What is Mewing aka Tongue Posture®?

Tongue posture means your tongue position inside the mouth whenever your face is resting. Which one is your tongue right now, assuming you are not eating, drinking, laughing, or yawning?

A: The tip of the tongue is touching the palate or touching the upper teeth.

B: The tongue is flat on the palate.

C: The tongue is in the middle. The tip of the tongue might be hitting the teeth or it's not anywhere at all in the mouth. It’s not touching the palate or bottom of the mouth either. 

D: The tongue is sitting on the bottom. It is laying on the ground of the mouth

Which one is yours? The correct answer is B. The tongue is fully up and flat. 

This is called Mewing, but not to be confused by a cat. It's nothing to do with a cat. A British dentist Dr. Mike Mew started promoting the idea and it has become widely known as “Mewing” now. By the way, I said flat on the palate, but the tip should NOT be touching. 

The red dot is where the tip of the tongue should be located. It can be close to the upper teeth but not be touching. OR it can go further back too. By the way, you're supposed to be doing this correct hand posture all the time. Whenever your face is resting. Like right now, you're reading this blog. Probably, unless you're eating or doing something, maybe your face is not doing anything right now, aka resting Face Posture®. You are supposed to be mewing for more than 23 hours per day. 

Yes! 23 hours a day, every single day. In fact, more than 23 hours a day, because the time your face is functioning is very little. Unlike body muscles, the purpose of facial muscles is different and needs very little movement. The purpose of body muscles: Move the body such as walking, sitting, standing, raising hands.The purpose of facial muscles: Create facial expressions and functions such speaking, eating, etc

3 Health Benefits & 3 Beauty Benefits

#1 Health Benefit: Correct Tongue Posture® encourages nasal Breathing

You probably know nose breathing is important. None should be mouth breathing unless you have health challenges to prevent that, running or those occasions that make it harder to breathe from the nose.

• Better quality oxygen intake
• Lots of filters help prevent bad air or dust
• Get NO, Nitric Oxide, an important molecule for overall health and anti-aging.

When you keep correct Tongue Posture®, and close your mouth, it’s much easier to keep nasal breathing. In fact, you cannot physically mouth breathe when you correctly mewing. The root of the tongue blocks airway to mouth breathe, and you can only do nose breathing. Tongue Posture® should be done even while sleeping, so I highly recommend Sleep Tape® to keep the lips sealed, which makes it easier to keep mewing. Lip seal while sleeping prevents snoring too.

#2 Health Benefit: Face grows forward

It does, especially if you are young and your facial bones are still growing. Otherwise it can grow longer instead of forward. This is proper face position, which improves body posture. 

#3 Health Benefit: Better Body Posture

In general, we tend to lean forward, because of the use of the phone, and the computer. That causes a lot of neck pain, shoulder pain or those often. An interesting thing is that the correct Tongue Posture® will move your head and neck slightly back, which improves your body posture.  Because the tip of the tongue should not be touching the upper teeth, the root of the tongue (back of the tongue) tends to be slightly back. When you press or do slight suction against the palate where it is close to the throat, your head naturally leans back above the butt.

In other words, if you are doing bad posture and mewing, isn’t it harder to nose breathe? You can probably still breathe from the nose, but it's harder to do, because the airway is restricted. But if you move your head above your butt, the tongue is back and flat and then it's much easier to breathe from the nose. In general, I decided NOT to say the word “Suction”, because “Suction” tends to cause excessive tension in the masseter muscles, but it is good to slightly suck the back of the tongue. 

Bonus! But super benefit: Better Teeth Alignment (for kids)

This is very beneficial especially for kids, because their facial bones are still growing. With the correct tongue position, you might be able to have beautiful teeth. The reason why the teeth alignment gets worse is because the body and Face Posture® are not good. When the tongue is down, the palate becomes narrow, and all the teeth don’t have enough space to sit in an organized layout.  But if you keep good posture, the palate becomes wide enough to have beautiful teeth. If they don't have space, the teeth have to fight each other, which results in crooked teeth.

#1 Beauty Benefit: Double Chin Reduction

This is my favorite because it's easier for you to see the difference. 

When the tongue is down, the root of the tongue in the throat areas is down too. (Blue in the anatomy) When it’s up, the rood tongue muscles are toned and lifted up.Imagine that you keep doing this correct tongue posture and keep toning the tongue muscles all the time, whenever your face is resting, of course, you're going to have a beautiful neck and jawline.This is a relatively easier fix. What do I mean by “whenever your face is resting”?

You are supposed to be doing this correct Tongue Posture® whenever your face is resting, except like talking, chewing or the first part of the drinking, yawning or big laughing, in other words, whenever your face is moving, you don't have to worry about the tongue. But if it's not moving, you want to do this even when you're sleeping (Check Sleep Tape™). So in our community, we said mewing for more than 23 hours per day. Every single day! 

#2 Beauty Benefit: Face Lift

Mewing Tongue Posture® may lift up your facial bones to lift up the skin. The tongue is lifting the palate, the ground of maxilla bones to lift up the face. It should not be a hard suction against the palate, but because you are touching the palate all the time, it does lift slightly. For the face, even 1mm or less difference makes a difference and a visible result, because the face is such a small frame, compared to the body. The maxilla bone is the base for cheekbones in charge of lifting up the skin. That’s why.

The facial bones define the shape of the face, as the foundation of the face. If the bones are saggy, the skin sag too. Many try to lift up the skin, but it is just a surface, and you might see temporary results from lymphatic drainage massage, but it is a temporary result. So it does make sense to lift up the bones by Mewing Tongue Posture®, and in fact it is the only way to lift the bones, in terms of natural face habit you can do by yourself.

#3 Beauty Benefit: Defined Jawline

If you google mewing or Tongue Posture®, you're going to see a lot of before after photos of people showing their jawlines. 

WARNING! 

I tend to see in general from young boys that they do mewing too hard and develop overdeveloped masseter muscles, which can lead to TMJ pain. At first look, you may like it, but if you keep doing it,  later you might have a lot of jaw pain. So it's important not to do it too hard. (Learn the differences between soft mew and hard mew in the video) You want to get beautiful jawline naturall, not artificially by pressing too hard for a short period of time. Any quick fixes don’t last for a long time.  The darker red in the anatomy is masseter that can get overactive by hard mewing.

How To Mewing Tongue Posture®:

#1 Practice: N

Say “N” slowly.

Say “N” for a couple seconds and keep closing your mouth. Isn't the tongue flat? That is the correct tongue position. You keep the good position as long as possible then.

#1 Practice: Click

Similar to the previous one, but click: suck the tongue against the palate and suddenly release so it causes sound. Right before releasing, isn't the tongue flat? That is the correct tongue position. 

#3 Practice: Swallow

Swallow while mewing. 

First let's get some saliva by circling the tongue around the mouth or whatever works for you. And then slowly swallow, by flattening the tongue against the palate. Are you able to feel the flatness? If so, keep it as is for a long time.This applies to drinking and eating too, because they both require swallowing. When you drink, you're supposed to swallow in this flat position. After you put the water on the table, you keep it up and flat. This is a great way to reset to correct Tongue Posture®. 

If none of the 3 above works for you, that means your tongue needs a lot of exercises to make it stronger and elastic. Your tongue is too weak and/or too tight. The exercises will be introduced in other episodes.