Face Facts, Don’t Take it on the Chin

Have you ever been hit in the face? Can’t remember your last bar room brawl? Maybe you can recall getting hit in the face playing defense in soccer or being tackled in a “friendly” game of backyard football or catching a rogue baseball with your mouth, chipping a tooth. Or perhaps you’ve slipped and banged your head on the black ice covering the walkway. Or while laughing and talking, you missed your chair slamming your chin hard on the counter on your way down. Or maybe you remember the time a sibling whacked you with their tennis racket while practicing their backhand or that time your face got too friendly with the dashboard while your new teen driver was practicing their driving. All these examples are scenarios that can result in significant face tension.  

Whether you get hit in the face indirectly from a fall or from a direct hit, your face holds tension from that hit and stays with you until it’s resolved. Impacts to the face cause compression; both within the bone and where the bones come together. Naturally, the harder the hit, the greater the compression. If the compression happens within the bone, it’s called intraosseous tension (“inside bone”), whereas if it happens between two bones, it’s called interosseous tension (“between bone”).  

When scenarios occur like the above examples, it’s easy to assume that once we’ve recovered from the impact or the pain, we’re fine. However, that’s not true; these compressions stay with you. Each time an incident occurs the body compensates for it and the pain goes away and the body continues to compensate until it reaches a threshold, manifesting months, years, even decades later as inexplicable pain. I have seen it manifest as nagging neck or upper shoulder pain, headaches, back pain, lower back pain, and knee issues to name but a few. I have even helped to remedy post-surgery swelling in the lower legs caused in part by unresolved compressions in the face. 

 It is possible to treat and release this tension caused by compressions. In fact, I am able to identify such tensions in the face, mouth or head and provide techniques to ‘unwind’ and decompress the tissue allowing for a resolution.  

Taking it on the chin should never be literal, the fact is relief is within reach.