Review by Nadezhda Loginovich, Minsk 01/23/2019

I realized something was wrong with my jaw closer to the end of February, coinciding with a period when I was following a raw food diet. My emotions were running high, but I couldn’t understand their source or what to do about them. I had worked on my jaw during somatic lessons before, under the guidance of a trainer (in the “Myth of Aging” course), but never with a specific focus.

The tension in my clenched teeth caused intense neck pain, making it impossible to turn my head properly or lie on my stomach to do exercises for my back.

In early March, I attended my first face seminar and had a personal clinical somatics consultation. Together with the specialist, we discovered that my jaw was holding an incredible amount of tension—so much that my mouth could barely open. During the session, I felt how this tension radiated to my temples, the back of my head, and further down my back, extending even to my hips and heels. I realized that my entire posterior chain was being held by my jaw, even though I wasn’t physically clenching my teeth or grinding them at night. I was still unsure of how to address this.

Later in March, I participated in a professional clinical somatics training module where we focused on the “green light” reflex, working specifically on the back. I experienced painful (even tear-inducing) sensations in my right shoulder and left leg (gluteal area). During a clinical session on the back, my body behaved in strange, inexplicable ways both during and after the session.

Something shifted inside me, but the pain in my shoulder blade and sciatic region would come and go. My jaw tension persisted despite my attempts to control it. For 3–4 months, I sporadically worked on my jaw, but my main focus was my back because that was where I felt pain—my jaw didn’t hurt.

In July, during Katya’s face seminar, we worked on the jaw (the lesson lasted only 20 minutes, though it felt much longer). As we focused on the jaw, I felt a strange expansion and an unease in my sternum—a sensation that grew and couldn’t be ignored. I didn’t recognize the feeling or emotion, but I could sense its impact. Strangely, I couldn’t even name it. Even when I ran outside and paced around the neighborhood, I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Something deep inside me was rising, demanding release, but words failed me.

I couldn’t fully understand the emotion even when I voiced a readiness to lash out. I recognized it as some form of aggression, but I couldn’t explain why it surfaced at that moment, especially when I was in the safest, most comfortable environment—a training surrounded by people I liked.

After experiencing restlessness and a wave of aggression, I regressed into a state of helplessness, like a child. I wanted to cry, to complain, to be held. I craved warmth, love, safety—from someone big and strong who would protect and care for me.

How deeply I had buried this part of myself. It became clear that I needed external protection because I hadn’t allowed myself to defend or express my anger.

As a child, my father expressed anger, rage, and shouting—directed at me and other family members. I don’t recall tenderness from him, though he wasn’t a tyrant or despot, just a person with a fiery temperament. Looking back, I understand that he loved us in his own way—my mother always told me so. But as a child, I didn’t feel love; I felt aggression. I learned to lie, evade, endure, hide my hatred silently, never cry in front of others, stay invisible, quiet, obedient, and spend a lot of time alone. I developed a steely will and distrusted men of his type.

I believe this is when I learned to clench my jaw—to smile when I wanted to cry, to stay silent when I wanted to lash out. I felt helpless on one hand and strong on the other.

After my father passed away during my youth, my relationship with him remained frozen in that childhood state. As an adult, I’ve worked on healing this relationship within myself through various methods over many years, with partial success. Not long ago, I worked on this trauma with a kinesiologist, even pointing to my jaw as the physical location of something unresolved. But I still didn’t fully understand the connection.

The night between the first and second days of Katya’s seminar, my psyche plunged me into a vivid dream of my everyday life—work, colleagues, subordinates. In the dream, I was screaming at them, unleashing all my inner tension, nitpicking every detail with an anger that mirrored my father’s. It felt completely out of character, even in the dream. My observing self was astonished, while a strange fire burned within me. I needed to release it through shouting; otherwise, it felt like it would consume me from the inside.

In the dream, a close friend of mine appeared—someone I deeply admire and learn from in real life. She seemed able to see past my mask of anger, hysteria, and aggression. She asked me softly, “What’s wrong? Why are you shouting?” I yelled back, “Do I have to be good all the time? Can’t I ever be angry? Don’t I have the right to be bad?”

As I kept shouting, I broke down into sobs, softening with each word.

I woke up abruptly, realizing—finally—the puzzle had come together. This was my anger, the one I couldn’t access the day before when Katya asked us to find it. I now knew where it was stored: in my jaw.

This was my father’s anger—his rage. It was the anger I had always feared. It had etched a mask of fear onto my face, as one of the seminar participants had pointed out. Fear of power, rage, fire, and fury. Fear of my own defenselessness. As a child, it had hurt so much that I vowed never to express it. And I wasn’t allowed to be angry at my mother or father. After my father’s death, this story lodged deep within me, where the little girl blamed herself for not loving her father the way a “good girl” should.

I realized after the dream and its intense scenes that I had learned how to express anger. How to separate the emotion from its destructive potential. How not to suppress this fire within me but also not to aim it at others undeservedly.

I’ve discovered how to channel my tension differently, knowing firmly that feeling angry doesn’t mean I’m unlovable.

I’ve allowed myself the right to be angry, to use anger sparingly when necessary. To see situations clearly and decide whether anger or a firm, direct response is needed.

Anger, I’ve learned, is not the same as rage. They’re different. Rage is purer but more destructive to others. Perhaps I’ll reach the point of processing rage someday. For now, I’m learning to bare my teeth and express anger.

I feel lighter and happier with this realization.

I’ve found my anger. And the key to it was in my jaw.