My name is Lori DuFour. I'm a physical therapist at Minnesota Head & Neck Pain Clinic. And first I'm going to go over some exercises that are helpful for both jaw pain and jaw relaxation. The first one is the relaxation exercise. Your tongue is going to be in the N position, just lightly on the roof of your mouth and your teeth apart and then we are going to use deep breathing which helps our muscles and ourselves just kind of let go and relax. And you can also use your hands as a tactile cue lightly on the side of your head. You are going to take a deep breath through your nose and as you exhale, you're just going to lightly bring your hands down the sides of your face and literally think a saggy, droopy jaw and getting these tight tense muscles to relax, okay. >> OK. >> The next exercise is a jaw stretch. Depending on how wide you can open, there's different levels that you can do this one. First would be one knuckle between your teeth, to prop your jaw open. Your teeth can lightly rest on your finger, but of course make sure you are not tensing or biting. You're trying to relax those muscles again. If that's too easy, you're going to do 2 fingertips. The next level, 2 knuckles. And last would be 3 fingertips. You would hold for 20 to 30 seconds, and you can do that one with a deep breath as well to again, help with the relaxation part of it. >> Okay. >> Okay. The third one is an exercise that's helpful for proper joint mechanics. And it can also be helpful for joint lubrication and joint inflammation. Again, your tongue is going to be in that end position and you're going to monitor how wide you open by feeling at your joints, right in front of your ear. You can open wide once just to feel that you're in the right spot, you're going to feel that joint kind of poke out at your fingers. Can you feel that? >> I can. >> Okay. Now you're going to put your tongue in the end position, and it's going to stay there even when you open. So it looks like this. But what I want you to watch for, and you can do this when in front of a mirror is that you're opening and closing straight and that you don't thrust your jaw forward when you open. So it's like your chin is kind of dropping back closer to your throat. Now what you're feeling for your finger, with your fingers, when you feel that joint start to poke out at your fingers that's your cue to stop, you're not going to open any further than that. And you think of your jaw as just kind of floating up and down, nice and relaxed. 5 to 10 repetitions is kind of a good guideline. >> Okay. >> 'Kay? The next set of exercises is going to be some neck stretches. And so, first we'll do, you want to be in a nice, good posture, neutral but relaxed. And then the first on you're just going to let your head fall forward. Try to think of your head as just kind of a dead weight, it's just kind of hanging there it allows your muscles to relax easier. And you want to be doing, you can do a few deep breaths in the 30 seconds that you hold it, okay. The next one, you're going to do side bending. Make sure you keep your shoulders down, so you're not letting your shoulders hike up and again, just thinking of your head as a dead weight just letting it fall to the side. Now with this one, you can fine tune it by doing also a little bit of rotation. So a little bit looking downward is going to localize it a little more up in here. Now you can do a gentle hand pulling if you don't feel enough of a stretch. You can pull just a bit. But I want to stress not over stretching because if you are going into a pain range with your stretches, you're not going to be able to relax and then we're defeating the purpose. >> Okay. >> Okay? The next one, I'm actually going to have you tuck your arm behind your back. And what that does is it just anchors down your shoulder and your shoulder blade, okay? And then you're going to turn your head and look down. And this one too, if you want to do a little bit of a gentle hand pressure, you can do so. >> I can really feel that. >> Can you? Good. Then we're going to get one stretch here for more of the front of your neck, called your scalenes. You're going to hold down your collarbone and your shoulder, and then you're going to tilt your head away from that side, and then you're going to look up and away from that. Hand side and that gets more in this area, okay? And the general rule for all of those is to hold for about 30 seconds. >> Okay. >> And to do with deep breathing, okay? >> Okay. [BLANK_AUDIO]