What are Tooth Archetypes

Tooth Archetypes are a powerful way for you to understand and work with emotional and energetic influences on oral health, to help you avoid unnecessary dental interventions and have better experiences with any necessary treatements.

Different parts of your mouth are aligned with different aspects of the truth of your innate goodness, the gifts of your ancestors and the highest potential of your humanity. Tooth decay, gum disease and other symptoms can be understood as alarms calling your attention to blocked energy that has been getting in the way of your full power and potential.

Each of the thirty-two teeth has an Archetype that consolidates and extends existing metaphysical frameworks for teeth including Mouth Meridian energy channels, Dr Michele Caffin’s psychosocial framework, Dr Christian Beyer’s neurological framework etc.

It’s a unique framework that I developed from working with my natural oral health coaching clients and I have written about in my new book: The Secret Lives of Teeth: Understanding emotional influences on oral health.

Secret Tooth Archetypes

Tooth Archetypes are like job descriptions. The Tooth’s Archetype is a role that stays as potential rather than presence unless the Archetype is activated. Then the job starts to actually get done and the role is filled. 

Tooth Archetype’s gets activated by your experience with three ‘S’s’: Silence, Secrets or Suppressed emotions. When one of the ‘S’s’ affects the qualities of a Tooth Archetype, that tooth may eventually, or immediately, start to try to get your attention.

Most people will only become aware of a tooth asking for attention when symptoms flare up i.e. decay or cavities, sensitivity or toothache, bleeding or receding gums. 

However, when you really pay attention to your mouth, you can become aware of a Tooth Archetype activating before it turns into a physical symptom.  You might be aware of a buzzing or tingling feeling, a sense of fullness, or just a feeling that is hard to describe in or around your tooth. 

The earlier you can engage with an activated Tooth Archetype, the easier it is to avoid, stabilize or even reverse damaging symptoms in your mouth. 

NB The tooth chart shown is not a mirror image i.e. the left side of the chart shows the right side of your mouth. 

Tooth Archetypes of Central Incisors

Incisors may carry the residue of your infancy, toddler and preschool years. They reflect how your caregivers socialised you and what you learned about how to be a member of your family, your community and the human race. The front teeth often have a lot to say about what you learned in those early years about gender, so the Tooth Archetype can be activated by different issues depending on your gender identity and experience.

The two upper central incisor Tooth Archetypes represent your earliest caregivers, and their relationship with each other. If you only had one caregiver, or none, these teeth can reflect parental absences in  your infancy; or how a single parent embodied each of the archetypal roles.

The upper left tooth 9 is the Nurturer archetype which may reflect your body image and how you were taught about caring for your physical body and well-being. Your relationship with the caregiver who fed, cleaned and dressed you is represented by this tooth.

The upper right tooth 8 is the Leader Archetype which may reflect your relationship with a parent who brought home resources from the wider world, provided boundaries for your protection and who showed you how to relate with people outside of the family.

The lower incisors reflect the habits, patterns and beliefs that you internalised from your infancy and early childhood. These two teeth have a strong toddler energy!

The lower right central incisor tooth 25 is the Beast Archetype which has a very impulsive momentum kind of energy. This archetype reflects your feelings and experiences of taking action on your desires, no matter the consequences.

The lower left central incisor tooth 24 is the Doll Archetype which may embody a people pleasing energy of passive compliance. This Tooth Archetype may reflect the consequences of being good at the expense of your own authentic well-being.

Learn more about Tooth Archetypes

Every single adult tooth has an Archetype, and there is a lot more to each Tooth Archetypes that the central incisor examples in this article and the video above. The Tooth Archetypes descriptions and framework are at the heart of my book, The Secret Lives of Teeth: Understanding emotional influences on oral health.

The Secret Lives of Teeth goes beyond the ‘spiritual meanings’ of teeth to engage with the oral effects of generational trauma, personal stress and adaptive emotional patterns.

It includes:

• A unique and user-friendly system of Tooth Archetypes to guide you through the emotional landscape of your mouth explaining each adult tooth’s vulnerabilities and strengths.
• An exceptionally in-depth explanation of Mouth Meridians, with a layperson’s guide to working with their energies.
• A directory of Symptoms as Messengers to help translate the underlying influences on symptoms including abscesses, bruxism, cracks and chips, gingivitis, plaque, root canals, and receding gums.
• A toolkit of self-help exercises to make it easier to work with your symptom’s messages, relieve symptoms and free yourself from shame and fear about your mouth.