If your jaw aches by mid afternoon, or you catch yourself with your teeth pressed together while you are just sitting at a desk, you already know the feeling this page is about. Some people notice it as a click when they yawn. Some notice it as a headache that starts at the temples and spreads. Some only find out because a dentist points at the wear on a back molar and asks whether things have been busy lately.
This page covers the exercises people are usually given, what clicking and posture have to do with it, and where our programs sit next to the rest of your care.
First, the boring but important bit
Jaw pain has a lot of possible causes. Some are structural, some are dental, some are inflammatory, and some are to do with tension you are holding without meaning to. Working out which one applies to you is a job for a dentist, a doctor or a physio, not for a website and not for us.
Everything on this page, the exercises and our programs both, is designed to sit alongside that care rather than take its place. If you have not had your jaw looked at, start there.
Some things are worth getting seen sooner rather than later. A jaw that locks open or shut. Pain that came on suddenly rather than building. Swelling. Pain in the ear you cannot account for. Numbness. None of that is a reason to panic, and all of it is a reason to book rather than read.
Six jaw exercises
These are the ones taught most often. Do them gently. If any of them hurts, stop, and check with your dentist or physio before you go further. None of this should be forced, and more repetitions is not better.
Resting the jaw
Let your teeth come apart slightly, rest your tongue behind your top front teeth, and let your lips stay closed. That is where a relaxed jaw sits. Most people are surprised how unfamiliar it feels the first time, which tells you something about how long it has been since it sat there. Hold it for a minute or two and come back to it during the day.
Controlled opening
Rest your tongue on the roof of your mouth and open your mouth slowly as far as it goes comfortably, then close just as slowly. Six to ten times. The point is the control, not the range. If the jaw deviates to one side as it opens, that is worth mentioning to whoever is treating you.
Chin tucks
Sit or stand tall and draw your chin straight back, as if making a double chin, without tipping your head. Hold a few seconds, release, ten times. This one is aimed at the neck rather than the jaw, and people who spend the day at a screen tend to feel it immediately.
Tongue up
Keep your tongue touching the roof of your mouth while you open and close your mouth slowly. It limits how far the joint travels and keeps the movement even.
Goldfish, partial opening
Put one finger on your chin and one on the joint just in front of your ear. Open your mouth halfway, then close. Six times, twice over.
Goldfish, full opening
Same finger placement, open fully rather than halfway. Six times, twice over.
Some people find these settle things within a couple of weeks. Others find they help while they are doing them and the tension returns afterwards. Both are normal, and the second group is usually the reason people start looking further.
What the clicking usually means
A click when you open or close is one of the most common reasons people first go looking. It is also one of the most misunderstood.
Plenty of jaws click without anything being wrong. A click on its own, with no pain, no locking and no change over time, is often just how that joint moves. What changes the picture is when the click comes with pain, when the jaw catches or locks, when the sound changes character, or when it is new and getting worse.
The click itself is not the thing to chase. If it bothers you, the question worth asking a dentist or physio is what is happening around it, not how to silence the noise.
Posture, and why your neck keeps coming up
If you have been sent down this road before, someone has probably mentioned your neck. Here is the honest version.
The jaw does not work in isolation. The muscles that move it connect into the neck and shoulders, and how you hold your head changes the load on all of it. People who spend their day looking down at a screen or a phone tend to hold their head further forward than it sits naturally, and that changes what the jaw muscles are doing to keep everything balanced.
What we would not tell you is that fixing your posture fixes your jaw. The relationship is real, and how much it matters varies a lot between people. A physio can tell you whether it is a significant part of your picture or a minor one. The chin tuck above is the exercise most often given for it.
TMJ or grinding, and why it matters which
These get talked about as one thing and they are not quite.
TMJ, or more precisely TMD, refers to problems with the joint itself and the muscles around it. Bruxism is grinding or clenching, which is a behaviour. They overlap often enough that people use the words interchangeably, but the distinction matters for what helps.
If the joint is the problem, that is a job for whoever is treating the joint. If the grinding is the problem, the joint may settle once the grinding does. Most people are somewhere in the middle. If grinding is the bigger part of your picture, our teeth grinding guide goes into it properly.
Guards, and what they are actually for
A night guard gets a lot of unfair criticism from people trying to sell you something else, so it is worth being straight about it.
A guard protects your teeth. That is what it is for and it does it well. Enamel does not grow back, and if you are grinding hard enough to wear it down, stopping that damage is genuinely worth doing on its own terms. Your dentist will fit one properly, which matters more than the material.
What a guard does not do is change the behaviour, because it was never designed to. That is a separate job and it does not make the guard less useful. Someone who is grinding usually needs both things, not a choice between them.
When the jaw is doing something you did not ask it to
There is a version of this problem where the jaw is not really the problem. The clenching happens while you are asleep, or while you are concentrating, or during a conversation you are not enjoying. You are not deciding to do it. That is what makes it hard to stop by deciding to stop.
Your dentist can protect the teeth from what the jaw is doing. A physio can work on the muscles and the movement. Neither of those is trying to change the habit itself, because that is a different job, and it is the one our programs are built for.
Where Cognitive Pattern Reprogramming fits
Cognitive Pattern Reprogramming is a set of guided audio programs. You listen, usually for fifteen to twenty minutes, and the sessions are designed to work with the automatic stress response that sits underneath habits like clenching. It is designed to help shift the pattern rather than to manage the pain directly.
It is not dental care and it is not physiotherapy. It does not replace either of them, and it is not the right first step if you have not had the jaw assessed.
What it looks like in practice: a session a day, fifteen to twenty minutes, wherever you have a quiet moment. It does not need to be at night and it does not need to be in bed. Most people run a program over several weeks rather than expecting anything from a single listen. Results vary from person to person, and some people find the format does not suit them.
Who made this
Rob Edmonds was nineteen and could not speak in front of a room. Not nervous, genuinely unable, and it was starting to cost him exams. He tried hypnotherapy because he had run out of other ideas, and a few sessions sorted it. It worked in a way that annoyed him slightly, because it should not have been that straightforward.
He went into business consultancy and finance first, where he watched capable people get held back by mindset far more often than by ability. Then he went and did it properly, training at the Institute of Applied Psychology in Sydney.
Cognitive Pattern Reprogramming came out of that. Short and practical rather than open ended. It is designed to help shift the response that is running now, instead of going back through what caused it.
He still sees clients one to one.
Reviewed by Rob Edmonds, who holds diplomas in Clinical Hypnosis and Strategic Psychotherapy and is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming Master Practitioner, and is a member of the International Strategic Psychotherapists Association and the Australian Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists. Creator of Cognitive Pattern Reprogramming and the MindShift Method, author of The MindShift Method: Cognitive Pattern Reprogramming. Rob practises in New South Wales, Australia.
Why bother now
Nothing about jaw tension gets dramatically worse next month, which is exactly why people carry it for years. The cost is not a crisis. It is another twelve months of waking up tight, another set of dental bills for wear, another summer of headaches you have stopped mentioning to anyone.
That is the thing worth weighing, rather than any urgency we could invent.
Frequently Asked Questions
They may help with the tension and the movement. They are not aimed at the habit itself, and for some people the clenching continues regardless. If that is you, it is worth looking at what is driving it.
Often not. A click on its own, that is not changing and not painful, is common. Mention it at your next dental appointment rather than making a special trip.
That is a question for your dentist, and the answer is usually yes. Nothing we do changes what a guard is for.
Cognitive Pattern Reprogramming draws on Rob's training in clinical hypnosis, strategic psychotherapy and NLP. In practice it is guided audio you listen to. You stay aware the whole time.
More women than men seek treatment for it, and that much is consistent across the research. Why is less settled, and you will find confident explanations online that the evidence does not really support. If you want a view on your own situation, ask your dentist or GP rather than taking a website's word for it.
Check with your doctor first. We are not in a position to tell you it is suitable for you.
The trial is one full session, free for seven nights, with no credit card. That is enough to know whether the format works for you. After that it is $29.95 a month, cancel any time.