Hello, friends.
I got some dental work done recently. A couple of fillings redone. Sigh. Tooth stuff is one of my least favorite stuff, but it’s also a reality of my life and, by 40, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to it.
“ReDONE?” asked my sister incredulously, with possibly zero fillings in her own mouth. “Yeah, they break down, just like everything else in our bodies.” A perfectly unwelcome reminder that nothing lasts. The most tedious of adulthood maintenance, like buying a new vacuum cleaner bag. Sometimes it’s not poetic, it just sucks.
As a genetically cavity-prone human, I used to deeply dread then sob after every dental cleaning. I’d receive the news of "problem areas,” “places to watch,” or new cavities as if they were a calamitous or fatal diagnosis. Silly in the grand scheme of things, I know, but in the moment anything can feel like the biggest deal.
Slowly, over time, my tangle with tooth stuff has become one of my greatest teachers on working with fear and anxiety, and practicing acceptance.
Like a grueling meditation retreat, I’ve spent maybe hundreds of hours in the dentists’ chair, as my teeth have been drilled, polished, ground, cleaned, picked at, and crowned. “It’s trauma inside your head,” a fellow soft-toothed friend affirmed. Indeed. It never gets more pleasant, but it can become tolerable.
I notice my body tense and I work to soften it. I focus on my breathing. I play with the idea of fully trusting the person whose job it is to repair my teeth and keep me safe. I make jokes. I zone out. Sometimes I just leave my body. On my best days, I cultivate gratitude for the care i have access to and that it’s not any worse.
I’ve been thinking a lot about teeth as teachers lately because, for the first time, someone else’s teeth are now my problem.
My son’s first two teeth just popped through his bottom gums.
Their journey to earth was slow and steady, about a month or more long. It involved a lot of saliva, some whimpering, and the very tricky challenge of managing someone else’s discomfort.
For the first time since my first teeth pushed through my gums, the nebulous process of teething dominates my life. Every process is also a practice. A practice to sit with my own discomfort with not being able to prevent my son’s discomfort. It’s also a practice in losing and letting go. Teeth appear in the mouth to bite and chew solid foods, a sign that my newborn is gone and my infant is growing fast.
A friend reflected that when her daughter cut her teeth it was the first real sense of loss she felt. That really hit me. Life is comprised of daily joys and losses, but it’s easy to forget that. Raising a tiny human seems to cast a myopia on life’s pores. This fact of constant joys and losses gets amplified. Teeth appearing are part of a long process of my son needing me less and less.
If something “has teeth” it has traction, power, and momentum. If something’s “sunk its teeth into you,” you’re in its grips.
The teeth of a gear are what make it function.
The teeth of a shark are what make it an apex predator.
The teeth of a human symbolize agency and independence — enabling some modicum of control.
In my yoga classes recently, I’ve been talking about aparigraha, or the idea of non-attachment.
As humans, our ability to attach to hopes, assumptions, wishes, and narratives is unparalleled. We attach and we cling, and the rigidness created just never leaves enough room for the fluid fullness of what life actually is. With a hard thud, we trip and fall into the dissonance between what we wished could be true and what actually is.
Non-attachment is not apathy or detachment or avoidance. Non-attachment is spaciousness. It’s holding lightly, it’s loosening grip, it’s allowing. It’s neither controlling nor being controlled, but the space between.
Non-attachment is losing a tooth and regrowing another one in its place. Non-attachment is leaving your tooth under your pillow at night, never to see it again.
Non-attachment is tolerating the unpleasant and the grueling which shoves you face to face with fear, anxiety, or loss, then watching yourself come out the other side.
In class, I asked students to reflect on what has sunk its teeth into them. I reflect on it myself. It’s always something, if not many, many things.
What has you in its jaws? What’s chewing on you? And, also, what are you gripping and grinding? An illusion; a perfect outcome if juuuuust this and that thing were to workout.
We notice, and then we choose to soften the jaw, drop the tongue, and loosen the grip. We experiment with being attentive but unbothered. Non-attaching.
They say when you dream about losing your teeth it’s an anxiety dream about losing control. Sounds obvious. There’s a vanity to teeth, even if they are also a huge pain in the ass.
But what if it losing control didn’t need to be a manifestation of anxiety, because it was actually more like loosening control. Or maybe it’s just a darn dream.
Let us turn for a moment, with curiosity and reverence, to the anatomy of a tooth. Most of us shelter about 32 in our mouth. All my children!
From the bottom up, you’ve got the root, the neck, and then the crown of the tooth.
Root, neck, and crown, like a meditating body.
First, the glowing red of the root chakra, muladhara. I say, feel your roots: the place where your seat touches earth; the place where earth rises to hold you - relax into it. The rooty rootedness of your pelvic bowl where new life and old life move out and into the world — manifesting into earthy existence.
Next, the vibrant blue of the throat chakra, vishudda. I say, bring awareness up the spine and let it lengthens with soft energy. Allow your neck to be open and long, allowing air in and out of the body. The space from which you say what needs to be said.
Finally, ethereal purple of the crown chakra, sahasrara. I say, further up the spine and up the back of the head bring awareness to the crown of your head which is face to face with the vast open sky. It is the place of our tender fontanelle when we are newly born, a reminder that we are beautiful unfinished creatures; a reminder that bones move and shift; a reminder that we’re not impermeable to the universe around us, but we are of it.
Bring your awareness back to a tooth.
From the outside in, you’ve got the enamel, then something called dentin beneath that. Underneath the dentin is the pulp cavity which extends down into the roots. The roots extend down into the bone, connecting to nerves and blood vessels there.
Wait, I am a tooth. You are a tooth. Layered and temporary. Powerful but not invincible. Brittle but also forgiving.
Dentin is the star here, let me just say. Shoutout to Dr. Huerta at Dental Boutique for answering my many questions about it years ago. It’s hearty, forgiving, and, in fact, to some degree regenerative. It’s comprised mostly of hydroxyapatite, the substance that makes antlers and horns. Hard and hearty, though not immortal. Kind of an in-between. Powerful for a limited time.
Learning about dentin allowed me to relax a bit in my many torturous dental appointments. My enamel might be jacked but my dentin’s got me.
My son is growing his first set of teeth — roots, neck, and crown; enamel, dentin, pulp, and roots — while I’m working hard to repair and maintain the last (real) set I’ll ever have in my skull. There’s something in there about the passage of time. About comings and goings. About the pain we go through to get teeth, then to lose them, get them again, and try to hang on to them as long as we can. There’s something there about anticipation that all of a sudden, one day, turns to longing.
But anyway, let me just leave it at that.
Such a provocative teaching, teeth as an avenue into so much reflection. Loved starting my day with this, Jess!