A peaceful morning. A night when the rain plays its quiet music. The hour of sorrow. The hour of joy.
Through all of these, we do not forget to eat.
It may be one of the small, daily gifts given to us — that, whatever life is asking of us, we are also asked, three times a day, to sit and to taste.
Today, let us pause for a moment, at the thing we do without thinking.
A question, as small and as quiet as the ones we have asked before.
When you eat, which side of your mouth are you chewing on?
The right? The left? Both, evenly?
Most of us, asked this for the first time, are not sure. We notice, only then, that we have been favouring one side for as long as we can remember. The mouth, like the rest of the body, has been quietly making this choice for years.
And — perhaps more importantly — if you are reading this with a child in your life:
when your child eats, which side do they chew on?
The body is still being built, in a child. The choices it makes now will be the structure it carries for the rest of a life.
The act of chewing is more architectural than it appears.
When you eat on one side — say, the left — the muscles of the left jaw work, again and again. The masseter, the great muscle along the side of the cheek, grows quietly stronger on that side. The temporalis, the broad fan of muscle at the temple, does the same. The right side, doing less, gradually softens. Over years, the two sides of the face come to differ in shape, in tone, in the quiet architecture beneath the skin.
This much is visible in the mirror. The next part is not.
Inside each jaw joint sits a small, soft disc — a quiet structure designed to glide smoothly as the jaw opens and closes. When the chewing falls habitually to one side, the two joints are no longer asked to share the work evenly. The disc on the favoured side endures more compression. The disc on the other side, less used, may begin to drift from its proper position. In time, the joint clicks. The jaw catches. The mouth no longer opens as freely as it once did.
But the jaw is not where this story ends.
The jaw is held by the skull. The skull rests upon the very top of the spine — upon two small, precise joints just beneath it, where the head meets the neck. When the jaw's two sides are pulling unequally, the skull is pulled unequally too. The small joints at the top of the neck, which are extraordinarily sensitive, begin to bear an uneven load. The muscles in the back of the neck and at the base of the skull — small, deep muscles, no larger than a fingertip — tighten on one side more than the other.
From here, the consequences spread quietly outward.
The shoulders begin to feel stiff, without obvious cause. Headaches appear, often at the temples or behind the eyes. Some hear a faint ringing in the ears, or feel an unsteadiness that comes and goes. Some find that sleep grows shallower — for the small muscles beneath the skull, when held in tension all day, do not release at night. The body that should be settling into rest is, instead, holding a quiet brace, in the dark.
And yet, on the surface, the story may seem to be only this: she chews on the left.
There is one more thing to say here, because it is rarely said.
"Try chewing on the other side."
It is the most common piece of advice given for this. And it is, of course, good advice — as far as it goes. But it does not always work, and it is important to understand why.
By the time the habit of one-sided chewing has lasted for years, the structure of the mouth has already adapted. The muscles on the unused side have weakened. The joint on that side may have lost some of its smooth movement. The teeth themselves may have settled into a bite that simply does not work well on the other side.
To switch sides, suddenly, can feel awkward, even uncomfortable. The body resists. The person tries for a few days, and gives up.
What is often needed first is not the intention to chew on the other side, but the structure that allows the other side to be chewed on at all. The jaw must be released. The bite must be checked. The muscles must be coaxed back toward something resembling balance. Only then does the simple instruction — "chew on the other side" — become an instruction the body can actually follow.
Intention without structure is a wish. Structure without intention is a tool no one uses. Both are needed.
The Eastern view of the body holds, at its centre, an organ-system that the West does not quite have a word for. It is called the spleen-stomach — but the translation flattens it. In Chinese and Japanese medicine, the spleen-stomach is not merely two organs; it is the great central engine of the body, the place where everything we take in is transformed into everything we are.
It has another name in this tradition. The root of what comes after. That is, the root of everything you have built since you were born — your blood, your breath, your strength, your warmth, your steadiness. Whatever your parents gave you at birth, the spleen-stomach is what has been keeping you alive every day since.
And the spleen-stomach's first task — its very first task, in every meal you have ever eaten — is chewing.
This is why the older tradition takes chewing far more seriously than the modern world does. To chew well is not a small thing. It is the opening note of the great work of nourishment. If the opening note is uneven — if half the mouth does the work while half rests — then everything downstream of it, in the long quiet process of becoming a body, is built upon an unevenness.
There is a piece of old advice in this tradition: chew each mouthful thirty times. It sounds quaint, perhaps; but its purpose is precise. It is not about digestion alone. It is about asking the entire spleen-stomach system to wake fully into its work, evenly, on both sides, before sending what you have eaten down into the depths of you.
A meal eaten well — slowly, evenly, with both sides of the mouth — is, in this old language, not a small daily act. It is a quiet, daily form of medicine.
Some time ago, a high-school girl was brought to my practice by her mother. She was perhaps fifteen, sixteen. The complaint was urgent in its simplicity: her jaw had become so painful that she could no longer open her mouth.
It had begun only three days before.
I asked her, gently, to try to open her mouth as far as she could. Four fingers, stacked vertically between the upper and lower teeth, is the range of a healthy young jaw. Hers admitted only one and a half. The mouth, on this attempt, could not pass through the small smooth gliding motion with which an opening jaw should begin; the disc inside the joint was not moving as it should.
I watched her sit. The head jutted slightly forward — the posture, now common in young people, of a life lived looking down at a phone. And when I asked about her eating, the mother spoke first: she has been chewing only on the left side, for as long as I can remember. And recently — recently she has been obsessed with a particular hard chewy candy. She eats them constantly.
The picture, then, was clear. The left side of the face had been working alone, for years. The recent flood of hard chewing, combined with the forward-jutting posture, had pushed a long-standing imbalance over a threshold. The chewing muscles on the left had developed hard, painful knots. Both of the small deep muscles that begin the opening of the jaw had ceased, in their different ways, to function as they should. The joint itself, no longer smooth, was stuck.
And the consequences had already begun to climb. The deep small muscles at the back of her neck, just beneath the skull, were knotted on both sides; the long muscles down the front of her neck were tight. Her jaw had stopped opening, and her neck had stopped moving with her head.
The work was urgent, but careful.
First, the pain itself. The hardened knots in the chewing muscles were released. As they softened, the jaw began, with my hands' help, to relearn its first small movement.
Second, the cause beneath. With the muscles softened, the joint could be persuaded back toward its proper gliding motion. The neck, now able to move with the jaw again, was restored to its small, precise rhythm of cooperation with the head.
Third, the days to come. We spoke about chewing — on the right side, deliberately, for a while. About the candy. About the forward-leaning posture. And about a piece of luck she did not know she had: she had come within three days. The body had not yet learned the new pain as a habit. The repair could be quick.
Two sessions. The mouth opened to three and a half fingers, stacked vertically, with ease. The pain was almost gone. She left.
I want to add a small note here, because it matters.
Habits in the body are written slowly, in time. Every day the body holds a small distortion, the distortion becomes a little more familiar to the muscles, the joints, the nerves. It is never too late to begin undoing it. But the sooner it is met, the gentler the undoing, and the briefer.
A high-school girl with three days of pain is one story. A woman of forty who has been chewing on the same side, unconsciously, since childhood is another. Both can be helped. But the first, simply, can be helped faster.
"I receive."
Many readers will have heard this word. It is the small phrase that Japanese people speak, with palms briefly pressed together, before beginning a meal. Its translations — bon appétit, enjoy your meal — miss almost everything that the word actually does.
The verb at its centre, itadaku, means: to receive, with the hands held humbly above the head. It is the gesture one would make before accepting a precious thing from someone of higher standing. The meal in front of you is not yours by right. It is given — by the rain that fell on the rice, by the people who tended the field, by the life of the small creature whose body, perhaps, has become this dish.
To chew well, then, on both sides — slowly, evenly — is, in this older sensibility, less a matter of bodily mechanics, and more a matter of how one accepts a gift.
Beauty is health. Health is the harmony of body and mind.
Three times a day, very quietly, that harmony is decided. Not in great moments. In small ones — in which side of the mouth has just taken the first bite.
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A NOTE FOR THE CURIOUS
The great muscle along the side of the cheek is the masseter; the fan-shaped muscle at the temple, the temporalis; the small, deep muscle that initiates the opening of the jaw is the lateral pterygoid; the soft structure inside the jaw joint is the articular disc; the joint itself, the temporomandibular joint. The small deep muscles at the base of the skull are the suboccipital muscles; the long one down the front of the neck, the sternocleidomastoid. In the older Eastern medicine, the central organ-system spoken of here is the spleen-stomach, also called the root of the post-natal.