GROWING DIFFERENTLY n°21
machine translation
Michel Montaud : “Our mouth testifies to this.” Michel Montaud is the author of the book Les Dents, une Porte Vers la Santé¹ and the co-founder of dentosophy.
Grandir Autrement : What is dentosophy and how did you come across this practice?
Michel Montaud : It is the result of twenty-five years of continuous research on the human being, which led my colleagues and me to a holistic conception of the human being. I was a dentist practicing in the traditional way. I discovered this rubber device called the activator and put it in my son's mouth.
What a surprise it was to see his recurring nightmares disappear and to see him evolve in many areas, not just his mouth.
I then tested the device on myself: not only did my teeth move, but some pathologies disappeared.
Modern medical and therapeutic sciences tend to dissect the human being into parts, whereas it is essential to consider him in his entirety. What is practical with the mouth is that it is enough to open it to decode the human being. Dentosophy therefore falls within the anthroposophical movement, a wonderful legacy that Rudolf Steiner has bequeathed to us. Dentosophy is therefore defined as a functional therapy that, on a humanist basis, makes the link between the balance of teeth-human-world.
This tripartition is observed in the mouth and it is the human being as he is today that we find in his dentition.
Could you tell us more about this link between the tooth, the human being, and the world?
It is interesting to note that the tooth is the only place in our physical body where we find pure mineral in the enamel. The mineral kingdom is the oldest on Earth. Through the tooth, we have access to an ancestral memory of humanity. It is worth noting that the enamel wears with age, as if we are not able to integrate this memory...
Interested in dentitions, I noticed that unexpected things arrive, which I could relate to the early hyper-intellectualization in children. Teeth erupt earlier and in a more often inverted order, which testifies to a deep distress. It is all of human evolution that is being questioned. Steiner said, at the beginning of the last century, that one should not intellectualize a child before the arrival of their first permanent teeth – incisors and first molars – as this diverts the physical forces needed to build their physical body. Until the age of 7 and the appearance of their second dentition, they need all their energy for this. If one introduces abstraction and mobilizes their intellect before this age, they risk having deficient organs.
Today, Steiner's thought is confirmed.
It is important to explain this to parents and teachers, who still believe they are acting in the best interest of children.
In our hyper-intellectualized Western world, we can see more and more signs of suffering in the deciduous dentition, i.e., the milk teeth, such as supraclusion – that is, the excessive covering of upper teeth over lower teeth – which is particularly a sign of significant emotional distress. Teeth are a true human construction site.
At what age can we come for a consultation?
The sooner the better! My youngest patient was 2 years and 3 months. The therapist's ego touches only the astral body of the child, not their intellect. If the therapist lives what they say, it passes like an "intravenous injection." I had the case of a child whose dentition started to move after the first consultation, without the use of the activator. That's why I insist on saying that the activator is just one of the tools of dentosophy. The human being works through the activator, certainly, but the first consultation is even more essential as it allows reading in the mouth everything that is not said and gives the patient the opportunity to self-treat.
How can the teeth move?
It is difficult to explain because it is not a mechanical action, like with the braces in traditional orthodontics. The problem with these is that everything tends to move back: there is a 60 to 90% relapse rate². This means that the origin of the problem has not been resolved. The mouth is the consequence of what we are. Recently, I had a 15-year-old intern who wrote this in her internship report: "I was able to witness an unusual consultation with a dentist. This experience was very appealing to me. Indeed, this dentist no longer practices the 'classical' medicine. A doctor for thirty years, he believes that our mouth is the consequence of what we are, what we feel, live, or have lived. Everything is read inside the mouth. Thanks to a non-invasive treatment (without dental braces), he repositions the teeth, the jaw, but also the way his patients live. I was able to witness the first consultation of a mother and her child, which is the most interesting and important one, to establish a connection with the patients. I was incredibly surprised by the ease with which this man dialogued with them, and especially by the way he read them. In a simple half-hour, he brought out the character, the feelings, the past of these people.
They did not know him at all." In reality, the teeth move because, inside, the human being begins to move. They have taken the decision to change their life. Every day, they choose to stop to chew an object that seems to serve no purpose and that, in addition, costs money. This change in mindset is also read in their mouth. The movement of the teeth is only the consequence of a psycho-affective state of being.
INTERVIEWS COLLECTED BY CARINE PHUNG 1 – Editions Le Souffle d'Or (2007). It is an easy-to-read and rich in teachings book.
2 – Note from the editor: In addition, current orthodontic care often prioritizes a treatment that is often too late and more invasive. For example, if a child has a small jaw, they will have to wait for all the teeth (or almost) to come out before being able to brace everything, or even have healthy teeth extracted, with the risk that everything will move back afterwards.
To request the list of practitioners: http://www.dentosophie.com
The teeth, seat of memory?
A Swedish study showed that by pulling a tooth, a part of our memory also goes... For this study, which is part of a larger study on memory, the researchers followed 1,962 people aged 35 to 90 from 1988, comparing the memory of those who kept their teeth and those who had dentures put in. Recent Japanese studies on rats and monkeys had already shown the link between teeth and memory, but according to M. Bergdahl, the Swedish study is the first large-scale study on humans. The research still needs to determine the impact of the loss of a single tooth on memory: "We will study until how many teeth a person can lose before it starts to affect their memory. We will also investigate the impact of tooth decay and implants," said M. Bergdahl.
When one thinks that dentists often remove healthy teeth from young adolescents in the context of orthodontics...
Source: http://www.afp.com/afpcom/fr
“DENTOSOPHY PERMITS, THROUGH THE MOUTH, TO GIVE THE HUMAN BEING THE OPPORTUNITY TO ACCESS THE DEEPEST PART OF THEMSELVES. IT PERMITS TO SEE WHAT WAS INVISIBLE AND TO HEAR WHAT WAS INAUDIBLE. IT LEADS US ON THE WAY TO TRUE UNDERSTANDING OF HUMANITY BY GIVING US THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIBERATE OURSELVES FROM OUR OLD BELIEFS. IT GIVES US ACCESS TO A WIDER ACCEPTANCE OF LIFE, TO GREATER TOLERANCE IN FRONT OF WHAT WE DID NOT UNDERSTAND AND, OFTEN, REJECTED. IT IS A DOOR TO THE 'NEVER SEEN, NEVER HEARD'. IT GIVES THE POSSIBLE ACCESS TO ANTHROPOSOPHY, WHICH IS THE AWARENESS OF WHAT IS TRULY HUMAN. IT IS A PATH THAT OPENS TO THE SOUL OF CONSCIOUSNESS.”