Pressing an active trigger point reproduces your referred pain, so there is discomfort during treatment by design — that reproduction is how the point is confirmed. It is brief, and most people describe it as a satisfying or recognisable pain rather than a sharp one. Aching in the treated muscle for a day or two afterwards is common and expected.

How many sessions will I need?

Recent, single-muscle problems often respond within a handful of sessions. Long-standing pain across several muscle groups takes longer, and the honest answer is that duration depends far more on whether the perpetuating factors are dealt with than on the number of sessions.

Is dry needling the same as acupuncture?

The needles are similar; the reasoning is not. Dry needling targets a specific taut band identified on examination, on an anatomical rationale. Acupuncture is delivered according to a different framework of point selection. They are distinct treatments that happen to share an instrument.

Trigger Point Therapy

Trigger point therapy targets the discrete tender knots within a taut band of muscle that refer pain elsewhere. It is one of the more directly effective treatments in orofacial pain when the diagnosis is right, and one of the most reliably disappointing when the perpetuating factors behind the trigger points are left in place.

Finding the point before treating it

Treatment begins with systematic palpation of the masticatory and cervical muscles to locate taut bands and the tender points within them. The finding that matters is reproduction of your familiar pain in its usual referral zone, not simply tenderness under the finger. That distinction decides what gets treated: a muscle that reproduces your symptom is a target, a muscle that is merely sore is not.

Manual release and stretch

Sustained ischaemic compression applied to the point, followed by lengthening the muscle through its range, is the conservative starting point. It is often combined with moist heat beforehand and a specific home stretch afterwards, because the muscle needs to be used at its new length for the change to hold. For accessible muscles — masseter, temporalis, upper trapezius, sternocleidomastoid — this alone resolves a meaningful proportion of cases.

Dry needling and therapeutic injections

Where manual work is insufficient or the point sits in a deeper muscle such as the lateral pterygoid, a fine needle can be placed directly into the taut band. Dry needling uses the needle alone; a therapeutic injection introduces a small volume of local anaesthetic. Both aim to interrupt the point and give the muscle a window in which it can lengthen and recover. Which is appropriate depends on the muscle, the history, and your own preference, and it is discussed before anything is done.

Why the perpetuating factors decide the outcome

Trigger points recur reliably if what created them is untouched. Nocturnal clenching, forward head posture, unrefreshing sleep, and sustained stress will regenerate the same points within weeks of a technically successful release. Trigger point therapy is therefore delivered as one component alongside orthotic therapy, posture and habit work, and airway assessment where indicated — not as a standalone series of appointments.

Common questions

Does it hurt?: Pressing an active trigger point reproduces your referred pain, so there is discomfort during treatment by design — that reproduction is how the point is confirmed. It is brief, and most people describe it as a satisfying or recognisable pain rather than a sharp one. Aching in the treated muscle for a day or two afterwards is common and expected.
How many sessions will I need?: Recent, single-muscle problems often respond within a handful of sessions. Long-standing pain across several muscle groups takes longer, and the honest answer is that duration depends far more on whether the perpetuating factors are dealt with than on the number of sessions.
Is dry needling the same as acupuncture?: The needles are similar; the reasoning is not. Dry needling targets a specific taut band identified on examination, on an anatomical rationale. Acupuncture is delivered according to a different framework of point selection. They are distinct treatments that happen to share an instrument.

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