How Mindfulness Can Soothe Teeth Anxiety.Even if you don’t like meditation

One day in 2013, Christina Divona PastanD91, DG94 was about to observe an endodontic postgraduate teaching resident performing a procedure when she noticed that the student was not doing well at all.

“She had a panic attack before she had her first apicotomy, which was surgery for an incomplete root canal,” says Divona Pastan, director of mind and body wellness and clinical assistant professor of endodontics. Mr. looks back. Tufts University School of Dentistry (TUSDM). “I left her clinical role for the first time and asked her if she could teach me a three-part breathing technique she knew from her yoga class.”

For Divona Pastan, the transition to mindfulness teaching was smooth. She has been practicing yoga and meditation for her 15 years, but over time she has noticed that more and more students, faculty and colleagues in the dental field struggle with stress management. On this day, her resident learned a new breathing technique and successfully completed her first apicotomy. But this resident is also the most generous Ms. Divona Pastan has ever been given for giving her name to her own anxiety and teaching her how to deal with it. She said it was an important tool that changed her life.

This feedback changed Divona Pastan’s life. She started a 200-hour yoga certification program at the Kripalu Yoga Center and later returned to get her certification. 100 Hour Meditation Teacher Certification and 25 Hour Chair Yoga Teacher Certification. She developed TUSDM’s wellness course to introduce mindfulness and yoga techniques to first-year dental students.

Divona Pastan also teaches weekly drop-in meditation classes for dental students, faculty, and staff. In December 2022, Tufts Springboard Grant Help create mindful dentist training courses focused on reducing clinical anxiety and stress and increasing resilience in third and fourth year dental students.

Tufts Now We spoke with Divona Pastan to find out how patients can reduce tension by practicing the same mindfulness practices she teaches to her dental students. their Stress or anxiety before and during dental appointments.

Can you describe some of the practices and techniques you teach to dental students at Tufts University?

In the first semester, dental students learn different types of mindfulness meditation. This includes the body scan, an exercise in feeling and focusing your attention on different parts of your body from your feet to your head. There is an “Awareness Meditation” that leads you to become aware of sounds, emotions, and the environment around you. And in visualization meditation, you visualize yourself succeeding at something when you are struggling.

One of my favorites is loving-kindness meditation. It cultivates compassion for oneself and others. This has been proven by science to really improve our capacity for compassion.

One of your students says in the video that using the techniques you talked about helped them gain control over themselves and even control the situation. Will it also work for patients facing appointments that cause them stress and anxiety?

absolutely. For patients anticipating a stressful procedure, diaphragmatic breathing is probably the most effective and easiest way to reduce anxiety. This is called tripartite breathing. Use your diaphragm, lungs, and upper chest.

Breathe first through your abdomen into your lungs, then into your chest as you lift your collarbones. Then exhale with long, slow breaths that are twice as long as she inhaled. This is a very conscious and effective way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, relax the body and nervous system, and focus the mind.

If you can practice this, it would be nice if you could wear the rhythm of exhaling twice as long as inhaling. Patients can start it at home, know they can breathe like that while in the car on the way to the hospital or in the waiting room, and continue while sitting in the dental chair.

I do the same when I go to the dentist. Once the patient can breathe comfortably through the nose, diaphragmatic breathing can be practiced with the mouth open.

Is there something else for people who can’t breathe well through their nose for some reason?

Visualization is also helpful. It helps if the patient can imagine himself surrounded by a protective white light and feel supportive of the chair as if it were a cradle. And imagine them having a feeling of being safe, relaxed and at ease instead of being frightened or frightened.

Do you have any advice for those new to these techniques, or those who have tried meditation in the past and found it too difficult?

For patients who worry that they can’t meditate, I help them breathe again. everyone has to breathe. Simply focusing on your inhalation and exhalation as an anchor distracts you from sitting and thinking.

You can also say a mantra like “I’m relaxing, I’m relaxing.” Or pray quietly to yourself. Either just breathe and use words and phrases as anchors, or watch your breathing. It’s very simple.

Music helps too. Many patients come to the hospital with earphones and want to listen to their own music. A heavy blanket can be very comfortable during a dental appointment. Patients can ask themselves: Or should I bring something to distract myself? ”

How are the children? Can parents teach their children the same skills before dental appointments?

For young children, for example under the age of 12, it is important for parents to emphasize that the dentist is a useful doctor in the child’s life and that dental care is a positive and important part of the child’s overall health. This helps encourage young children to think that going to the dentist is fun. Sitting in a chair going up and down and having a water gun makes you think of the dentist as a good experience.

When these younger children start to get nervous, let them breathe and say, “When you take a deep breath. It will calm you down.”

For older children, combining music and breathing can be very effective. Many children love music, so put on earbuds to focus on the music and encourage them to sit in a chair and feel relaxed and supported. This is helpful for children with anxiety.

Other than specific practices to deal with dental appointment anxiety, what can people do in the face of this stress?

It is very important for patients to communicate their fears and anxieties to dentists and their staff. I often see front desks and dental assistants in front of dentists.

As an endodontist, I perform root canal therapy, and patients seem to be very afraid of it. I often appreciate them saying they are scared, but when I asked more, I found that they were most afraid of feeling pain, and that’s no surprise. Who would want to feel pain?

Knowing their fears made me feel the need to communicate with them more as well. Therefore, you need to communicate and know that your practitioner will be working with you. Once you get that start, it’s usually pretty smooth after that.