, but it was over there, the body has to recruit differently.

So like to me, this stuff is so cool. So some of your clients who have chronic pain and stuff like that, just giving them tongue drills and exercises can bring more awareness to head position. Number one, it can help the jaw stabilize when it needs to, and it can help the spine stabilize when it needs to 'cause the tongue is fascially connected to the neck and muscular in a few spots.

Cool. So if you are hypermobile, I want you guys to look into this, see what's going on in your jaw and tongue. Ask for awareness, bring different strategies in, reach out. I have a ton of teachers who are educated in my systems and assessments and are, would love to help. Don't. Don't feel like you're alone.

And if people aren't listening to you, find someone else that will. If you've got someone you love, keep going with them. Talk to 'em about your tongue and jaw. Ask them what they're seeing and observing what they're seeing and observing. They have awareness of, you don't even when they tell you, it's like, stop lifting your shoulder.

Okay. I mean, I'd love to, but my brain isn't feeling that era. Okay, so now question three. I know I've got like super technical. Um. I mean, I think it's super exciting, but I don't know. I think a lot of things are super exciting. My last question is, what are you doing about your jaw pain, your headaches?

What are you doing about it? Are you just taking Advil? Are you getting craniosacral? Are you going to a do? Are you going to a neurologist? What are the things you're doing? Number one, identify if they're working. If they're working awesome. And now I want you to let them do their job and think about how you can support the rest of your body so that whatever you're doing sticks and we can work on integrating it.

Now, if what you're doing is not helping, and here's what I mean about not helping. Oh my God, I feel great when I leave, but then I'm right back where I was. We're putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Oftentimes they are releasing what the patterns that you've overworked. So neuroplasticity, we've heard of this.

Um, I have an episode about it if you're interested. It works both ways. We can create new movement patterns, but our brain prefers efficiency. So we're always gonna go back to what's efficient. If there's low focus, no focus, or we have focused, but previous experience trumps that. Okay? So the sensory environment, if you wanna create a new movement pattern, has to be specific.

Now we gotta replicate it and make that new pattern more efficient. So think about it, if you're creating this pattern in your body, because every time you turn your jaw shifts to the left, that's super efficient. Your brain's like, that's what we're doing. End of story. Leave me alone. And you're like, no, brain.

Look, we can do it this way. And your brain's like, okay, I'm listening. That's actually kind of better. But this other way is so much easier. You have to make this new way more efficient. So sometimes when we go to places, and I'm not against massage or any body work, but you know, they'll be like, oh, you're really tight here.

Yeah, that's your overused pattern. So if we release it, the brain's not just gonna re miraculously go to a different pattern. It's often gonna go back to the pattern that caused that problem. Now, don't get me wrong, if you're in a kerfluffle, work that out. When you're in pain, sometimes we need triage, right?

We, it's like, hold on. I am in so much pain. I've gotta do something that makes me feel better. But what I always tell people, creating a Newman Pattern, new movement pattern is the best solution. Is it always easy? No, but this is life, right? So going back to that, if something isn't working or you are chasing your tail, I would suggest to stop doing it.

Why I am suggesting that is the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We've all been been insane at points. I've done it too, right? We all have done it, but it's okay. But if something is helping, even if someone's like, no, that's not good for you, shut up. If infrared light or cold therapy or anything makes you feel better, you should still do it.

But I want you to remember that jaw, those headaches don't work in isolation. Why is the tension there? Why is the rest of the body not supporting it energetically? Where are things stuck? All this stuff matters. So for me, I am going to just start you with a list of things you can do when you have jaw pain, headaches, um, uh, nerve pain, uh, brain fog.

Number one, work on your eyes and work on your eyes Separate than moving your head. Give your brain enough information with a towel around your neck or touch it and make sure you can isolate your eyes in all different movements. Up, down, left, right, jumping slow without your head moving. The reason to do this is because we want an opened visual field that can take in information without increasing cognitive load.

Now, if our eyes only work in conjunction with head movement, or dare I say, our eyes don't move well, we're going to have to over mobilize our neck and often our jaw. Okay, this is a big problem for me. Post-concussion. It's affected. I have a bit of a blind spot in my left visual field, like right here, and up and down can be tricky.

So instead of looking up and down, I also believe my husband, he's six six, I'm five three. Rather than fully tracking up and down, I tend to move my head a lot. This is why scrolling on the phone, it really aggravates my nervous system. Like sometimes scrolling on DoorDash to decide where we're going to dinner can really aggravate my nervous system.

That quick, small, up and down in my eyes. It's like you are poking the bear. And, um, if you go to Instagram, I, I think there's one on the Neuro Studio and my personal account where I do a visual eye reset after scrolling. And don't laugh, I do that. After I scroll all the time, I have to my nervous system and my brain depends on it.

Also, the safety of my husband, because sometimes I pop off. I know it's hard to believe. Okay, so eyes number two, resetting your shoulder girdle. I did a whole episode asking you questions about your shoulder. Girl, go back to it. Okay? But our glenohumeral, the ball in the socket is the most mobile joint in the body.

Nobody's fully expressing. It's getting jumbled and mixed with other joints. We think about the scapular thoracic that's, see what I'm doing right now, shrugging my shoulder up. That's kind of the shoulder blade, gliding on the ribs. Everybody's obsessed with that one. It upwardly rotates, but keeping joint sensation, basically keeping the bone and not popping into other things really hard.

So when that joint can't fully mobilize and differentiate from others, there's going to be less stability in that joint. So if everything's kind of stuck and mushed together. The brain's like we're good. And again, I have worked with a lot of head injuries, lot of concussions, lot of brain injuries, lot of people with brain fog, and it is magic when we can get their upper quadrant to reflexively stabilize.

It's so freaking gorgeous. Yeah. People who talk nonstop stop talking people's eyes who move all around. Stop. They focus. It's almost like somebody turned on the lights and they could see again. Or as my hypermobile client I told you about before, she said, Meg, I felt like you just gave me glasses I can see for the first time.

Right. This is awesome. Um, I think I love it so much because I'm big on motivation and what it takes, um, and. Expectancy of success, like thinking that success is possible is very hard. When you have a neurological condition, there's not a lot of people you see get better. So feeling that shift, oh my God, and I swear this neural work saved my life, upper quadrant stability and remapping it.

And yeah, I have to do drills for it almost every day. I mean, at this point it takes me five minutes and you know, I've been traveling, I haven't been doing it, and my brain fog. Um, my concussion symptoms are worse. I'm shorter tempered. Um, my memory is worse now. I'm not saying shoulder hurdle stability fixes all our mental health woes, but man, it's sure hard to work on those mental health things when the most mobile joint in your body is unstable in your brain is protecting you.

Also, the shoulder joint is like hanging. Our arms are always hanging. It's called open chain. Most people's upper body just hanging on their lower body. It's almost like I want your shoulder girl hanging up like we're like hanging on the wall Beautifully up there. Okay, number three, sensory integration of your head.

So find someone that will not just give you neck exercises, but be really specific about what your head exercises are doing for your proprioception, your visual and vestibular. I want them to also identify which system is the problem. Work on the other two. First. We always support before we challenge.

This is my big pet peeve on a lot of concussion based therapies. They're like, oh, it's her vestibular system. Let's just challenge the shit out of it. No, we wanna support first, then challenge. All right, so to rehash what we talked about today, your tongue position is important when we're talking about jaw health, right?

We only really think about our jaw and neck as those muscles get weak as we get older. But our jaw health is critical for eating, for talking. Our neck health is critical for moving around. And yes, as people get older, their neck muscles and their neck skin might change appearances, but by doing some jaw and tongue exercises and good cervical spine movement, I call them your neck abs.

We're all concerned with these abs down here. Your ab abs, I joke. You have eye abs, muscles that move your eyes. Muscles that move your cervical spine and muscles that move your lumbar spine. We gotta work our ab abs, our neck abs, and our eye abs. Okay. These are all critical excessive jaw mobility or no jaw mobility or clenching.

It's all a result of another issue. If your joy is clenching, probably when you're sleeping, you might be sleeping with hamburger mouth, mouth open. I do this. Maybe it's your head position. When you lay on your pillow, you might not have the cervical mobility to get in that position. Also, when we lay down, it's our body kind of relaxing.

Our brain might be going like, alert. Alert. We've got some issues up in here. So clenching your jaw could be giving safety and proprioceptive feedback to your brain. So these are all just things to think about. I have given you no answers, just more questions to think about. Come to think about it. Am I giving too much homework?

I don't know. Listen, when it comes to homework, if it helps, do it. If it doesn't, it wasn't good homework. So the last thing I wanted you to leave with tongue position matters. Job mobility matters. If you are hypermobile guys, make sure you have somebody who's looking at these things and noticing what happens to the rest of your body.

When you're doing tongue eye jaw, oftentimes your body has no clue where your head is in relation to your upper and lower body. And last but not least, we need solutions of things, what to do. So rather than challenging your jaw and biting and doing all stuff like that, support your jaw first. Think about getting your whole body to move.

See what happens when you're in your plank, when you're running on the treadmill, when you're doing your CrossFit class. Notice when you're doing things, when you want your spine to stabilize. See what your tongue is doing. Focus on tongue position, not pulling in your abs. Keep your tongue there. I guarantee your abs will fire when needed.

All right, so I hope you, I got you a bit more excited about your jaw. Maybe I'll be thinking about it a little more, supporting you a little more, and I look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode.