Off topic but you had mentioned orbital support increase. Did you notice a change in your canthal tilt? Also, what is it you are doing? Standard mewing? 

My eyes are both more symmetrical now and the canthal tilt on both is definitely better

I don't know about all this thumb in the mouth stuff because I doubt many know how to apply to proper pressure in the right direction 

i don't understand how your bite could've gotten worse if youre supposed to keep you teeth closed and barely touching.  Are you sure you didn't do anything extra youre not telling us about?

I've been pushing on my cheekbones some with my fingers, up and out, and sometimes sleeping with a McKenzie chin tuck.

I don't have enough space in my mouth to extend my tongue all the way forward so I've been really just focusing on the posterior tongue.

Posted by: Silver

I've been pushing on my cheekbones some with my fingers, up and out, and sometimes sleeping with a McKenzie chin tuck.

I don't have enough space in my mouth to extend my tongue all the way forward so I've been really just focusing on the posterior tongue.

When I was starting out i just suctioned my tongue to where it fit. It eventually made its way forward all the way. Your tongue can carve out space but it takes time.

Stop this finger ridiculousness now. You probably can't apply even force which is why your bite can't fit well. Let your palate revert and focus on using your tongue. Unless you have the same exact same hand strength in each of your forces I can't see what good can come from this unnatural practice. You are too impatient  

wait so you've been pushing from the inside of your mouth with your fingers? wouldn't that mean you've kept your mouth open which is the opposite of what you should be doing? it'll be fine but just mew normally 

I'm pretty sure I know what happened.

First of all yes your posts have been a bit scary lately, and I understand why you posted in that manner, but those kinds of posts make me and probably others want to keep our distance. This latest post is better though. It sounds like you were able to make some good positive changes even though some bad ones came along with it. I'll talk about that more down in my last post - I made separate posts so that there isn't a giant wall of text.

Before we get into that though, I have to cover what might be the unwritten rules of this place. As far as I know none of us are medical professionals or doctors here. We're all just experimenters trying to figure things out and trying to build on each other's thoughts in order to learn more about reshaping the face and skull. We, or at least I do want to help. I just don't want to give out some advice only to find out that it somehow caused your jaw to fall off and you teeth to shatter into dust. And I certainly don't want to give out advice if it's going to lead to a backlash and more scary posts.

In addition to that, the following seems important to state:

1) I'm not a medical professional

2) Anything you do is at your own risk

3) You should try to solve things to the best of your ability using logic, basic physics, and intuition.

I'm being serious about the above points, especially number two. Ok, moving on.

I have to start off with asking about how you are currently mewing. The last time we talked about this, if you can remember, you were using a suction motion that was actually pulling your maxilla down and back in the wrong direction and caused your molars to tilt like crazy. Do you remember that?

I ask because I then brought up the idea that you could push your tongue forward a bit in order to get the posterior portion up as a solution to that issue. You tried this for about one day based on the forum post timestamps and then you replied with:

But anyways, to get to the point, I'm pretty sure that the cause of your problems is that you are pushing up too much with the back of the tongue only, which is causing the front of your maxillary region to tip down almost like a see-saw. This see-saw motion would explain the major good results you are getting up near the eye and nose region, and it would also explain why your front teeth are now the first to touch when you try and bite and why your jaw is getting pushed back. On top of this you may also be pushing too hard with the tongue and overpowering your jaw, which would also cause some of the same issues. The tongue and the jaw need to be in balance with one another.

Imagine that the green arrow is the part of your maxilla where your posterior tongue pushes up, the red arrow would be the front of your palate that is unsupported by any tongue force. It would go straight down.

So on the topic of tongue posture, pushing up with only the back or only the front of the tongue are both bad postures, there has to be a balance of upward force across the whole palate along with the upward force provided by the teeth being together too. Pushing the tongue forward to get the posterior part up is a temporary thing you do in order to gain more space to be able to fit the tip of your tongue onto the spot and even then you still have to push up with the middle of your tongue too - basically whatever fits into your palate.

Did you gain more forward space yet? If so you need to start using it and mewing normally again. You need to keep your teeth together too, this is what keeps bite issues from happening. Don't push so hard with your tongue in desperation for results that your jaw comes apart.

I don't think your finger pushing experiments are helping much either, but I doubt that it is the main cause. It might be an issue if you do indeed have Marfan's like you stated earlier though, so you should probably look into that. In fact I recommend it. I also recommend the consultation with Mew as well.

That's it, I'm done now. Take my advice if you want but remember the disclaimers I gave above and please try not to make any more scary posts. We're all trying to move forward together here. Ask questions if you are unsure, don't wait until everything falls apart.

Thank you all for the kind and helpful words, especially @Allixa! My posts have definitely been over the top. Every time something changes fast I get kind of freaked out, but Allixa you said that you can undo negative changes, so I won't make those kinds of posts anymore.

Posted by: Allixa

I have to start off with asking about how you are currently mewing. The last time we talked about this, if you can remember, you were using a suction motion that was actually pulling your maxilla down and back in the wrong direction and caused your molars to tilt like crazy. Do you remember that?

I ask because I then brought up the idea that you could push your tongue forward a bit in order to get the posterior portion up as a solution to that issue. You tried this for about one day based on the forum post timestamps and then you replied with:

Well, Allixa, thanks a lot. I tried your idea and I am unequivocally the worse for it. I am about to throw in the towel with all this. I suspect I may have some deformity or condition that makes this a bad idea for me.

 So based on your response I have to ask: did you keep mewing in that way or did you start mewing in a different way? And I have to ask this as well: if you kept mewing in a way that you publicly stated made you worse off, what did you expect to happen? Your answer to this question is important because my last post assumes that you kept mewing in this manner.

Adding to that, in that very same thread after your negative experience post I asked you to see a medical professional about the idea of Marfan's or that your body makes changes way too quickly to be normal, and I also recommended that you should consult with Mew to figure out how to mew for your situation. Those two things were my latest and most important advice to you, not the tongue forward technique. Did you give either of those a shot yet? If not why not? I consider both of those to be important for your situation. You might not need either, but the way you had been posting previously, it almost seemed like without true professional help that you were going to do major damage to yourself.

I did try your idea! I felt a change several hours after figuring out how to do what you meant, for the worse, and it freaked me out a little.

I haven't consulted with Mew because it's £250. (Right?) I'm still on my parents' health care plan and I don't have that kind of money to throw around nor could I convince them it's necessary.

I have actually been to the ER a few times over fast changes to my skull that seriously freaked me out. Once I had incredible eye pain after pulling some phlegm down and could feel one of my eyes move down and saw stars. Eventually the pain went away on its own and I got a CT scan of pretty much my whole head and apparently it was normal. After that, though, I had to tilt my head a little to see straight; I think that's better now. I've mentioned some of this in passing to a few doctors and they've all told me the bones in the skull can't move at all. Don't know if this is relevant but I was diagnosed with acephalgic migraines a month ago, and I am told that this can cause misperceptions, but seeing things in the mirror too? I don't even know where I'd begin if I went to see I guess my primary care physician. I've been taking tons of selfies whenever something feels different, but it's never been obvious enough to definitively say that my face bones were physically different. I have noticed though that over the years my face has sort of naturally vacillated between a relatively optimal bone relationship and something that looks like what I have now, with a CCW rotation and longer face.

The reason I was pushing with my fingers is because when I do, pretty much anywhere upon my face, I can hear little cracks/clicks/pops 95% of the time, and occasionally I can actually feel bones moving. I can still breathe through my nose very well almost all of the time and so my lips are almost always sealed. I do not know if I have been keeping my mouth closed when asleep, but the McKenzie chin tuck seems to make opening my mouth from a slack jaw impossible.

Allixa, I think you're right on the money about how I've just rotated my maxilla. The edge of my hard palate is like in the middle of the roof of my mouth, and pushing on my philtrum feels squishier, like there's space between it and my upper teeth, among other symptoms. My jaw has receded a little and the angle is much worse. It's pretty uncomfortable and my head feels like an underbite of a few millimeters is where my jaw wants to be. My cheekbones also seem to be relatively slowly tilting to match the new jaw angle.

I don't know how I neglected to mention this, but: I haven't actually been mewing, really. I have been doing a lot of swallowing. Correctly, I believe; I've been doing this  /community/community/main-forum/thorough-explanation-of-proper-swallow-oral-posture/ (I read that swallowing exerts several pounds of force) Every time I do, I can jut my jaw forward and I hear a crack and it feels like it upswings a little.

I have almost enough forward space for my tongue but haven't been holding correct posture as of the last few weeks because I can't! I have an pretty high-arched palate. Even now with my rotated maxilla, if I put the tip of my tongue on the papilla and apply suction, I can only maybe make the posterior tongue touch like I've been doing, and it feels like I'm pulling my jaw back into my head. If I put the tip of my tongue higher up, the rest of the tongue seems to be able to touch the roof of my mouth, but then I get a big bulge under my jaw, and it doesn't feel like I'm flexing against anything solid. What should I do? I thought that using suction to put my tongue up where it needs to be was counterproductive. Should I just try to mew with the tip and the posterior third or so?

Thank you all, again, for the huge help and apologies big time for the alarming posts.

EDIT: One more relevant thing, and this puzzles me. One of the occasions when I went to the ER because I could have sworn my face was seriously moving in a big way, one of my nostrils got way wider spontaneously. I and others confirmed to me that they could see that the alar base on one side had noticeably lengthened (asymmetric change).

Today, looking in the mirror and feeling my face I seem to have lost much of that orbital support and my canthal tilt has become more neutral. There's no way it's normal for bones to move this fast, right? But how could I ever persuade a physician that that's what's happening?

Posted by: Silver

Thank you all for the kind and helpful words, especially @Allixa! My posts have definitely been over the top. Every time something changes fast I get kind of freaked out, but Allixa you said that you can undo negative changes, so I won't make those kinds of posts anymore.

Yeah negative changes can be undone through proper mewing. I've done it many times myself. But for me it's a slow process. I still think that your changes are really quick.. if they are actually happening that fast and its not just anxiety or something like that you should definitely try and figure out why your changes come so quickly...

I did try your idea! I felt a change several hours after figuring out how to do what you meant, for the worse, and it freaked me out a little.

I haven't consulted with Mew because it's £250. (Right?) I'm still on my parents' health care plan and I don't have that kind of money to throw around nor could I convince them it's necessary.

I have actually been to the ER a few times over fast changes to my skull that seriously freaked me out. Once I had incredible eye pain after pulling some phlegm down and could feel one of my eyes move down and saw stars. Eventually the pain went away on its own and I got a CT scan of pretty much my whole head and apparently it was normal. After that, though, I had to tilt my head a little to see straight; I think that's better now. I've mentioned some of this in passing to a few doctors and they've all told me the bones in the skull can't move at all. Don't know if this is relevant but I was diagnosed with acephalgic migraines a month ago, and I am told that this can cause misperceptions, but seeing things in the mirror too? I don't even know where I'd begin if I went to see I guess my primary care physician. I've been taking tons of selfies whenever something feels different, but it's never been obvious enough to definitively say that my face bones were physically different. I have noticed though that over the years my face has sort of naturally vacillated between a relatively optimal bone relationship and something that looks like what I have now, with a CCW rotation and longer face.

The reason I was pushing with my fingers is because when I do, pretty much anywhere upon my face, I can hear little cracks/clicks/pops 95% of the time, and occasionally I can actually feel bones moving. I can still breathe through my nose very well almost all of the time and so my lips are almost always sealed. I do not know if I have been keeping my mouth closed when asleep, but the McKenzie chin tuck seems to make opening my mouth from a slack jaw impossible.

Allixa, I think you're right on the money about how I've just rotated my maxilla. The edge of my hard palate is like in the middle of the roof of my mouth, and pushing on my philtrum feels squishier, like there's space between it and my upper teeth, among other symptoms. My jaw has receded a little and the angle is much worse. It's pretty uncomfortable and my head feels like an underbite of a few millimeters is where my jaw wants to be. My cheekbones also seem to be relatively slowly tilting to match the new jaw angle.

I don't know how I neglected to mention this, but: I haven't actually been mewing, really. I have been doing a lot of swallowing. Correctly, I believe; I've been doing this  /community/community/main-forum/thorough-explanation-of-proper-swallow-oral-posture/ (I read that swallowing exerts several pounds of force) Every time I do, I can jut my jaw forward and I hear a crack and it feels like it upswings a little.

I have almost enough forward space for my tongue but haven't been holding correct posture as of the last few weeks because I can't! I have an pretty high-arched palate. Even now with my rotated maxilla, if I put the tip of my tongue on the papilla and apply suction, I can only maybe make the posterior tongue touch like I've been doing, and it feels like I'm pulling my jaw back into my head. If I put the tip of my tongue higher up, the rest of the tongue seems to be able to touch the roof of my mouth, but then I get a big bulge under my jaw, and it doesn't feel like I'm flexing against anything solid. What should I do? I thought that using suction to put my tongue up where it needs to be was counterproductive. Should I just try to mew with the tip and the posterior third or so?

Thank you all, again, for the huge help and apologies big time for the alarming posts.

EDIT: One more relevant thing, and this puzzles me. One of the occasions when I went to the ER because I could have sworn my face was seriously moving in a big way, one of my nostrils got way wider spontaneously. I and others confirmed to me that they could see that the alar base on one side had noticeably lengthened (asymmetric change).

Yeah a consult with mew is expensive and you probably don't need one, I doubt there's much he could tell you, I just didn't want you to do more damage to yourself. But then again maybe he could help you figure out how to mew properly for your situation.. but maybe that info is already in the comment section of some of his videos.. im sure there are others like you who have asked that Q before.

If you're taking selfies when you feel big changes, but you don't end up seeing them, perhaps it's all in your head. I'd say to keep taking lots of selfies and letting the camera be the true judge. Pictures don't lie.. mirrors can. Take photos especially when you feel something huge move next time... and then take one when things are back to normal and see if there really is a difference... if there is then you have evidence to show someone if you ever decide to try and diagnose why its happening.

As for how to mew when your tongue doesn't reach your palate.. that's a tough one. You could be in one of those situations where you have to develop an arsenal of 3-4 different postures that you switch between depending on how things are going and what progress you are making. You just have to take the basics and come up with your own postures until you get more space. Just experiment and play around.. but again be careful.

I know what you mean about the bulge under the jaw.. I used to get that too which is why I started doing the tongue forward technique .. I did it for a few months and now I can mew normally with no bulge and tongue tip on the spot..it took time though but it was better than mewing normally with no space because that felt like I was pushing my jaws apart every time I tried to push up.

Posted by: Allixa

 

I know what you mean about the bulge under the jaw.. I used to get that too which is why I started doing the tongue forward technique .. I did it for a few months and now I can mew normally with no bulge and tongue tip on the spot..it took time though but it was better than mewing normally with no space because that felt like I was pushing my jaws apart every time I tried to push up.

Thank you so much for the reply!  Do you really think that anxiety could cause me to feel things that aren't there?

What's the tongue forward technique?

How can I at least unrotate my maxilla? Jaw is all recessed now and it looks terrible.

Also, how should I swallow?