This part two of a series on my dysfunctional sensory organs. As I always say, my nose is strictly for ornamental purposes. I have rarely drawn a breath through it.
Breathing through one's mouth often causes a facial deformity of sorts, the long-faced, horsey look. When you do not settle into nose breathing, comfortably closing your mouth and nestling your teeth together on a regular basis, your teeth do not know when to stop growing. They get that signal from touching together most of the time. Unsignaled, they grow long. Long of tooth, is something quite different.
The expression, long of tooth, is another condition which results from deteriorating gums. The margins at the top of your teeth disappear and your teeth look longer than they ever did - a sign of old age before periodontists.
I do not have this elongated facial syndrome, even though I am a mouth breather, because I spent my childhood with my jaw clenched. I was a little tense. All that Struwwelpeter. Fabulous for my bite, disasterous for my bark. Fact dump ending.
Denoument: As I explore meditation and healing I realize how much of it is based on the breath. Being able to breathe through one's nose is quite important in lots of this stuff. I can't . Perhaps that is why my enlightenment is so late in coming.
Posted by Dakota at December 15, 2003 11:21 AM