9 Bruxism Exercises to Help with Teeth Grinding & Clenching
Do you often grind your teeth at night or during the day? Doing teeth-grinding exercises is one way you might be able to get relief. Although performing jaw exercises for bruxism can help, wearing dental protection is often an even more effective solution. Fortunately, you don’t need to choose one or the other!
Teeth grinding, or bruxism is more common than many of us realize, and it can disrupt your lifestyle and health in subtle ways, gradually leading to more painful and permanent problems. Even if your grinding and clenching are mild, it’s best to start doing bruxism exercises and wearing a dental guard before the condition gets worse.
The biggest problem is that many people may not realize that they have a teeth-grinding problem until they notice symptoms. This is because many of us who struggle with the condition end up clenching or grinding our teeth unconsciously and involuntarily. Don’t ignore the warning signs!
In many ways, the constant teeth grinding may have become part of your muscle memory, right? That’s why you must reverse the process by retraining your jaw and facial muscles to ensure you don’t subconsciously grind or clench your teeth. Of course, that’s often easier said than done! That’s why also wearing a dental guard is so important.
Here are some bruxism exercises to incorporate into your daily and nightly routines.
1. Try Progressive Muscular Relaxation (PRM)
This is a series of teeth-grinding exercises you can try if you're experiencing bruxism due to stress. When we're under a lot of stress, our muscles can become very tense without us realizing it; this includes our face, neck, and shoulder muscles. Those tense muscles often lead to excessive jaw clenching and teeth grinding.
If this is something you’re experiencing, then PRM techniques are worth trying. You basically need to focus your attention on each muscle, tense it up, and slowly relax it. Repeat these bruxism exercises three times for each muscle, and then move on to the next. You can start from your toes and go all the way to your facial muscles.
2. Do The Tongue Exercise
This is one of the easiest jaw exercises for bruxism, and you can do it any time throughout the day—you might even start doing it unconsciously at some point. All you need to do is place your tongue on the roof of the mouth near your front teeth and hold the tongue in this position for a bit—kind of like you're saying "nnn.” Keep the tongue there for as long as you comfortably can, and then repeat the motion.
This bruxism exercise will help keep your jaws from clenching and should bring immediate results to your daytime teeth-grinding habits; for sleep bruxism, it may take longer to notice results.
3. Practice A Neutral Position for Your Tongue
Another thing you can do for your tongue and jaw muscles’ memory is to practice a neutral position for them so that you don't unconsciously grind or clench your jaw. This is another one of the easiest teeth-grinding exercises.
To do this, open your jaw slightly to bring it to a more relaxed state (make sure your lips are not apart) when performing this bruxism exercise. Next, touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue and take slow but deep breaths while staying in this position for as long as possible (a few minutes at least).
We highly suggest that you try doing this several times a day in order to retrain your jaw and tongue accordingly.
4. Relax Your Tongue
Once you’re done with the first two jaw exercises for bruxism, give your tongue a chance to lay back and relax—literally! This exercise involves moving your tongue toward the back of the mouth—as far back as it goes. Then, without changing the tongue’s position, slowly open your mouth wide and slowly close it. Complete a set of 20 bruxism exercises like this, and you should notice your tongue feeling a lot less tense.
5. Yawn Wide and Often
This is another super simple exercise that you can do any time you like. In fact, you're probably already doing this multiple times a day! Now, just start doing it more often and on purpose.
Yawning helps to stretch your jaw muscles, and when you’re doing it more consciously, you’ll notice how your face immediately feels less tense. So, we suggest you do a set of 8-10 yawns in a row. Consider doing this in the morning and at night—it’ll help you relax your muscles before bed and right after you wake up. Make your bruxism exercises part of your regular routine.
6. Give Your Jaw a Good Massage
Unlike other teeth-grinding exercises, this technique is more of a massage than an exercise, but it serves the same purpose, i.e., to keep you from teeth grinding and clenching. All you need to do is gently press your fingertips along the jaw muscles on both sides of your face. As you make small circles with your fingertips on the jaw joints, you'll notice the muscle knots gradually fading.
Pro Tip: Try this jaw massage while taking a shower with hot water—it’ll be very relaxing and effective with the hot water running down your face.
7. Do Some Shoulder Rolls
As you learn about bruxism exercises, it’s important to understand how all the muscles in our body are connected. Your jaw muscles aren't the only ones you need to worry about when it comes to teeth grinding—get your shoulder muscles involved, too!
Sit or stand straight, move your shoulders upward, and then continue by moving them backward; you’re basically completing a circular motion with the circles. You can repeat the circular motion until your shoulders feel completely relaxed. With more relaxed shoulders, you’re less likely to grind your teeth!
8. Move Your Neck (Chin Tucks)
Since your neck is directly connected to your face, you need to make sure it's relaxed as well. To perform these bruxism exercises, start by standing up or sitting up straight. Slowly look down, bringing your chin to your chest—count to 10 as you do this. Once your chin is at your chest, count another 10 seconds before slowly moving your head upward until your neck is at its usual spot. Repeat this motion until your neck feels relaxed.
Also, while you’re doing these teeth-grinding exercises, make sure your jaw and facial muscles are not too tense and your top and bottom teeth are apart.
9. Do A Mandible Stretch (With A Dynamic Twist!)
For this exercise, you're going to need to follow a whole 2-minute sequence, but it’s worth it—these bruxism exercises should help to loosen your jaw muscles significantly.
Start by opening your mouth as wide as possible before closing it. Next, move your lower jaw toward the right—go as far as possible (don’t touch the jaw!). Once you've reached the extreme right, release and go toward the left side.
Next, jut your chin toward the front as far as possible without moving your neck and head out of alignment. Then, forcefully bring the chin back toward your face as far as it can go. Repeat these jaw exercises for bruxism a few times.
Get Lasting Relief With a Custom Dental Guard
While these are greatly effective bruxism exercises that you can try every day, it's important to understand that teeth grinding can be triggered by stress or even other lifestyle factors, such as caffeine intake. What's truly important is to protect your teeth, facial muscles, and surrounding nerves from the damage bruxism may cause to them.
The most straightforward way to go about this is to invest in a custom-fitted dental guard. Because they’re customized to perfectly fit your dental structure and mouth shape, they fit better and offer more effective protection. You can take our quiz to determine the best thickness for your custom night guards—check it out!
Doing bruxism exercises is just one part of the equation. There’s no guarantee that teeth-grinding exercises will be effective, so it’s important to embrace other solutions that are backed by science and proven to work. Fortunately, we make buying a custom night guard an easy and affordable process.
Why choose us? Clear Comfort Night Guards is a team of professional dental technicians. Here at our dental lab in Los Angeles, we create the exact same dental guards sold by dentists but at a fraction of the price. Skip the line at the dentist’s office, save some money, and start getting the relief you deserve!
