Are you struggling with a strength deficit or you keep getting injured? Well, it’s really important to address your shoulder stability and symmetry to be able to optimize your overall strength, performance, and movement longevity.
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What is stability?
Stability is defined as sequencing, timing, and coordination, also referred to as “motor control.” It is different from strength which is defined as how much force we can generate. The best way to improve stability is through isometric contractions that create fascial tensioning— tension around the joint. Think of our stabilizers as muscles that are close to the joint. If we’re referring to the shoulder specifically, the rotator cuff close to the joint.
What is symmetry?
The first thing to recognize is that we are asymmetrical beings because of all the placements of our organs. However, asymmetry in movement can be a predictor of injury. For example, if we can move our right shoulder in a certain range of motion and we are very limited on the left, that could be a huge predictor of injury. As you are working through a proper training program, you want to try to create symmetry. The exception to that rule is high level athletes, like golfers, who whose asymmetry can contribute to their peak performance. To do that, it’s great to do unilateral exercises to see how the right shoulder compares to the left shoulder and vice versa, for example.
4 ways to improve your shoulder stability and symmetry
Although there are many exercises that you could do as well as assessments, I would suggest these few exercises that I think can be very valuable in assessing as well as treating your shoulder symmetry and stability. Now, if any of these progressions are too hard for you, please do what feels appropriate.
Here are four ways to improve your shoulder stability and symmetry:
1. Kettlebell screwdriver
Start with a kettlebell hold. You want to think about packing the shoulder, bringing the shoulder blade down towards the ground and down towards your hips, maintaining that tension in the shoulder while you slowly rotate it in and out. From there, you can move towards a kettlebell arm bar.
For this, drive from the hips, while keeping the shoulder stable the whole time, moving into your arm bar position where you’re gazing up at the bell. Hold that position for 30 seconds to 1 minute and then come back to your start position while initiating the movement from the thoracic spine.
Based on animal flow, start from a beast position and drive the ground away and you reach one leg through. Then you can also move into a crab, maintaining strong shoulder integrity.
Lastly is the halo to bring it all together, integrating your core. From a tall kneeling or half kneeling position, while using a kettlebell, bringing it around the head while maintaining a strong foundation.
If these exercises were helpful, please make sure you give it a like, share it with a friend or family member who might need this, and of course, subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Movement Paradigm, for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
If you need help with your shoulder, please make sure you reach out. We can see you virtually or in person and would love the opportunity to help you on your journey.
Are you performing aggressive chin tucks due to your neck stiffness or neck pain with no results? Well, instead, try out this very simple and effective technique that works wonders.
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As a physical therapist for the past 12 years and being in the movement industry for my entire career, I’ve realized that chin tucks are prescribed so often, aggressively. As always, it is important to address root causes of why forward head posture is happening in the first place.
In our previous videos and blogs, I’ve gone into more depth about forward head posture, and we have to think beyond just the mechanics of it. Is there an airway restriction? Is there emotional and nervous system dysregulation that’s contributing to poor posture? Aside from that, we want to also think about what forward head posture is doing to our nervous system.
What forward head posture does to the nervous system
Poor forward head posture can affect our vagus nerve (and other cranial nerves) and create more dysregulation in our nervous system. It can compress some of our spinal nerves as well as our cranial nerves, which have very important functions.
With that said, we have to think beyond just chin tucks and respect the nervous system.
One of my favorite basic techniques, which is a myofascial technique, stimulates the vagus nerve. It can ultimately help bring us into a better mechanical position and begin to reinforce optimal mobility in the spine.
How to perform
To perform this exercise, think about where the vagus nerve exits right behind the ear. Take both hands and place them right behind the earlobe. Traction that tissue up in the direction of the ear.
Place your hand on the tissue, move the tissue over, tractioning it up very gently, and you will almost immediately or shortly thereafter feel a sense of relaxation that could come in the form of a sigh, a swallow, or a yawn — it could just feel like a simple sense of relaxation.
You should feel like you’re actually placing the neck in a more neutral position, creating a natural lengthening of the spine.
Once you assume that position, from there, move through a gentle range of motion — forward bending, backward bending, rotation, and even side bending. What that will do is give good feedback to the nervous system because you’re actually stimulating the receptors in the joints and signaling to the brain that this is a good position. This feels safe. This feels pain-free.
Begin to incorporate this exercise frequently throughout the day. It’s easy, only about a minute, and can be very effective.
Are you interested in seeing how we can help you with your neck pain, shoulder mobility, etc.? Schedule your 15-minute discovery session here: https://p.bttr.to/3qHXz8i
I hope this is helpful. If it was, please give it a like, share it, and subscribe to our Youtube Channel — The Movement Paradigm — for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
Not only is our foot our foundation for human movement, but it is also a powerful neuromuscular structure that gives our brain constant information. This happens through the skin on the bottom of the feet.
Here are seven different ways you can optimize your foot health that can be easily integrated into your daily life.
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What do you need to know about the foot
As I mentioned, from a biomechanical standpoint, we want to think of our foot as our foundation for human movement. If our foot is not stable and does not provide a stable foundation, the rest of your kinetic chain will be affected.
When we think of the foot from the neuromuscular standpoint, we want to think about the skin on the bottom of the foot. We have 104 different receptors, which are actually stimulated by different external stimuli: deep pressure, texture, skin stretch, and vibration.
The information coming in through the skin on the bottom of the feet via these receptors goes to the brain, even passing through the emotional center of our brain.
When we wear shoes and socks, we block this powerful information that’s coming into our nervous system. It is imperative that we focus on stimulating our feet to move, walk, balance, and live better.
7 of the best foot hacks
#1. Foot release
There are lots of different tools that you can use, including rad balls or a neuro ball by Naboso. Hold the ball under the specific points of the foot for approximately 20 to 30 seconds. You can do longer, ensuring there’s no pain. Allow the foot to naturally relax over the ball. This will stimulate some of the receptors in the bottom of the foot that respond to deep pressure and release tension in your feet.
An easy way to incorporate this into your life is to perform this while brushing your teeth or cooking. That way, you’re stimulating your feet, creating more mobility and elasticity, while simultaneously doing something else.
#2. Splay
Use splay in your feet. During the toe-off in your gait cycle, females toes should splay approximately three millimeters; for men, five millimeters. When we wear shoes that have a narrow toe box, it prevents proper splay. This affects the ability of the foot to create a rigid lever to be able to push off from. Ultimately, that’s how we transfer force.
Instead of wearing compressive shoes, which we’ll get into in just a moment, we want to think of trying to create space in forefoot. Try Naboso Splay 30 minutes each night, maybe while you’re relaxing or watching TV; that’s a great opportunity to incorporate this.
If you have a bunion, you’ll want to address that, too. You won’t fix the bunion by using a toe spacer, but you can use something like a bunion spacer between your first and second metatarsal to realign your first toe and bring it in a more neutral position for push-off in your gait cycle.
#3. Naboso insole
Naboso is an evidence-based technology that stimulates the small nerves on the bottom of the feet, specifically the Merkel disc. I highly recommend wearing the insoles for constant stimulation in your shoes.
There are different variations of Naboso insoles. There’s activation performance, neuro, and duo — all of them may be a little bit different based on your needs, but really powerful ways to stimulate your feet while wearing shoes.
#4. Varied surfaces
You can build a rock mat and stand on that while you’re getting ready in the morning. You can get river stones that are a little bit softer; you can also get little pebbles depending on your tolerance and work up a tolerance over time. Walking outside in the grass, on stones, and on different surfaces really allows you to adapt to different stimuli. You can also use Naboso technology mats.
Yoga mats, for example, decreases your balance and stability.
#5. Short foot
Train your feet! Instead of wearing shoes, socks, and orthotics and losing stability over time, you want to train your feet. That can start with slowly increasing your barefoot tolerance, stimulating the feet and allowing them to do what they are meant to do. We can also intentionally train them, which is called short foot.
As you’re performing this exercise, it really is about sequencing the foot to the core. It’s about connecting all of the fascia in the foot and the muscles in the foot all the way up to the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, and the hip stabilizers. It isn’t just simply a foot exercise, but it’s ultimately how we are stabilizing during dynamic movement.
To perform short foot, you start on one leg, and you can place your foot in a neutral position. You can begin with a kickstand, and from here, inhale through the nose, allowing your foot to relax. As you exhale, root the tips of your toes into the ground. This will lift the arch of the foot and the ball of the foot slightly as you perform this exercise.
Once you feel comfortable, then you move up onto one leg and perform the same. You perform approximately eight breaths before you move on.
#6. Footwear
Next is enhancing your natural foot function with proper footwear. Unfortunately, as I said, as it relates to our feet, we tend to block all this powerful information with shoes, socks, orthotics, and cushion.
The shoe should be able to twist just like the foot does. The foot has to spiral. The midsole should bend unless you have some type of forefoot pathology such as great toe arthritis or neuromas.
The more cushion we have, the more impact force we have coming in through our body because we are hitting the ground harder.
More cushion and more support is actually not good despite what the shoe industry tries to push for. You can SLOWLY transition to less supportive shoes as you do more intentional footwork. Ultimately, you want to get to a point where you are enhancing your natural foot function.
#7. Barefoot time
Lastly is increasing barefoot tolerance. If you’re somebody that wears shoes and socks at home all the time, you must go really slow. If you are already barefoot all the time, you’re off to a great start.
Start with about five minutes. Whether you are scared to go barefoot, or your podiatrist told you to never go barefoot, whatever the case may be, go very slowly while building tolerance and a sense of safety over time.
If it’s extremely fearful and scary for you, then you have to respect that. Start with one to two minutes at a time. Keeping all of these nerves stimulated is one of the keys to preventing falls as we age so that we can prevent any kind of major accident as we age.
I could go on and on about feet, but hopefully, these seven hacks were helpful.
If you are interested in learning more about your feet and what your foot needs, then please reach out to us. We are trained through EBFA Global as barefoot rehabilitation specialists.
I hope this is helpful. If it was, please give it a like, share it, and subscribe to our Youtube Channel — The Movement Paradigm — for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
No, peeing yourself by lifting heavy weights is not normal! There are numerous posts floating around social media that are making light of the fact that women (and men) performing heavy lifting are peeing themselves. This is purely information that we need more pelvic health education.
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We have three different layers of the pelvic floor which are part of the intrinsic stabilizing unit of our core. This system is based on pressure management.
At the top of our core, we have our diaphragm. As we inhale, the intra-abdominal pressure that’s built up from the diaphragm as it descends continues to move down to the pelvic floor. Initially, as we inhale, the pelvic floor relaxes. As we exhale, the pelvic floor is gently lifting (contracting). This is simply a normal function of our diaphragm and pelvic floor. It also involves our transverse abdominis, which is our natural weight belt. As we inhale, the transverse abdominis lengthen and eccentrically contract. As we exhale, we’re creating a corset as it contracts.
If there is an imbalance in the pressure management in the core at a basic level, then when going under heavy loads, the pelvic floor cannot support this amount of pressure.
3 Key Reasons Why You Have Dysfunctional Pelvic Floor During Lifting
There are three key reasons why you have dysfunction of the pelvic floor during lifting. If you can understand and appreciate the anatomy, then these are all going to make sense.
1. Shallow Breathing
We breathe about 25,000 times a day. If you are breathing from your neck and shoulders on a day-to-day basis, then this will create downward pressure on the pelvic floor.
Breathing from the neck and shoulders creates a reverse breathing pattern. When you inhale, everything is lifting, and as you exhale, the belly comes out. We have to be able to breathe optimally, which means as you inhale, you have 360 degrees of pressure in the abdomen, all the way down to the pelvic floor.
During exhalation, allow the abdomen to contract and bring the belly button towards the spine. Coordinating your breathing pattern during dynamic movements or heavy lifting is essential.
2. Breath Holding
When doing something like a heavy deadlift or squat, you are performing a Valsalva maneuver which can effectively increase intra-abdominal pressure and can help with spine stability and trunk rigidity.
If you have an over dominance of your outer core muscles (think six-pack muscles) and a lack of stability in our deep stabilizers, which are the diaphragm, pelvic floor, transverse abdominis, and the multifidi, then that can create significant downward pressure on the pelvic floor. That can cause dysfunction in our pelvic floor and result in urination during lifting.
3. Doming
This is also caused by instability in the deep core. The way that we would test this is to lie on your back, bring your knees up, and see what happens to your abdomen. Many times the abdomen will dome immediately. Sometimes that could be due to diastasis recti. It can simply be that there is poor intrinsic stabilization (deep core). If you’re trying to do heavy lifting without proper stabilization and coordination of intraabdominal pressure, then, unfortunately, it can result in a lot of pelvic floor dysfunction.
What can you do
One of your easiest takehomes from this is to begin working on breathing coordination with your deep core. As you breathe in through the nose, allow the abdomen to expand 360 degrees all the way down to the pelvic floor. As you exhale, you can focus on an active exhalation, pulling the belly button towards the spine.
This creates more of an abdominal brace. Work on the coordination, sequencing, and timing of all of these important muscles. Then begin to integrate that into dynamic movements. When you get into heavy lifting, you will need to learn how to maintain your pressure while you are doing a lift.
If you don’t have good coordination, to begin with, and you’re trying to manage pressure at a high level, it’s not going to work out so well. If you have been lifting for years, implement this newfound knowledge and awareness of your pelvic floor, diaphragm, and coordination among all of your deep core muscles.
I hope this is helpful. If it was, please give it a like, share it, and subscribe to our Youtube Channel — The Movement Paradigm — for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
Have you performed side planks but you felt like they were just way too hard? What’s important to recognize is there are many variations that you can do. The side plank is a wonderful exercise and it can be very challenging for many people.
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What you need to know about side planks
The important things to consider about a side plank are:
You want to have equal tension under the shoulder, side, and hip. It is a full-body tension exercise. Otherwise, you can put too much load on your shoulder.
It’s important to not drop the hips down, but rather stack your rib cage over your hips.
Make sure that you are breathing diaphragmatically in your plank.
Rather than holding for time, use your breath as your repetition. That way you will have optimal sequencing will be able to create optimal body tension and will know exactly when you need to stop.
Types of progressions you can do and how to perform them
As far as progressions, there are many.
Hands and knees: One of the first progressions for a side plank you can do is performing this from your hand and knees. You do want to make sure that you have equal pressure and tension underneath your shoulder, side, and hip.
Forearm and knees: To progress this, you can move down so you are more parallel to the ground. This requires more stability. You can extend the top leg as another alternative.
Full plank staggered: Then move into a full side plank with a staggered stance, with the top leg is in front of the other.
Full plank stacked: Then you can move into a stacked stance where the top leg is parallel with the bottom leg. From here you can do many variations like pulsing the hips or arm wraps.
Although there are many variations, you do want to make sure you have a strong foundation first.
Please make sure to check out all of our other vagus nerve hacks that can help you optimize your health and longevity. Make sure to give this a share and subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Movement Paradigm for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
Are you suffering from osteopenia or osteoporosis, and you’re unsure how you got here? It’s important to identify the root causes of osteoporosis which can be different for each person. However, there are some commonalities.
What we eat, our environment, toxin exposure, activities, and stress all play into how our body is building bone and breaking it down. It’s important to look at our modifiable lifestyle factors like sleep, nutrition, movement (or lack thereof), and also how we are digesting and absorbing food and getting the optimal amount of nutrients that we need for proper bone health. Now let’s dive into six potential causes of low bone density.
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6 causes of osteoporosis
1. Chronic Inflammation
Ninety percent of all chronic disease is linked to excessive or persistent inflammation, and osteoporosis is no different. For each person, different inflammatory drivers such as food, bugs, toxins, trauma, and hormones could affect your bone health.
2. Lack of Resistance Training and Weight-Bearing Exercises
This is one of the most important things to do, especially as you get older because we are going to develop sarcopenia, which is a loss of muscle mass. With the loss of muscle mass, we also lose bone density if we’re not stimulating our bones. We do this through resistance training and weight-bearing exercises. It’s important to make sure you continue that, if not increase it, as you get into your older years.
3. Heavy Metal Toxicity
We are exposed to heavy metals on a fairly regular basis. Lead happens to be a key driver in osteoporosis. It’s important to recognize that things such as protein powders and so on that aren’t third-party tested can include heavy metals like arsenic and lead. So, you want to make sure that you’re assessing those products and supplements to try to lessen the toxic burden.
Some of us can be much more sensitive to heavy metals than others because our ability to detoxify is unique. One person may have a very high toxic load and toxic burden that could affect their bone health, whereas another person may be unaffected.
4. Low Estrogen
As women are going through menopause, the production of estrogen shifts from the ovaries to their adrenal glands. This decrease in estrogen can significantly affect bone health. For some people, that may exacerbate their loss of bone density, and for some people, hormone replacement may be the best way to target low bone density, especially if they have osteopenia.
However, hormone replacement may not be appropriate for many people due to family histories, beliefs, philosophies, and so on. It’s important, though, either way, to recognize that it can be a key driver in your osteopenia or osteoporosis.
5. Gut Health
Things such as the leaky gut, celiac disease, and even non-celiac gluten sensitivity can go undiagnosed for many years, and all of these things can play such a huge role in bone health. Exploring your digestion, absorption, and elimination, as it relates to gut health, is a key thing that you want to explore if you have symptoms of chronic inflammation or if you have low bone density per DEXA scan.
6. Smoking
Smoking is one of the biggest drivers of low bone density, not to mention poor overall health. Please make sure that if you’re smoking that you consider getting the help that you need to be able to quit.
Hopefully, this overview gave you some food for thought about how to begin to address your low bone density.
Please make sure to check out all of our other vagus nerve hacks that can help you optimize your health and longevity. Make sure to give this a share and subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Movement Paradigm for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
Do you suffer from acid reflux, and you’re trying to figure out how to manage your condition? Many factors go into this, but today’s focus is on a visceral release for your gastroesophageal junction that may, in fact, help relieve your symptoms.
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It’s important to remember that when we are in a stressed state, we have blood flow that’s moving away from the digestive tract. To be able to digest optimally, we have to be in a parasympathetic state, i.e., rest and digest.
Stimulating the vagus nerve via the digestive tract by performing visceral releases can be a great way to manage and treat your condition.
The gastroesophageal junction connects the esophagus to the stomach. The esophagus, stomach, and the rest of the digestive tract are innervated by the vagus nerve. This junction itself regulates the food and fluid that is moving from the esophagus to the stomach. This is a very important function because this is one of the things that can contribute to acid reflux. From an anatomical perspective, the esophagus passes right through the diaphragm. As you’re performing the exercise, diaphragmatic breathing is very important before, during, and after to be able to calm the nervous system down and optimize esophageal mobility. If the diaphragm is restricted, then that means it could compress the esophagus as well.
To perform this technique:
To find the location, move down the sternum and under the xiphoid process. Perform this exercise lying down and while you gently press into the tissue. You might already feel some tenderness, which is quite common and normal.
Once you’ve assessed the tissue, then traction the tissue down and to your left towards the stomach. Once you’re there, perform your diaphragmatic breathing. As you inhale, you’re creating resistance against the tissue. As you exhale, move down and out while tractioning the tissue more. Perform this until you feel a release or until the tissue begins to feel more relaxed. You might also have another response in your nervous system, such as a sigh, swallow, or yawn. However, you will feel the tissue relax and feel not as tender. Those are all positive signs that you’re performing the technique properly.
Perform this in-between meals. You don’t want to do it immediately before or after a meal. You can perform this exercise right before bed or in the morning.
Make sure you speak to a medical provider if you are dealing with a chronic condition to make sure this is an appropriate technique for you. Always be gentle and intentional, and never aggressive.
Please make sure to check out all of our other vagus nerve hacks that can help you optimize your health and longevity. Make sure to give this a share and subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Movement Paradigm for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
Did you know that the brain and the gut develop from the same embryonic tissue which begins at the navel?
Navel massage is a foundation of many ancient practices and can be a great addition to your self-care practices as another way to regulate your nervous system.
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The Sib Sen Thai Massage
In Thai massage, they refer to the navel practice as Sib Sen — Sib for 10 and Sen for path. Ultimately, there are 72,000 different trajectories that are starting from the navel and expanding outward.
The Lower Dantian
In Japanese practice, right below the navel is considered the lower Dantian, the area we refer to as life, chi, and energy. The lower Dantian is also believed to be the foundation of breathing, posture, and awareness and can even control our emotions. This is thought to be a key area of digestion and metabolism, too. However, on a spiritual level, it gives us the strength and ability to transform, vitality, change and evolve.
So how can you perform these different techniques?
Assess your navel. This can tend towards being very sore at first.
How restricted or elastic does it feel?
Starting at the navel, pulling up towards the direction of your head. Pull down, side to side, and in a diagonal direction to see where the restrictions are.
Once you’ve done that, then you can begin to perform a basic navel massage. To do that, you can place your hands on the umbilicus and traction the skin over the tissue.
If you are experiencing SIBO, gut issues, have anxiety or depression, or if you are trying to restore your gut-brain connection, give this a try! We love combining Eastern and Western medicine. The fascinating aspects of ancient culture are so valuable in today’s world.
We are happy to help, so please reach out. We do virtual and in-person consultations, so we’d love the opportunity to help you on your journey. If this was helpful, give it a share and make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Movement Paradigm, for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
Reach out for a 15-minute FREE discovery session to see how we can help you on your journey.
Should you be doing crunches? This is definitely a controversial topic.
Let me first start with I was obsessed with the core starting from my early 20s. I was interested in how we could stabilize our spines properly while preventing low back pain and other injuries, while also generating as much force as possible. This led me to understand more about deep core stabilizers. They include your diaphragm, pelvic floor, transverse abdominis (your natural weight belt), psoas, and the multifidus. All of these have to work together as an integrated unit.
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Are crunches bad?
Well, we have to get out of bed in the morning. We have to be able to flex our spines. In order to perform a crunch, we have to recruit our global core muscles. In order to do that without eventually getting injured, it is necessary to stabilize first. Stability is defined as timing, sequencing, and coordination.
How do we reinforce this optimal stabilization before mobilization, i.e., a crunch?
How to perform crunches
1. Breathe
In order to have proper stabilization, we have to have optimal diaphragmatic breathing.
We need to inhale through our nose and breathe all the way down to the base of the core to allow this intra-abdominal pressure to build up 360 degrees. That allows our transverse abdominis, your natural weight belt, to expand and contract eccentrically. Your pelvic floor is lengthening when inhaling and as you exhale, the pelvic floor lifts, and the transverse abdominis contracts. The diaphragm goes back up to its resting position. It’s a beautiful rhythmical dance.
2. Prevent Doming
Doming can happen from the diastasis rectus, which is the separation of the fascial structure called the linea alba. That can happen from pregnancy or from poor stability over time. Many women and men can experience this.
Doming occurs when the abdomen pops out as you are doing some type of crunch or abdominal forward bending. If you feel that popping out, that means you have to reintegrate the breath and change the movement to make sure that you are stabilizing first.
3. Lift Up
Regardless of the type of crunch you are doing, you want to think of lifting up as opposed to just pulling your head forward. A lot of times we tend to yank on our neck, which actually just ends up being a neck exercise and not at all a core exercise. You want to seek optimal movement with proper fascial tensioning, rather than doming, breath-holding, or pulling on your neck.
Lastly, I just want to mention a couple of things that are indicators that the core is not stabilizing well. A hernia or a sports hernia, which is also called a core muscle injury, is a perfect example of too much demand on global muscles coupled with a lack of deep intrinsic stabilization. That leads to tearing of the tissue. Both need to be surgically repaired.
So to answer the question, are crunches bad?
It depends on how you’re doing them. If you can integrate some of the things that I spoke about today, you can actually change crunches and make sure that they’re appropriate for you. There’s always a gray area.
Need help? Reach out for a 15-minute FREE discovery session to see how we can help you on your journey.
If you experience jaw pain, you should know about its link to emotions. Poor vagal tone is linked to things like clenching and grinding.
When we have overstimulation of the trigeminal nerve from the masseter muscle, one of our main jaw muscles, we are in sympathetic nervous system (flight/flight) overdrive. Clenching or grinding your teeth at night or during a stressful situation is very common.
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Other Factors that Affect Jaw Pain
Poor tongue posture can also contribute to jaw pain. The tongue should be on the roof of the mouth and gently touches the back of the teeth in our resting tongue posture.
If we have dysfunctional breathing or breathing from the neck and shoulders, that creates a stress response. That can further drive dysfunction in the trigeminal nerve.
The trigeminal nerve innervates the muscles of the face, sinuses, and nasal cavity. It is one of the biggest nerves that we want to associate with our sympathetic nervous system, our fight or flight system. It is also deeply connected to the vagus nerve.
Our vagus nerve is 80% of our parasympathetic nervous system. These two nerves are bringing information to the brain and affect transmitters such as serotonin and noradrenaline, which are linked to neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety.
Ultimately, when we have dysfunction or miscommunication in these nerves, whether the sympathetic nervous system is increased or the parasympathetic nervous system is decreased, then this can contribute to jaw pain.
Most often, you’ll see clenching and grinding at night. Our reticular activating system is part of our brainstem and when we’re sleeping, our cerebrum is at rest and our reticular activating system is that alert system that is going to tell us if our child is crying. Think of it as our survival mechanism. So during sleep is often where we’ll start to see the sympathetic overdrive kick in.
Takehome Message
The take-home message is that there is truly a jaw-emotion link. If you’re suffering from TMJ, have your airway evaluated. It is important to make sure that there are no structural abnormalities that are contributing to it. However, you also want to dive into the emotional aspect of it. Explore your emotions, learn how to regulate your nervous system, try many of my vagus nerve hacks, speak to a professional. Find what works for you.
I hope this was helpful if it was please give it a share with your friends and family. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel The Movement Paradigm for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.
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