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Tongue Posture Basics
This might have seemed like a simple addition to the problems that mouth breathing comes with, but in reality, it is the main factor behind facial structure dysfunctions. For now, I need you to keep 3 things firmly in mind:- Your facial structure is molded by the forces applied to it over time.
- The sutures that connect your facial bones never fuse.
- Forward Growth is the name of the game & the Maxilla is the star of it
Goal
Actuator
In the front view, you can see the outer part of it, where the muscles of the cheeks, lips, and eye socket attach. Although there are many muscles there, they are all relatively small and weak for the task at hand...
From the side and bottom view, however, it is not easy to identify muscles that seem to attach to it. Take a minute and feel your face, do you notice any muscles that attach to the maxilla from the inside? There are none. There is one other observation we can make when looking at the side and bottom view of the maxilla: the bottom of the maxilla forms the roof of your mouth.
Palate - The roof of your mouth
The tongue as the actuator
But man, how can the tongue act as the actuator without being attached to the bone we want to remodel? Valid question. Though the tongue is not attached to the maxilla, its position right under it is ideal for pushing. We will go over the concept in detail, but before we do, here is a sneak peek:
What is " Tongue Posture "?
Correct Tongue Posture
Tongue posture refers to the position of the tongue at rest and during various activities within the oral cavity. When the tongue is in the correct posture, it rests against the roof of the mouth, specifically the palate. This position allows for proper development and forward growth of the maxilla, which is crucial for facial structure and overall oral health.
Incorrect Tongue Posture
On the other hand, incorrect tongue posture occurs when the tongue rests low in the mouth, against the bottom teeth, or on the floor of the mouth. This leads to various issues, including a recessed maxilla, improper development of the midface, and a less favorable facial structure. It also contributes to breathing difficulties, such as mouth breathing (we talked about this!), and impacts overall oral posture.
What is considered normal?
Maxillary Support:
Long ago, when man lived in the cave, when pacifiers were not a thing, allergens were nowhere to be found, when nose-breathing was the norm and the eating of the meat raw kept the jaws strong and wide, man’s tongue sat firmly on the top of his mouth, applying a light, yet constant force to the maxilla, using it from the earliest of age to grow outwards. In today’s world though, kids from an early age develop poor oral posture. With their tongue sitting low, the maxillary arches are left unsupported, and with no force guiding them to develop horizontally, they grow downwards, creating long, narrow faces with teeth crammed and jaws set back and at an angle, creating the weakest, narrowest looking faces our species has ever had. The question is, what can we do now ?
- Aboriginal woman who grew up before contact with westerners. Wide palate, no crooked teeth because there is enough space to accommodate them all.
- Aboriginal woman born after contact with Westerners. The western diet completely changes development, making the dental arches narrower and deeper, the face longer and the teeth crooked (no space to develop).
Maxillary and bone structure malleability in adulthood
You probably noticed the frequent mentions of the word development. While tongue posture is crucial in one’s formative years, the influence of the tongue (and of all the other forces applied to your facial bone structure) throughout life is ever present and has the potential to turn things around at any age! By now, you should remember the sutures, the connective tissue that binds your facial bones together. This is going to be half of the equation when trying to achieve forward growth, as they are going to allow for the repositioning of the maxilla. The second part is bone malleability. Take a look at this familiar picture:
What exactly should your tongue be doing
Your tongue should be placed on the roof of your mouth, but where exactly, and with what amount of force?
Mistake: The natural impulse of most people when they learn about oral posture is to press their tongue hard, on a single point of the palate (top picture). This is completely wrong. First of all, the pressure does not need, and should not be a lot. As discussed, the changes in bone shape and size stem from the cueing generated by the tongue constantly pushing on the palate, not the sheer force. Second, the pressure should be applied neither to just one point, nor only vertically. As for the rotation of the maxilla, it requires subtle and consistent change, as the sutures are pliable but slow to remodel.
Correct : Forward growth and upward rotation are achieved by applying light pressure on the whole of the palate, from the front to the back of it. The easiest is to press on the front part only. This will come easily to you but is not enough. You should try your best to push the back of your tongue on the back of the palate too (Bottom picture). Concentrate on getting the back of your tongue to the part of the palate that feels soft.
Forming the new pattern
Alright man, so I just have to keep my tongue on the roof of my mouth, simple as pie!Not so fast, or better yet, I wish it were that fast for you, but in case you face some struggles along the way, let's prepare for them!
If you belong to the majority of people who start as partial mouth-breathers, your tongue posture also reflects that. Aside from not being able to breathe with your tongue on the roof of your mouth, which forces you to have poor tongue posture while breathing through your mouth, poor tongue posture and mouth-breathing also narrow the dental arches (making the palate narrower and deeper). This lack of space makes proper tongue posture hard to sustain, and most importantly, if your tongue posture has been poor for a long time, just like mouth-breathing, it is a pattern , and patterns take time to break.
How to practice consistently
As with nose breathing, proper tongue posture is most of all a habit. At first, you will get it right only when you are conscious of it, so be conscious of it as much as possible, this is the pre-requisite of building the habit.Accelerators:
We talked about mouth-breathing and it’s plenty. If you have not already, this is the time to also employ mouth tape while sleeping. This will ensure that you do not breathe through your mouth at night and will give room for proper oral posture while you sleep. The extra eight hours a day will make a significant dent in the old habit of low tongue posture and will enable the momentum of conscious oral posture to carry over at night.
No pressure. Excuse my proclivity to repeat myself, but do not try to force change. You should be firmly but not forcefully touching the whole of your tongue to your palate. Not partially, not forcefully. If your tongue gets tired after a while, you are pressing too hard!
Timeframe of the habit:
You will start your journey to proper tongue posture 100% manually and you will 100% reach the ultimate state, the state of autopilot. Don't listen to these courses that "teach" you disruptive techniques that are unnatural and will take time or focus out of your day. Depending on your current situation and the severity of your poor tongue posture, you will achieve autopilot in 2-8 weeks.
Now that we understand the basics, let's dive into the advanced section.
Advanced tongue posture (Suction) & Expansion
So we discovered how the tongue shapes the face and how the malleability of the sutures can be used to our advantage at any age to remodel and reposition the maxilla forwards and upwards. We do that by placing the tongue on the roof of the mouth, touching as far back as possible. This technique is mad useful, but when I introduced it to you I purposely left out a small, but game-changing part, the part that will induce expansion of the palate alongside forward growth - Suction!Palate expansion
As we learned previously, a big part of our goal is going to be to expand the palate. When the palate is expanded, the cheekbones “lift” up, creating the coveted “hollow cheek” effect, the eyes get tighter (more hunter-like), the jaw gets wider, and the face looks more square from the front. Expanding the palate looks like so:
Making the palate wider in all directions is exactly what we want, it will lead both to forward growth and facial width expansion. When you just push up with your tongue, though, you only achieve forward growth. The tongue though has the capacity to induce expansion in all directions, just by a simple tweak to your oral posture.
Modification of basic tongue posture
If simply pushing up rotates the maxilla upwards and moves it forwards, we need a way to do something similar to the sides of the palate, make the depth of the palate less, turning the sides upwards “like the wings of a butterfly”. To do that, we will use suction.Suction
Pushing works, we already established that. What also works, though, is pulling (for the exact same reasons). Imagine, if we could pull in the middle of the palate while pushing on the outer parts of it. That pattern induces a “flattening” of the palate, while at the same time making it wider. Your palate will have roughly the same surface area, but instead of it being convex and narrow, it will be shallower and wider, making the face wider and “shorter” at the same time (more compact face).
The question now is, how do YOU pull?
Pulling - Suction
We identified what we need to do, pull in the middle of the palate, now, how do we actually go by doing that? Though it seems complicated; pull here, push there, it’s actually simple. We will use the tongue as a suction cap, attaching in the middle of the palate, with the purpose of pulling it down, while the outer parts of the tongue (which touch on the outer part of the palate), continue pushing up.Implementation
Proper Positioning:Firstly, the tongue should rest entirely against the palate (roof of the mouth) when at rest. This includes the posterior (back) third of the tongue, which is essential for maintaining upward pressure on the maxilla. The front of the tongue should rest behind the upper incisors without touching them. Constant upward pressure from the tongue helps to stimulate bone remodeling and forward growth of the maxilla, which, as mentioned, is the crucial bone for enhanced facial structure.
Creating Suction:
For mewing to be even more successful, we must utilize the mechanics of suction to ensure that our tongue stays in the correct position. This is done by swallowing. As you swallow, feel the tongue move upward and backward, creating a tight seal with the roof of your mouth. You can swallow multiple times (obviously with sealed lips) to strengthen this suction as well. This motion pulls the tongue upward and naturally adheres to proper tongue posture.
Over time, this will build muscle memory and help you naturally maintain the suction posture without having to think about it. You will also naturally strengthen the back third of the tongue, which many find difficult to engage, specifically improving the palatoglossus and styloglossus muscles. The improvements in these muscles helps maintain the forward position of the maxilla, reinforcing the upward and forward forces needed for optimal facial aesthetics.
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