Probably you’ve never thought of how to drink, and you do it unconsciously. You don't think about it. You just do it. Right? You drink and swallow every day so many times.But if you haven't thought of how to drink in your life yet, you might be drinking wrong or at least in a way that can worsen the facial aging symptoms. The reason why I say it is important to master how to swallow in better ways is that it engages the tongue. You know that I'm all about tongue. (Mewing 101) One of the main reasons why you have a hard time mewing is your tongue is too weak, because you are not using it fully for daily facial activities such as drinking.
In other words, if you use your tongue in a better way for daily facial functions such as swallowing, you will be training the tongue muscles fully.
How to drink/swallow correctly
Step 1: Body Posture
There's a drink in front of you. We tend to move our head forward to reach the item by slouching the shoulders. You might be even causing chin tension and keeping bad neck posture too.
Instead, you want to bring your drink to you so that you can easily keep good body posture. You keep your head above your butt, so the drink comes to you instead of you go to the drink.
Step 2: Upper Lip
The reason why you should not create a lot of tension on the chin or the lower lip too much is because they are overworking muscles. (Red in the anatomy) The bottom face muscles tend to move down to sag the face.So if you keep doing the bad mouth habit every time you drink, it's going to get worse. You can train the upper lip and the philtrum area by doing our lip exercises in our app. If you don’t want to have saggy cheeks, bulldog face, undefined jawline, jowls, etc, check it out. After doing the duck lip exercise, try to get the drink from the upper lip lip only, although drinking involves all the entire lip muscles (Orbicularis Oris). This step 2 is advanced though, because the lip muscle is like a donut ring. The upper and lower are connected, but I am saying you should try to use more upper lip only without the lower. With age, philtrum becomes longer because it is blue sleeping muscle. And the upper lip becomes thinner, and pulls back too. That’s why you want to activate the upper lip muscle every time you swallow. If you do that, you can keep beautiful fuller lips.
By the way, if you use a water bottle often, you might want to reconsider the use. Water bottles tend to force yourself to activate the bottom lip to drink. That's why I prefer to drink something in a big cup, so that you don't have to use the lower lip so much.
Step 3: Mewing Swallow
This is the most important thing.
First of all, if you don't know what Mewing Tongue Posture® is, please watch our Mewing 101 video.
Mewing Swallow #1:
Open your mouth.
Mewing Swallow #2:
When the liquid comes inside the mouth, tip of the tongue should be placed on the palate in front of the upper teeth. The tip of the tongue should be on the spot. Spot means right behind upper teeth. Keep the tip on the spot to hold a bit.
Mewing Swallow #3:
Swallow the liquid by flattering the tongue against the palate and move the water down to the throat.
If you have water, try the 3 steps. If you don't have any drink, you can try saliva too. Saliva is easier for you because its amount is much smaller than a drink. If drink is difficult, start with saliva. If saliva is too easy, try as little water as saliva. Then you increase the amount later. By the way., this Mewing Swallow applies to food too. Whatever you swallow, you want to be conscious about the 3 steps and you’ll be able to activate and stretch the tongue muscles more, so it’ll be easier to keep mewing.
Warnings:
Try not to move the neck or shoulders while swallowing. If they move, that means you are using the wrong muscles, not the tongue.
Exercise NOT to engage the other muscles than the tongue
Level 1:
- Create more saliva and wait for swallowing.
- Keep your thumb and lightly bite between the upper and lower teeth.
- Lightly smile to activate the cheeks.
- Keep your tongue up and flat on the palate.
- Swallow the saliva with the mewing position while keeping the mouth open.
In general, if this is hard for you, that means you're using the other muscles for swallowing, not the tongue enough.
Level 2:
If you can do this easily, swallow without biting this thumb, that means you're using the tongue muscle fully, which is very good. You can try with a drink, instead of saliva. The more liquid, the harder it gets.
Level 3:
Do the same without a finger, while keeping the mouth open. Because swallowing is a facial function that everyone does so many times every day, it is important to master the better ways.