Today I realized that I tend to really hold my stress in my jaws while I’m meditating. I clench them, and that tension throws off my meditation. As I mentioned in the introduction view, the mouth is a very common place to hold this tension, and it’s important part of a good posture to make sure that’s not happening.
I did notice that this is worse when I have my eyes closed. If they’re open, for some reason, I tend not to clench my jaws as much, so I’ve started doing that to help.
We all hold our tension in different parts of our bodies – for some of us it may be our neck, shoulders, or back. But the jaw is also another place that one can hold tension. I had never realized before that I do this, but meditation has made it more clear to me that I do hold a lot of my stress and tension in my jaw. Becoming aware of the way I hold stress during meditation has also helped me become aware of it in my normal day-to-day life.
With that in mind, I’m going to work on trying to reduce the amount of stress I hold onto in my jaw!
