My recent discovery is mewing. How through tongue posture re-training one can correct facial asymmetry, which is strongly correlated to the development of scoliosis.
Idiopathic scoliosis is a complex three-dimensional deformity of the spine. It begins from the eyes (ocular armoring) with a cascading effect on the other parts of the body. Thus, I got down to correcting the misalignment in my eyes. Through wearing an eye-patch, I tried to get my lazy right eye to start focusing.
However, it felt quite stressful physically forcing my eye to get active. After years of looking surreptitiously sideways in shame and fear, the habit was difficult to shake. I felt some force within my psyche continue pulling my eye and ME downwards.
Mewing is the process of using the tongue to change the facial asymmetry
After some extensive research, I discovered how our tongue affects our mind and body. The tongue is the rudder for the human body when it comes to posture, breathing, and facial development. When it is out of alignment other parts of the body go out of whack and cause issues that may seem unrelated.
Mewing – Be Aware Where You Place Your Tongue
The mewing trend was started by British orthodontist, Dr. Mike Mew. According to him, tongue placement affects so many aspects of our body beginning with our face. It is a do-it-yourself facial restructuring technique involving tongue re-training. His talks on Youtube are eye-opening.
Mewing involves flattening out the tongue against underneath the maxilla (the roof of the mouth). This re-positioning of the tongue helps to activate good nasal breathing and improves our head posture. This in turn positively affects our strength, movement, and vision.
I can personally, vouch that my vision has improved substantially since I began mewing. I have been using my tongue to push up my right eye and miraculously that internal pull I struggled with has diminished. The act of pushing the tongue upwards kind of emotionally pushes our mind to feel more upbeat. The body affects the mind and vice versa.
Over time, the movement is said to help realign your teeth and define your jawline. This I still have to experience but then it’s only a month since I’ve begun.
Of course, like any new habit, repositioning of the tongue may feel odd and difficult. But with gradual practice, we can slowly increase the time we can keep our tongue in that position. It is akin to practicing tongue mindfulness. Being aware and positioning our tongue back to the roof of our mouth. Though, the tongue is supposed to lie cupped against the palate, which is, in fact, its rest position. You could begin by letting the tip of the tongue flicker against the palate.
How The Tongue Controls Your Mind-Body
The muscles of the tongue, are controlled by the hypoglossal nerve also known as the twelfth cranial nerve. It arises from the medulla oblongata, which is a part of the brain stem that connects to the spinal cord., The medulla oblongata is responsible for a number of autonomic (involuntary) functions like breathing, heart, and blood vessel function, digestion, sneezing and swallowing.
According to research. placing the tongue on the roof of your mouth when in a resting position, rather than letting it lie passively at the bottom stimulates your vagus nerve. Thus activating our parasympathetic nervous system to bring on the relaxation response. Moreover, this tongue position also forces us to breathe nasally which helps our body relax.
Thus it makes sense that keeping the tongue in a relaxed position which is on top of the palate will have a calming effect on our body and mind.
Strange how we fail to understand how our tongue can affect so many aspects of our personality. Metaphorically, our tongue is closely connected to our state of mind. We all know the feeling of being tongue-tied when we feel inadequate. Or the times we have to hold our tongue to avoid unpleasantness.
The tongue musculature is intricately connected to our jaw and the throat. Poor tongue position can affect neck stability balance and muscle strength. Keeping your tongue in the correct position improves the neck position which means better body posture.
Mewing To Heal Scoliosis
This information was picked up from the great-work forum and have tried to incorporate it into my healing protocol.
If your left shoulder is the lower one, your left side of the face is possibly more developed than your right side. Your skull will also be leaning towards the more developed side of the face. Mew toward the less developed side. The upper arch on your less developed side may also seem higher than than the more developed side of the arch – this is because scoliosis can cause the impacted side to be compressed into the skull. As you use your tongue to push the weaker side of the face outward, it will not only expand but unwind and assume its proper position and shape.
Ideally, you will eventually reach a posture and facial structure where the tongue can exert a balanced force on the palate. If you are scoliotic, facially asymmetric, and not particularly in tune with your body, it’s likely that what at the moment seems to you like symmetric tongue engagement, is actually not. Thus it can be very insightful to deliberately fight against the scoliotic distortion of the skull until you are sure that the previously slacking neck musculature on the facially weaker side is under your full conscious control and has good muscle tone. This will ensure that the musculature is able to keep the skull in alignment with the spine and the hips, allowing spinal scoliosis to resolve relatively easily with light postural work.
The Flexibility of Cranial Bones
The development of the facial bones is not fixed. The bones of the skull are held together by fibrous joints called sutures. The maxilla, the bone of the mouth is connected to the cranium and face by several sutures. The interesting part is that these sutures are not fused together.
New bone can still be made at the sutures, even in adults. According to recent research, certain sutures do not begin to fuse right up to the ripe age of 68-72 years of age. The potential for maxilla-facial redevelopment is alive even late in adult life. The tongue is a relatively big and strong muscle and can exert plenty of force on the maxilla.
That got me thinking, are there other ways to exercise the tongue. And so I discovered quite a few yogic practices that stretch and massage the tongue.
Tongue Stretch – Simhasana (Lion Pose)
Besides, practicing mewing, I have begun doing the lion’s pose. It is simple and can be done in almost any pose seated, cross-legged position, lying down, or even standing.
You stretch the tongue out as far as possible while opening your eyes wide as possible looking upwards. Check out the video below.
The lion’s pose stretches your entire face, from your eyes, tongue, neck and right down to your entire body You can actually feel the release within the core of your being. This is one yogic pose that is so easy and really found it so very effective
On the psychological level, the act of sticking out one’s tongue/mocking is a primal reflex we adopted as kids when we were angry. Of course, we were admonished for being bad and disrespectful. Over time we learn to repress our emotions which needs to be released if we are to heal.
The lion’s pose effectively liberates the pent-up emotional energy. When you do this pose, think of all those times when you had to bite your tongue, swallow your pride, gag yourself, and feel those suppressed feelings being pushed out
Now, whenever I feel pissed off I stretch out my tongue, the rage and accompanying tension lessens substantially.
Move Out Of FREEZE and Reset Your Nervous System
Tongue – A Powerful Muscle
After practicing mewing and the lion’s pose I have felt so much better emotionally. My vision in my right eye has definitely improved. Developing proper tongue posture and swallow function will help the body to find balance and I believe improves the mind-body connection.
I feel like kicking myself for not discovering the versatility of my tongue – how important it is to the face and posture.
Idiopathic scoliosis is due to the repressing of negative emotions. Our emotional right side is holding on to the pain and the hurt while the analytical left side to trying its best to survive this leads to facial asymmetry. Emotional asymmetry eventually becomes hardened into our psyches and subsequently into our bodies. And the best way to release these ingrained asymmetrical patterns is by using powerful tongue muscle. It works from inside out.
First Thanks for your amazing post and for your hard working we really appreciate, and I want to say that for me I have unsymmetrical body especially the legs and spine and because of habits and I was using more right side in gym now I’ve kind-of fixed the muscle symmetry and I will go to physiotherapy hopping it will help me in symmetry and what I want to say shortly, that hardmewing can give you unsymmetrical face if you have body unbalance, I’m waiting your response about symmetry meowing and your thoughts very soon, thanks much love much respect
Thanks, so glad you found the post helpful. Two factors to keep in mind when healing are 1) how long have you had the asymmetry and 2) your age – the older you are the tougher it is to undo ingrained patterns.
Instead of pushing hard, start with small but consistent practices towards change.
Start with your mind– I found rewiring my earlier beliefs of being not good enough to feel more confident has had a dramatic change in how I hold myself.
Be mindful of your tongue position at all times, at the roof of the mouth, once that becomes reflexive, try pushing it more towards the side which is drooping down – mine is the right side of my face, particularly around the eye area.
Don’t overdo it, expecting overnight changes, your body may go into a defensive state if something feels too different. Check out my article on pandiculation.
Healing takes time, hold on to the belief that you will get better. Good luck
I had upper jaw surgery for an underbite where the surgeon placed my jaw a few mm to the left to match my lower jaw. I developed scoliosis after ten years with a whole host of other problems as a result (varicocele, callus under second big toe on left foot due to more foot strike, left shoulder lower than right, lower back pain). I recently have been mewing and it’s been fixing the left right asymmetry because every time I mew it pushes the right palate up and I hear an audible crack coming from the left side of my neck which is tight. I’m pretty sure my scoliosis and jaw asymmetry will go away in the future just like this article says. That’s how I found this article (through google) and I think what you wrote in this article is absolutely true.
Khaa, so glad to know you found my post helpful. Thanks for sharing and corroborating my theories with regard to the development of idiopathic scoliosis. Good luck in your healing journey.
I read some of your post and it’s amazing how we have exactly the same issues, I also have scoliosis. I have done instintively some of the things you have done like the patch, CO2 tolerance, mewing…
My big battle is the nasal breathing, it’s being really hard for my to breath throw my nose, I always have 1 nostril blocked, and the other not always allows the air pass properly.
I also have a very visible desviated septum.
My right side of the face has a lot of tension, especially in the jaw.
I am twenty years old and I feel that I have to fix this now, or at least be sure I am In the right path
How can I be in touch with you?, I would like to talk with you to make sure I am doing things properly and to ask some questions I already don’t understand.
I am from Spain
Un saludo y gracias.
Glad to know my posts were helpful. At the moment I don’t do personal calls, maybe once I begin my coaching practice.
First, try to access how your current living situation is. Do you feel safe? Unless we feel relatively safe only then can our myofascial tissues relax thus releasing our body armor.
My advice is to keep on believing you can change your body, try to keep that mental picture vivid in your mind. Keep a pic of a body you admire and let that image be stamped into your mind while listening to healing sound music/theta brainwaves.
Most importantly follow some practice to release trauma from the mind, like journaling, therapy, or talking to someone. Find someone who can mirror positivity towards you.
Also, see that you eat healthy food, particularly probiotics. Our gut influences our mental state.
I have found listening to Paul Mackenna Confidence guided meditation very helpful. Find what works for you.
Lastly, I have realized that until one can change our internal landscape only then can our outer reality change. Good luck in your healing, it takes time but small daily effort does lead to incredible changes. You are still young so keep at it.
Wow this is amazing stuff. Thanks
Thanks, Eric so glad you found this helpful. Take care