Health Principles

machine translation

The "dentosophy" is a holistic approach to better overall health, or even self-healing leading to a new way of life. Preserving one's teeth without surgery or appliances, but also treating various ailments other than dental pathologies, is its objective.

Inspired by Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, Dr. Michel Montaud is its bearer.

Our Teeth Speak to Us About Our Overall Health

Health Principles It's hard to draw up an official biography while working on this...

Michel Montaud (laughs) I like to say that I am simply a "human being," in search of a lost humanity. The modern man is only "head."

My task is to open people to the "feeling." Moreover, saying that one is a dentist is reductive. France has separated doctors from dentists, which means thinking that the mouth does not belong to the same physical body. Yet, oral pathologies have a direct link with the psyche via organs and the nervous system. And vice versa.

Health Principles With dentosophy, a disappeared cavity would solve headaches or a change in dental alignment could chase away depression?

Michel Montaud Any dental dysfunction says something about the body and the being in general. The word "dentosophy" comes from the Latin dens, the tooth, and the Greek sophia, wisdom! Because teeth have real wisdom. They are generous because they are visible and allow us to understand potential problems without needing a scan or other. Dentosophy carries the hope that one day "man listens to the mouth speak of man."

Health Principles How does one move from dentistry to "wisdom of the teeth"?

Michel Montaud Thanks to illness, the "ill that says"! I have a classical career. Dental surgeon studies, a beautiful beginning of career, a beautiful family... But I have increasingly violent back and stomach pains (80% of dentists suffer from them). And especially, my 9-year-old son at the time had problems and they wanted to pull his teeth. I sense that it doesn't make sense. I then discover the work of Professors Soulet and Besombes in France, who invented a latex device to restore oral balance. Quite soon, science will declare this discovery useless. Yet, not only does this device work for my son's dentition, but it also evolves his behavior. As for the pains that expressed themselves in my own body, they disappear. A new path of life then began.

Health Principles Add to this singular encounters?

Michel Montaud I was lucky to know Gitta Mallasz well, who wrote "Dialogues with the Angel," whose idea of the task each one must accomplish left a mark on me. At the time, I was far from thinking that spirituality could be translated into matter. And vice versa. Later, I also worked extensively with Elsa Gaensburger, who created the first Steiner school in France. But especially, I said, there was this strange encounter with this small piece of latex, a sort of double gutter, called "multifunctional activator." I put it in hundreds of mouths, including my own, for years. Its renewed effectiveness confirmed to me that, via the mouth, we could access the extraordinary self-healing capacity of our body. Not only can teeth take their place in a dental cavity without appliances or surgery, but also various ailments of our well-being disappear...

Health Principles How explain the power of this activator?

Michel Montaud It's a bit like a cranial osteopathic treatment doubled with an autotherapy linked to the presence to oneself. Because, in addition to wearing it at night, and biting it several times a day, it marks a conscious pause in one's daily agitation. It then sets in motion our own forces of will, not to be confused with the forces of reaction. And then, neuroplasticity is also at play. The activator amplifies stimuli via neuromediators. It solicits other aspects of breathing, sucking, swallowing, and phonation; it plays on the place of the tongue in the palate, on the way of chewing, on the vertical dimension of the body.

There is not a single organ for breathing, the lungs are not enough.

Same for swallowing and chewing related to digestion, and phonation related to thought.

Health Principles Rudolf Steiner has greatly inspired your work?

Michel Montaud This man had a scientific, inspired, and holistic vision of life and the interactions between matter and non-matter. He highlighted the triarticulation body, dental, in going to the dentist? soul, spirit, and also made connections between thought, feeling, and will.

Through empirical observations, I made analogical links. Thinking anthroposophical medicine, I understood that, for example, a balanced occlusion is necessary because it is the key position to be really in the present, therefore in a completely different state of being. I also made links between profiles (too many thoughts and not enough action; or on the contrary too much action but not enough reflection; or even an inability to settle in the present) and what moves or does not move as the jaw and maxilla. Dental overlaps speak to us far beyond what we imagine!

Health Principles You also take into consideration its logic of "walking-speaking-thinking"?

Michel Montaud Because I believe that everything we feel, learn, and live sensorially as a fetus and in the first years has a crucial importance on the development of all our being and therefore on the balance of the mouth. Rudolf Steiner, like Béatriz Padovan later, explained well that speaking is first done through the body before being done through the mouth. Also thinking.

We believe that when development steps have been skipped or poorly traversed, the body and the spirit will compensate. All this must harmonize.

Health Principles Do you think that a tooth extraction, or even a cavity, has meaning?

Michel Montaud Provided we question the "for what?" and not the "why?" We cannot content ourselves with blaming what I call the "outside," that is, the other, the microbe, the virus, etc.

Otherwise, why would brushing protect all the other teeth and not the one that has a cavity? Similar questions around amalgams: if only mercury were at fault, why would not all amalgam carriers be sick? The psychoaffect is weakened immune defenses, it is proven! We must always personalize the analysis of the body's response and remember that the system tries everything to compensate for a dysfunction. Everything, up to sometimes a disease that is there to raise our consciousness. The tooth must always be considered as a fuse that blows. But changing the fuse without searching for the cause of the short circuit leads to nothing. And each house is different.

Health Principles Are patients ready a priori to go beyond their dental problem by going to the dentist?

Michel Montaud Dentosophers are trained to receive as many first emergencies as to accompany a possible global change, gently, because the work can last several years. They are sensitized to an authentic feeling that will be completed by knowledge. Patients can be surprised at the beginning. Although they rarely come by chance and are ripe for thinking differently.

This is good because Paracelsus's formula is major: "The only doctor for man is himself, and the doctor is his medicine." P. de S In what way is your approach different from other alternative visions, notably the "biological decoding"?

Michel Montaud I received information on the language of teeth more than 25 years ago. But I always refused to write it because its interpretation can be catastrophic. It's like learning the letters of the alphabet hoping to speak the language. In my eyes, it is preferable to resolve conflicts anchored in the unconscious through a conscious bodily work, via the activator. Conflicts can thus disappear without passing through consciousness. Putting the activator consciously in the mouth allows a beneficial passage towards another consciousness of oneself.

Health Principles Dentosophy is not recognized in France, or even criticized. What is the situation elsewhere?

Michel Montaud In Italy, where dentists have long been trained as doctors as well, one of my trainees was allowed to defend a thesis rewarded with the highest grade. In France, I observe without expecting anything. As Einstein said: "We cannot solve problems with the same mind that created them." We currently lack a sacred vision, which is a personal path to our spiritual part left at birth. l

Interview conducted by Christine Saramito

Read the interview in the magazine