And welcome to your jaw release,
Tension release meditation.
We're going to use some light exercise,
Some self massage techniques,
And of course pair that with our breathing to release anything that we've been holding up in the jaw,
In the neck,
In the head,
In the face.
And just let it go for the day.
Take a seat,
Upright but soft.
Allow your belly to expand with an inhale and soften with an exhale.
Just repeat this,
Inhale and exhale.
Just continuing this breath.
I want you to start rolling your neck gently from side to side.
Looking down,
Letting it rock with the weight of your head.
Do the work for you.
Just want you to keep your shoulders down and back.
Next what I want you to do is to look up towards the ceiling.
As far as you can go,
Keeping your shoulders down and back.
Sitting upright so you can look a little further.
And I want you to think of drawing your shoulders down towards the floor.
With this you should feel a lovely stretch through the front of your neck,
Into the bottom of your jaw,
Maybe even the front of your chest.
And just breathe here in nice big breaths.
And on your next exhale,
I want you to come back to center,
Just sitting upright and relaxed,
Continuing your breath.
Next what I want you to do is place your fingertips towards the middle of your chest,
Elbows out in front of you,
And caving in the front of your chest and really rounding out the back.
Tuck the chin in and just make the front of you as small as possible.
On your inhale,
I want you to send your arms open and wide,
Pushing your chest forward and looking up towards the sky.
It's really expanding the front of the body,
Squeezing the back of the shoulders.
And again,
Fingertips towards your chest,
Elbows up and forward,
Chin tucks in and really rounding through the back.
And opposite,
Push the chest forward,
Open up the arms,
Squeeze the shoulders and look high up into the sky.
I just want you to repeat this two more times,
Nice and slow with your breath.
Really try to reach to each extreme.
And after your last one,
I just want you to come to an upright position again,
Regulating your breath in through the nose,
Out through the mouth.
In through the nose and out through the mouth.
Let the belly rise and expand and then simply let it go soft.
With each breath,
Your body releasing any tension that you're holding,
Letting go of any of the stress of the day,
Of the week.
And next,
What I want you to do is with your right hand,
Use your fingertips of your fingers to find the left corner of your jaw,
Reaching across your neck,
Pressing in with your fingertips nice and flat.
And I just want you to press along the side of your neck down towards your collarbone.
And as you do this,
I want you to turn your head,
Bend it to the side,
Away from your left shoulder as you end at the collarbone with your fingertips.
Back up to the edge of the jaw,
Applying a bit of pressure and slowly massaging down the side of your neck.
Again,
Tilting your head towards the right.
Just noticing where you feel tension along your neck.
And gently yet firmly massaging it out,
Letting any of that stress dissipate,
Flowing into your shoulder and your back for the rest of your body to disperse it as it may.
Good.
And I want you to repeat with the same thing on the other side.
So using your left fingertips at the bottom corner of your right jaw and gently but firmly pressing into the side of the neck,
Down towards the collarbone,
Bending your head over to the left,
Just really opening up that side as you massage anything out in your neck.
Noticing where you feel the tension,
Just pushing it out.
One more.
And then just go back to doing a nice,
Soft neck roll,
Just stretching out those areas that we just worked.
Again,
Letting the gravity take your head from left to right.
Coming back to your relaxed,
Upright position,
I want you to look up again towards the ceiling or the sky.
And I want you to tilt your head from left to right slowly,
As if you're gazing at the stars.
Just really sending your head back.
Again,
You should feel a stretch to the front of your neck,
Through the side of your neck as you rotate.
You may even hear some clicks in the neck.
That's all right.
We're just getting everything moving.
Just work with your breath.
Go nice and slow.
Keep your shoulders down and back.
Now coming back to center in your seated position,
I want you to use your thumbs to reach behind your ears,
Towards the back of your neck,
Right where your neck meets your skull.
And I want you to use your thumbs to just do firm circles in that area.
You can move around a bit.
Coming out to the sides towards your ears,
Moving yourself back to the center until your thumbs touch at the back of your head.
Again,
Just finding any areas of tension,
Giving them a little extra love.
This is a very common space that,
When there's a lot of tension built up,
Can really give people headaches.
So we just want to let that go.
Probably be quite tender and that's all right.
Just manage your pressure and maintain your breath.
Good.
And then coming away from the back of the head,
We're going to work on the jaw.
So I want you to create little hooks with your index finger and I want you to put them just below your bottom lip,
Cupping your chin,
The pads of your thumbs underneath your chin.
And I just want you to move from the center along your jawline up towards your ears,
Giving yourself a little bit of pressure with both the sides of your fingers and the pads of your thumb,
Just cradling the bone of your jaw.
A lot of muscles that we use in this area to speak,
To eat.
And a lot of us tend to hold tension here when we're stressed or if we clench our teeth at night.
We're just letting that go.
Maintaining your breath throughout,
Keeping your shoulders relaxed,
Keeping your brows soft.
And then we're going to move on to the sides of our jaw.
So again,
Finding that bottom corner down by your ears of your jaw and pressing on the face.
I just want you to press on those areas with your fingertips.
You should feel a bit of muscle there.
It might even feel quite tender.
Again,
Just manage your tension,
Your pressure,
Your breath.
And with this,
I want to make sure that you're not clenching your teeth,
That your tongue is resting softly at the top of your mouth.
Your teeth are slightly apart.
I'm just moving a little bit forward towards the mouth.
Again,
You can do circular motions.
You can go from the bottom of the jaw up towards your cheekbone.
You can go back closer to the ears.
And on the next one,
I want you to use the pads of your thumbs and I want you to place them right beside your nose so your fingertips are up towards the ceiling,
Your thumbs are facing down just beside your nostrils.
And I want you to use again a gentle but firm pressure and just follow the contour of your cheekbones out towards the sides of your face and towards your ears,
Just maintaining that pressure.
And then coming back to the center along your nostrils,
Following the round contours of your cheekbones,
Pressing up a bit,
Ending up the temples.
Do this a couple more times,
Breathing.
Next I want you to use your two middle fingers,
So your middle finger and your ring finger.
And I want you to gently place them between your brows,
Just pressing in a bit into that space between your brows where we tend to furrow and just going in a rainbow motion up and around your eyebrows,
Just maintaining that pressure and out towards the temples.
The temples a bit of a press and back to center.
So right between the eyebrows with some pressure,
Up and around the eyebrows,
Ending at the temples with a little extra press.
And again,
To the center,
Up and around,
Press of the temples and just really think of that tension letting go from the forehead.
Mentally think about ironing out any of those patterns of tension,
Those wrinkles,
Those signs of a life well lived.
Just think of them letting go for a moment,
Not holding on to all the memories,
All the past,
All the stress of the day as you massage up and out.
And this last one when you end at your temples,
Just give them gentle circular motions at the temples.
And then I just want you to bring your fingertips towards your scalp.
Again,
Working in circular motions all throughout,
Starting from your forehead,
Around your ears,
The back of the skull,
The nape of your neck,
Just really massaging out that scalp.
It also holds a lot of tension,
Connects the muscles from the front of your face to the back of your head.
So we're just releasing that bridge between the two.
And once you feel good there,
I want you to come back to seated.
And lastly,
We're just going to work through the mouth.
Again,
We use this so often with speaking and eating.
And anytime we express ourselves,
Every time we smile,
We laugh,
We frown,
It's at work.
So what you're going to do is you're going to use your thumb and your index finger to pinch around your lips and kind of pull them away from the face a little bit.
Starting at the center,
Moving out towards the right,
Letting go,
Grabbing through the center again,
Moving yourself to the left at the edge of the mouth,
And let it go.
Grabbing through the center of the mouth again and separating your fingers as you kind of give your lips a little bit of a pull until you meet the corners of your mouth and letting go.
Doing any which one of these you want to continue,
Whether it's going left to right,
From center to the outside,
Whatever you feel.
Again,
Checking in that our shoulders are away from our ears,
Our brows are no longer furrowed,
And that we're taking nice deep calming breaths,
Just being here in the moment.
Before we finish off,
We're going to do a little bit of a strengthening exercise again,
Just to reprogram the jaw into choosing tension when we decide.
We are not idling with tension,
So to speak.
You're going to place a fist,
The flat part of your fist,
Underneath your chin.
Then what I want you to do is to give yourself pressure up as if you are closing the jaw.
What I want you to do is press the jaw down into your fist,
So you're creating this counter effect of pressure.
I just want you to hold that for five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
One.
You might feel the need to move your jaw around,
Stretch it out,
Give it a bit of a massage.
That's okay.
We're going to do this two more times,
So placing your fist underneath your chin,
Pressing up,
And your jaw pressing down into your fist for five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
And one.
Nice deep breath.
Make sure the tension isn't being held anywhere else in your body.
For our final one,
Again with the fist underneath the chin,
Chin pressing down into the fist for five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
And one.
Just coming back to your seated position,
Upright,
Checking in with how we feel.
Taking nice deep breaths,
Expanding the belly,
Letting it go softly.
I just want you to check in.
Give your shoulders a little bit of a roll,
A soft,
Gentle,
Slow roll.
Up,
Down,
And back.
Up,
Down,
And back.
Slowly making bigger circles.
We're just getting everything moving.
I want you to hold your shoulders up towards your ears,
And I want you to squeeze for three,
Two,
One.
Let it fall.
I'm going to do this again.
Shoulders up towards the ears,
And squeeze,
Squeeze,
Squeeze,
Three,
Two,
One,
And let them fall.
Lastly,
One more time.
Squeeze the shoulders up.
Squeeze nice and tight.
Three,
Two,
One,
And drop them down.
Again,
Rolling them around a bit.
Just getting everything moving.
And coming back to our breath as we just rest softly in our seat.
Present here,
Noticing what we feel in the body,
In the shoulders,
In the neck,
In the jaw,
Around the eyes,
In the scalp.
Maybe it's a soft tingling as the oxygen innervates all those areas.
Maybe it's a softness from everything we've just let go.
Maybe there's even still a little bit of heaviness from things that are still there,
And that's okay too.
Now we're just going to close out with some deep breaths.
I just want you to expand the belly,
Breathing in through the nose,
Nice deep breath,
And nice and loud out the mouth.
Let it all go.
And a couple more like this.
Nice big breath through the nose,
Expand the belly,
Expand the chest,
And a big sigh out the mouth.
Just let everything go.
Another inhale,
Followed by the exhale.
One last one.
Inhale.
And with your exhale,
Just let go all of the tension.
Everything that you were holding onto,
Which is no longer in your body,
Just let it go.
Just come back to a normal,
Comfortable breath.
And whether you wish to stay in this breath for a couple moments longer,
Go back to any areas of tension and just give yourself a little bit of self-love,
A little self-massage,
A little stretch,
Whatever you need.
You can do that too.
And if you find you're ready to continue on in your day at this moment,
Then just thank yourself for coming here,
For taking the time,
For being mindful in your body,
For releasing whatever you've been holding in your body.
And just remember that feeling as you continue through your day or as you fall asleep.
Just remember what it's like to not hold that tension in your jaw,
In your neck,
In your shoulders.
You can come back to this practice any time you need to.
You can use these techniques any time you need to.
And when you're ready,
You can close out your practice however you wish.
