TMJ Treatment Berkeley, Treatment for TMJ in Berkeley, CA

TMJ Treatment Berkeley -- The kind of TMJ therapy you will get with Joshua Tucker, The Tendonitis Expert.

If you are suffering from TMJ symptoms, and you are looking for relief from the pain and tightness, I can certainly help with that.

If you want to work on curing TMJ, towards eliminating it entirely, that's more what I'm really interested in working with you on. In my book, if you want relief, you might as well work on a TMJ cure for yourself.

How Will We Do That?

TemporoMandibular Joint Disorder can be a complex issue. Or it can be a simple one. It really depends on each person, and where they're at in the Downward Spiral of increasing tightness and pain.

A lot of the work I do is with wrist tendonitis, elbow tendonitis, and shoulder issues. Carpal Tunnel and Tennis Elbow, from my perspective, are easy to deal with. Basically, just hit them with a hammer in the right places and everything falls back into place.

TMJ therapy from a massage therapist like me requires a very deft, patient, careful touch. The muscles around the jaw aren't fragile, but if you are very far along the TMJ dynamic, they are going to be very tender and potentially painful.

We are going to work all the muscles and structures of the jaw, that connect to the jaw, and associated neck, spinal, and skull muscles. We are going to work them gently in such a way that they will essentially turn from dry crunchy sponges into soft squishy sponges like they are supposed to be.

One of the main factors of TMJ is muscle tightness. The nervous system controls the tone of muscles.

The Nervous System and TMJ

The nervous system controls the muscles. One aspect of TMJ and the Pain Causing Dynamic that comes with it is that as muscles get tight, over time your nervous system resets those tight muscles as the new 'normal'.

So the muscle don't relax, because the nervous system feels that they are fine just where they are. Then the muscles get even tighter, and the nervous system resets them to 'normal' again.

So when you go to sleep at night, your jaw literally doesn't relax like you think it should, because it's normal and from the nervous system's point of view, doesn't need to relax.

The work we will do will start to reset muscle tone to a new normal. This is immediate, but does take some retraining until the nervous system figures it out.

Connective Tissue Shrink Wraps

The Tendonitis dynamic follows a very specific pattern. Part of the pattern has to do with connective tissue shrinking down.

When muscles are tight for long periods of time, the body naturally starts to shrink wrap the connective tissue down around the muscles.

The work we will do will open up that too tight connective tissue and allow the muscles some space to relax and expand into.

When people say their muscles are bound up, what they really mean is that you have saran wrap tightly wrapped around the muscle. The problem isn't really the muscle, it's the connective tissue that compresses everything down.

Emotional Aspects of TMJ

TMJ is caused by a variety of factors, some structural, some mental, some emotional. Any combination of factors can lead to TMJ symptoms.

The specific massage work that we will do may bring up some emotional charge. This can be due to old emotional trauma stored in the muscle. Sometimes muscle that has been painfully tight for too long, when massaged, releases what -feels- like an emotional charge.

It's time to get rid of TMJ

I'm ready to work with you when you are ready to start the process of getting rid of TMJ.

It is a process. I can do some specific work with you that will make a huge difference, and you will learn a lot of things you probably can't even imagine right now (and that's always fun).

Even more valuable than that, I will show you how to work on yourself to stop the Downward Spiral and help your body create an Upward Spiral of increasing relaxation and health in the ecology of the jaw.

The fact is, the self care you will do on a daily basis (at first) is crucial to healing TMJ. It really does require daily, repetitive self care to turn the TMJ dynamic around, and I don't think you want to hire me every day....

The good news is, it's only daily for a while. When the pain and tightness is gone, or close to it, then you can back off the self care and just use it to maintain a happy jaw.

I look forward to working with you.