That viral intraoral massage video

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.

As a massage therapist trained in intraoral massage, this video was incredibly disturbing for me to see. It’s awful. It’s upsetting. I felt sick to my stomach watching it.

This is not how intraoral massage should look.

Let me be clear: this is NOT what intraoral massage should look like. Intraoral massage done correctly—done with consideration for the patient and their nervous system—should work WITH a patient’s nervous system and pain tolerance. In other words, it should feel relevant, therapeutic, helpful, and productive. It should NEVER be painful. It should NEVER put a patient into agony. It should NEVER leave them sobbing from the pain.

I wrote a lot of those words in upper-case letters, because I have a lot of big feelings about this video. And none of them are positive.

I have so many concerns about the repercussions from this video.

I worry that people who see this video and are suffering from issues that could be improved with intraoral massage will not seek treatment, fearing that it looks too painful.

I worry that massage therapists who see this video and have been considering getting training in intraoral massage, will decide against getting training, because they think all intraoral massage is intended to produce this type of reaction and they are wary of inflicting pain on their patients.

The other side of that particular concern is this: when I’ve seen the video shared in massage therapist groups on social media, I’ve seen some practitioners comment along the lines of, “I want to learn to do that!”

Excuse me, WHAT? You want to intentionally inflict pain on your patients? Gross.

Intraoral massage can help with many issues. And it should not hurt.

Let me say this again, loud and clear: what we can see in this video is not what intraoral massage should look like. In fact, no massage “treatment” should ever look anything like this. This was abuse. Those practitioners abused that patient.

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 reputable 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.