There’s a viral video making the rounds in the past week. You may have seen the one: it features a well-known celebrity receiving “jaw release” from an energy healer. I’m not going to share it here or anywhere else, but in the video, the celebrity is physically held down by one provider, while another performs intraoral massage so aggressively that the celebrity sobs uncontrollably afterward.

If you have jaw-related symptoms or issues like clenching, headaches, facial pain, ear pressure, neck and/or shoulder stiffness, intraoral massage can help. If you’ve been thinking of trying intraoral massage and you’ve been put off by this video, I encourage you to talk to a provider and ask how they work. Because everyone I know personally and professionally who has been trained in intraoral massage, treats very differently to what’s shown in the video. We encourage communication with the patient to ensure everything we do feels gentle to them, and is tolerable by their nervous system. And most therapists will be only too happy to answer questions and allay any concerns you may have prior to starting treatment.

We want it to feel therapeutic, relevant, productive, and helpful. Never, ever painful. A reputable practitioner will never intentionally inflict pain to provoke a reaction like the one in that video.

In keeping with February’s theme of self-care, I’m including a recipe for a homemade sugar scrub. I have to use a hand scrub at least once a week. Yes, I said “have to”. For one thing, I’m a massage therapist, so I wash my hands about a hundred times a day and that’s only a very slight exaggeration. And for another thing, I live in Calgary, where the air is ridiculously dry. Those two little facts combine to create a recipe for really dry hands. So yeah, this hand scrub is self-care for me … but it’s also kind of for my clients. Because believe me: nobody wants a massage therapist whose hands feel like medium-grit sandpaper.