11/16/2025
Something to try
Close your teeth right now. Which side hits first?
If you feel more pressure on one side, your spine is compensating at this exact moment.
Here’s the cascade destroying your posture work:
The jaw drags your skull off-center. When your bite lands harder on one side, your jaw pulls your entire skull with it. Your head tilts. One ear drops. Your neck muscles grip all day just to keep your eyes level.
The crooked head forces your spine to bend. Your brain won’t let you walk around tilted, so it bends and rotates your spine. One shoulder climbs. Ribs twist. That one-sided tightness you keep foam rolling but can never fix.
The twisted spine makes your pelvis and feet compensate. To stop you from falling, your pelvis shifts and one hip hikes while more weight drops into one foot. The leg that feels shorter. The knee that always hurts more.
And the jaw keeps the entire chain stuck. As long as your bite stays asymmetric, your nervous system keeps rebuilding this pattern from skull to feet. You can stretch your neck and strengthen your core all you want. Your body will snap back to this jaw-driven compensation by evening.
This is why your posture work never holds.
A 2025 study analyzing 83 studies confirmed it: the trigeminocervical nucleus creates bidirectional pain referral between jaw and neck. They’re hardwired in your brainstem. Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between the two.
When jaw mechanics are off, your neck muscles stay tight not because they’re weak but because your brain thinks they need to stabilize a faulty jaw.
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Which side hits first?
