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Back and up movement = decreased mew indicator line. Forward movement really implies the distance decreases because of this upward counterclockwise rotation
And I don't know about bimax, but most people's maxilla is located too far below their nose and this is downward growth
Did your upper eye area improve? It seems to be the case in your first comparison gif but not so much in the latest one. Do you generally notice a more hooded upper eye appearance, or not really? I'd think fixing your posture would cause less upward pulling on that area but maybe I'm incorrect. Thanks.
It does seem that things such as IMW are the clearest indicators of progress. In looking at my own photos, even the slightest change in angle can completely skew the comparison, to the point where it's not much use. It appears to me that the second photo was taken from a higher angle creating the illusion that the jaw has shrunken back.
Thanks for the description, that's been something I've struggled to get a grasp on.
- Mewing for 6+ months
- IMW: 35mm (no expansion)
- Sleep on the floor without a pillow
- Tape mouth at night
- Continue to emphasise chin-tuck/occipital drive for extended periods
- Chew Mastic Tears for 1 hour every other day
Did your upper eye area improve? It seems to be the case in your first comparison gif but not so much in the latest one. Do you generally notice a more hooded upper eye appearance, or not really? I'd think fixing your posture would cause less upward pulling on that area but maybe I'm incorrect. Thanks.
While under-eye support has increased noticeably, my eyes are as hooded as they have always been.
How is your overbite going ?
Are you moving your upper maxila back and up ? Why and how ?
How is your overbite going ?
Are you moving your upper maxila back and up ? Why and how ?
I wish I knew. I can only say that I experience dozens of daily shifts in the posterior skull, and that these shifts have led to significant cranial expansion. My intention is to let these changes occurr as they want to. Regardless of whether this process leads to the maxilla moving back and up or forward and up in relation to the rest of the skull, I have full confidence that it'll result in a functional and aesthetic improvement, since that is the direction I am already progressing towards.
As for what I'm doing, I am mewing and working on my posture. My overbite has remained more or less the same.
Hi Progress, I saw you telling you applied force with your tongue "up against the base of the skull, down against the chin, forward against the jaws, laterally against the ramus, backward against the spine." How is it possible since mewing consists in putting your tongue against the roof of your mouth ? And btw, what do you think of Myobrace for jaw expansion (especially forward growth) ? I think it is useful to keep a good tongue posture while sleeping. And in addition to mewing, do you do other things to increase your IMW ? And if you do, which particular part of your routine do you attribute to your forehead being much less sloped ?
Sorry for my English (I'm French) and asking so many questions, but your progress really amazes me !
I made the following gif recently and tried to align ears & eyes. The short-haired picture was taken in 2016, and the other picture last week. In this particular comparison it seems that while the rest of the cranium has expanded, the jaws have moved back and up, instead of forward and up. I remember @SUGR1 saying that many adults actually have bimaxillary protrusion. Back then I questioned the claim, but based on this comparison it seems to make more sense.
As for your earlier question regarding the full-body mewing I mentioned, try to perceive the connection between vacuuming your stomach in and suctioning your tongue against the palate. Likewise, try to perceive similar connection between pushing your stomach out in an expansive manner and pushing the tongue against the palate. One should curve your spine forward, and the other backward. In general you should strive to maintain a balance between these two movements.
I think that in this case the camera lens are distorting the real perspective. Try to take photos with the camera lens at a good distance and never too close, because it can make you seem totally different...
Look how his all facial proportions was deformed by perspective of the lens in each photo:
@mangas77 By that description I tried to express how I seek to activate not just the tongue, but the related musculature around it in a way that provides a 3D-like expansion. This is not something I fully subscribe to anymore, but I found t helpful at that point of time. I have no routine, I just mew. Regarding your question about myobrace, that is not my area of expertise nor interest.
@ionezide Yes, I'm aware of this effect. My only current option is to try to minimize its impact.
UPDATE 1/2019:
Left side progression from the past 2 years. Did not find a bearded 'before' for comparison and did not want to shave off my current beard. Changes in forehead, mouth area and nose should be visible regardless.
That old photo really illustrates the progress you've made, way better than the profile shots you posted originally!
You can see that your chin has rotated since the first picture, it's really phenomenal actually. You look like a different person. You actually can see the upswing!
Thanks for documenting your progress so well, it's really invaluable for all us still at the beginning of the process.
- Mewing for 6+ months
- IMW: 35mm (no expansion)
- Sleep on the floor without a pillow
- Tape mouth at night
- Continue to emphasise chin-tuck/occipital drive for extended periods
- Chew Mastic Tears for 1 hour every other day
@mangas77 By that description I tried to express how I seek to activate not just the tongue, but the related musculature around it in a way that provides a 3D-like expansion. This is not something I fully subscribe to anymore, but I found t helpful at that point of time. I have no routine, I just mew. Regarding your question about myobrace, that is not my area of expertise nor interest.
@ionezide Yes, I'm aware of this effect. My only current option is to try to minimize its impact.
UPDATE 1/2019:
Left side progression from the past 2 years. Did not find a bearded 'before' for comparison and did not want to shave off my current beard. Changes in forehead, mouth area and nose should be visible regardless.
Change so impressive it could look like fake! Really congratulations!!!
But I wonder if in the most recent pic you are not protracting the jaw (unintentionally I mean, as a result of the correct oral posture) or you are completely relaxed as in the pic of the before.
Change so impressive it could look like fake! Really congratulations!!!
But I wonder if in the most recent pic you are not protracting the jaw (unintentionally I mean, as a result of the correct oral posture) or you are completely relaxed as in the pic of the before.
I of course have no way of proving you that I'm not, but from what I can say, I kept molars in contact in both pics. Note that it's not just the jaw moving, but the upper lip & tip of the nose too. The possibility of this difference having occurred due to changed camera angle aside, my point is that all these locations are swinging up in unison, an effect that could not be achieved by merely jutting the jaw forward.
Wow your chin came straight forward, incredible. Great work Progress
Change so impressive it could look like fake! Really congratulations!!!
But I wonder if in the most recent pic you are not protracting the jaw (unintentionally I mean, as a result of the correct oral posture) or you are completely relaxed as in the pic of the before.
I of course have no way of proving you that I'm not, but from what I can say, I kept molars in contact in both pics. Note that it's not just the jaw moving, but the upper lip & tip of the nose too. The possibility of this difference having occurred due to changed camera angle aside, my point is that all these locations are swinging up in unison, an effect that could not be achieved by merely jutting the jaw forward.
So your hypothesis is that you have had a real skeletal advancement of the jaw which in turn has been followed by the mandible, if I understand correctly.
how old were you in the 1st picture ?
@scerif If we assume that such advancement has taken place, it would indeed mean that the mandible has been able to follow the upper jaw. Even with 10 mm of expansion, the feel of my occlusion has not changed much, or the change has been slow enough as to remain imperceptible.
@catirl I had recently turned 24. I'm 26 now.
Thanks for sharing. Definitely rooting for you to spontaneously decide you don't need a beard though.
@scerif If we assume that such advancement has taken place, it would indeed mean that the mandible has been able to follow the upper jaw. Even with 10 mm of expansion, the feel of my occlusion has not changed much, or the change has been slow enough as to remain imperceptible.
@catirl I had recently turned 24. I'm 26 now.
If it wasn't a skeletal change, what could have caused these sensational changes? Did you have retroclined teeth at the beginning?
In any case, I noticed that your maxilla has come forward and upward a lot, incredible! 😯
@scerif If we assume that such advancement has taken place, it would indeed mean that the mandible has been able to follow the upper jaw. Even with 10 mm of expansion, the feel of my occlusion has not changed much, or the change has been slow enough as to remain imperceptible.
@catirl I had recently turned 24. I'm 26 now.
If it wasn't a skeletal change, what could have caused these sensational changes? Did you have retroclined teeth at the beginning?
In any case, I noticed that your maxilla has come forward and upward a lot, incredible! 😯
I do share your belief that significant upswing has occurred, but I simultaneously realize that there are people who will put the captured difference down to angle, lightning, beard, lens and other factors that tend to change from photo to photo. Rather than claiming this or that, I encourage everyone to come to their own conclusions.
I have also taken pics of a ruler showing my mew indicator line. Once this changes noticeably (it hasn't yet), I will be able to provide more quantifiable evidence of the change that has taken place.
UPDATE 1 / 2019
Left side progression from the past 2 years. Did not find a bearded 'before' for comparison and did not want to shave off my current beard. Changes in forehead, mouth area and nose should be visible regardless.
Dude this is an insanely good before and after comparison. Congrats! Did you have any asymmetry in the before that has improved now?
@scerif If we assume that such advancement has taken place, it would indeed mean that the mandible has been able to follow the upper jaw. Even with 10 mm of expansion, the feel of my occlusion has not changed much, or the change has been slow enough as to remain imperceptible.
@catirl I had recently turned 24. I'm 26 now.
If it wasn't a skeletal change, what could have caused these sensational changes? Did you have retroclined teeth at the beginning?
In any case, I noticed that your maxilla has come forward and upward a lot, incredible! 😯
I do share your belief that significant upswing has occurred, but I simultaneously realize that there are people who will put the captured difference down to angle, lightning, beard, lens and other factors that tend to change from photo to photo. Rather than claiming this or that, I encourage everyone to come to their own conclusions.
I have also taken pics of a ruler showing my mew indicator line. Once this changes noticeably (it hasn't yet), I will be able to provide more quantifiable evidence of the change that has taken place.
Except for the beard, the two photos are very similar and I find no other explanation for the differences than a real advancement of the maxilla and mandible too. Looks like your bite is class 1 now, but if I were you, I'd be dying to do a cephalometric analysis to assess it.
@scerif If we assume that such advancement has taken place, it would indeed mean that the mandible has been able to follow the upper jaw. Even with 10 mm of expansion, the feel of my occlusion has not changed much, or the change has been slow enough as to remain imperceptible.
@catirl I had recently turned 24. I'm 26 now.
If it wasn't a skeletal change, what could have caused these sensational changes? Did you have retroclined teeth at the beginning?
In any case, I noticed that your maxilla has come forward and upward a lot, incredible! 😯
I do share your belief that significant upswing has occurred, but I simultaneously realize that there are people who will put the captured difference down to angle, lightning, beard, lens and other factors that tend to change from photo to photo. Rather than claiming this or that, I encourage everyone to come to their own conclusions.
I have also taken pics of a ruler showing my mew indicator line. Once this changes noticeably (it hasn't yet), I will be able to provide more quantifiable evidence of the change that has taken place.
Except for the beard, the two photos are very similar and I find no other explanation for the differences than a real advancement of the maxilla and mandible too. Looks like your bite is class 1 now, but if I were you, I'd be dying to do a cephalometric analysis to assess it.
I actually have moderate overbite, which hasn't changed much during the past two years. I suspect that mewing alone won't be enough to resolve it:
@gubbbbb Asymmetry has remained the same. It's something I'm going to focus more on in the upcoming months.
@Progress, Not sure how often you respond to posts here, but I would be really interested to know whether you have dabbled in thumb/face pulling at any point.
The more time I spend on this forum, the more it seems that the people who have made clear, observable progress, have pulled their face at one point.
Have you tried face pulling at any point in your journey, and what are your perspectives on whether it's essential to cranial restructuring?
Since my changes have been so subtle, I try to hold back the impulse to oversell them. There are people who think my face has changed remarkably, and people who question whether or not my face has changed at all. I understand both point of views. Pictures taken at close distance can lie a lot, to the extent that it can be hard to remain objective. If I had the means to track my progress with actual 3D scans, I of course would.
I tried NCR and belt-pulling early in my journey back in 2016. Based on @greensmoothies and @achilles1 anecdotes in this thread, I might experiment with frequent thumb-pulling in the near future in an attempt to achieve disarticulation in the mid-palatal suture. The changes I have acquired so far I attribute to hard mewing and palatal expansion. I have kept track of my inter-molar width, and it seems that the palate has widened roughly at a pace of 1mm/month:
37 mm 7/2018
38 mm 8/2018
39 mm 8/2018
40 mm 9/2018
41 mm 9/2018
42 mm 10/2018
43 mm 11/2018I made the following gif recently and tried to align ears & eyes. The short-haired picture was taken in 2016, and the other picture last week. In this particular comparison it seems that while the rest of the cranium has expanded, the jaws have moved back and up, instead of forward and up. I remember @SUGR1 saying that many adults actually have bimaxillary protrusion. Back then I questioned the claim, but based on this comparison it seems to make more sense.
As for your earlier question regarding the full-body mewing I mentioned, try to perceive the connection between vacuuming your stomach in and suctioning your tongue against the palate. Likewise, try to perceive similar connection between pushing your stomach out in an expansive manner and pushing the tongue against the palate. One should curve your spine forward, and the other backward. In general you should strive to maintain a balance between these two movements.
Based solely on the nasolabial angle... it looks like your maxilla actually retruded. Mine did as well with my Mewing attempt. I did finally get it to come forward this week by just grabbing it and pulling it. I'm lovin' my new look. I put my thumbs behind my top incisors and my index fingers right up top (pointing at each other). It seemed to work! Crazy, huh? I'm watching my condyles. I'm going to sew some tennis balls to the back of my pajamas so I don't sleep on my back. It seems that when/if things get loose that they are more likely to move around and can even revert.
I attempted to pull in such as way that if I do get gaps, that they're not right in the front.
@Progress, Not sure how often you respond to posts here, but I would be really interested to know whether you have dabbled in thumb/face pulling at any point.
The more time I spend on this forum, the more it seems that the people who have made clear, observable progress, have pulled their face at one point.
Have you tried face pulling at any point in your journey, and what are your perspectives on whether it's essential to cranial restructuring?
Since my changes have been so subtle, I try to hold back the impulse to oversell them. There are people who think my face has changed remarkably, and people who question whether or not my face has changed at all. I understand both point of views. Pictures taken at close distance can lie a lot, to the extent that it can be hard to remain objective. If I had the means to track my progress with actual 3D scans, I of course would.
I tried NCR and belt-pulling early in my journey back in 2016. Based on @greensmoothies and @achilles1 anecdotes in this thread, I might experiment with frequent thumb-pulling in the near future in an attempt to achieve disarticulation in the mid-palatal suture. The changes I have acquired so far I attribute to hard mewing and palatal expansion. I have kept track of my inter-molar width, and it seems that the palate has widened roughly at a pace of 1mm/month:
37 mm 7/2018
38 mm 8/2018
39 mm 8/2018
40 mm 9/2018
41 mm 9/2018
42 mm 10/2018
43 mm 11/2018I made the following gif recently and tried to align ears & eyes. The short-haired picture was taken in 2016, and the other picture last week. In this particular comparison it seems that while the rest of the cranium has expanded, the jaws have moved back and up, instead of forward and up. I remember @SUGR1 saying that many adults actually have bimaxillary protrusion. Back then I questioned the claim, but based on this comparison it seems to make more sense.
As for your earlier question regarding the full-body mewing I mentioned, try to perceive the connection between vacuuming your stomach in and suctioning your tongue against the palate. Likewise, try to perceive similar connection between pushing your stomach out in an expansive manner and pushing the tongue against the palate. One should curve your spine forward, and the other backward. In general you should strive to maintain a balance between these two movements.
Based solely on the nasolabial angle... it looks like your maxilla actually retruded. Mine did as well with my Mewing attempt. I did finally get it to come forward this week by just grabbing it and pulling it. I'm lovin' my new look. I put my thumbs behind my top incisors and my index fingers right up top (pointing at each other). It seemed to work! Crazy, huh? I'm watching my condyles. I'm going to sew some tennis balls to the back of my pajamas so I don't sleep on my back. It seems that when/if things get loose that they are more likely to move around and can even revert.
I attempted to pull in such as way that if I do get gaps, that they're not right in the front.
Yes, that's like the thumb pulling that a few of us do here. The anchor points I use are on the palate and then my index fingers on my forehead. I do believe it works to bring the maxilla up and forwards, although you're the first person other than myself to clearly mention experiencing this effect. Pulling behind the incisors may be better than pulling from the 2nd molars like most of us who thumb pull do here because pulling from the back will bring the zygos out a lot. Mine came out too much so I switched up to pulling from behind the incisors for a while. Also, yes sleeping on the back when I do this seems counterproductive, Mew has mentioned that back sleeping isn't ideal for bringing the maxilla up and forwards as well. I haven't seen evidence of mewing bringing the maxilla up and forward yet, so these manual adjustments have proven to me to be quite helpful.
Remember this pain... and let it activate you.
Posted by: scerif
Except for the beard, the two photos are very similar and I find no other explanation for the differences than a real advancement of the maxilla and mandible too. Looks like your bite is class 1 now, but if I were you, I'd be dying to do a cephalometric analysis to assess it.
Posted by: Progress
I actually have moderate overbite, which hasn't changed much during the past two years. I suspect that mewing alone won't be enough to resolve it:
Hm 🤔, this is very strange! Your chin seems to have definitely come forward, yet you say that your overbite is always the same, I don't think the picture is misleading so maybe the reason is that the mandible has followed the maxilla forward, and that's why your bite has not changed. But I'd like to know what think about it @admin @abdulrahman @eddiemoney @Varbrah. Do you think his deep bite will work out?
Your thumb pulling experiences are very interesting @greensmoothies @Darkindigo. Could you explain in more detail your routines? How many times a day and for how many minutes at a time? And with how much strength? Thank you very much 😆
This actually shows a difference, even with the beard and sweater your lower lower jaw appears to have moved forward and neck moved back and up. It would be better of course if you eliminated those differences.
I actually have moderate overbite, which hasn't changed much during the past two years. I suspect that mewing alone won't be enough to resolve it:
@gubbbbb Asymmetry has remained the same. It's something I'm going to focus more on in the upcoming months.
This is two years difference, which is before and after?
my story: http://www.aljabri.com/blog/my-story/
I have often thought that there is something Tardis like to the mouth. I find it very difficult to see expansion in the upper teeth in the photos Progress presents. I can only see it in relation to the bottom teeth on the assumption that they have not tipped in the process. The pictures of his face show a wonderful improvement. If I were just to see the two sets of photos I would imagine he had been doing belt facepulling in Dons Johns’ method. Dons Johns asserts that his method can widen the palate too, but in the last photos I saw from him there was little evidence that he had succeeded. For what Progress calls ‘body Mewing’ (ugh) his descriptions of the work he has done are masterful and wonderfully fine. He is a yogin. I came to Mewing at what is hopefully the end of a long quest to fix my twisted body and skull, and to be rid of the pain and debility that it caused me. So far so good. I was not interested in facial aesthetics and really cared not a jot for how my teeth looked. Because this is my primary aim, I hang on Progrees’s every word. I have come to realise that now I have acquired another aim which is the proper accommodation of the tongue and achieving full contact with the roof of the mouth. By this I mean something a bit beyond being able to get it fully up there. I see this as important for some of the subtler functions of the body, in short hormonal and nervous. I can see also that I am not going to be fully satisfied until I have an aesthetically pleasing result after so much effort. After half a lifetime of wearing my teeth in the wrong place and so wearing them down, I am never going to have Charlton Heston’s teeth, but I have a sense of the result that would satisfy and happily I suspect it will arrive at the same time as full and proper accommodation of the tongue. I do think this will come with Mewing. I would be interested to know what Progress thinks will be his way, other than Mewing, to achieve it.
Measurement is such a difficult thing. I accept that IMW is the best we have got, but it is not very good. I have measured increases in it and been surprised, because I did not think I had made progress since last measuring. I have done a lot of measurements, probably too many but all will understand the need for encouragement in this horribly slow work. More interestingly I have gone through periods when I have been delighted by how much more space I have been achieving for my tongue and time and time again my IMW is the same. I do have tipped teeth but this is a bit more than me creating a bulbous cavern above tipped in teeth. The movement achieved by Mewing is just incomprehensibly complex. I half believe what my tongue tells me, but even though I am forcing it to face the truth that it avoided all my life by retreating in my mouth, I know that it is by its soft and malleable nature a coward and a liar and that I should not fully trust what it tells me. Ultimately I proceed on a large amount of blind faith and the idea that I will just know when this work is done, probably when the Tardis effect is finished.
All this being said I have achieved significant amounts on IMW and the look of my teeth (as an aside they are so much whiter for being more in the right place and better aligned), just not when or how I expected to.
Has your palatal expansion been due to proper oral posture or are you using some sort of palatal expander? Absolutely magnificent work, as a 24yo male I am very encouraged to keep working thanks to your bravery in posting these photos.
@abdulrahman The above is an earlier one. Not that it should matter, since not much change is visible.
@odys Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Like you, I am mostly working from the premise that complete postural correction is the foundation upon which the whole process is built. As such, I trust that the physical body in itself is a sufficient tool for resolving malgrowth, i.e. asymmetries and recession. The work is hard and painstaking, but also rewarding and inspiring. I feel like the physical changes are accompanied with subtle mental & spiritual changes. Based on these changes, I suspect that the manner in which your skull & spine are twisted may determine the kind of limitations that you face in your wellbeing, in the form of neurofeedback. Since nervous system is fundamentally asymmetric in its nature* there could possibly be different symptoms that arise depending on whether the balance of your posture & cranial structure is leaning towards the left or right.
* Think of the functional difference between left & right brain hemispheres and how each side is linked to the ears, eyes and limbs of the opposite side. It has for example been proven that right ear is better at perceiving short, sudden sounds (linked to the detail-oriented left hemisphere) and left ear slower, static sounds (linked to the big-picture oriented right hemisphere).
@bael All expansion has come from postural correction.
@progress I misunderstood. When you wrote you suspected that mewing would not be enough, I thought you were referring to orthodontic help. I find myself a bit of tipping and centering short of what I imagine is a point of satisfaction (still an imagined point of satisfaction has loomed just in front of me like a mirage for a couple of years now). Impatient to find an end to this and also worried that I enjoy it too much, I repeatedly ask myself if I should not be getting orthodontic help in tipping and centering. The idea makes me shudder and then rationally I convince myself that it is not the right way to proceed. I cling to a remark Mike Mew made about us being surprised at how fast things will move at the end. Well things do speed up but not enough yet for the point of satisfaction to come.
I think that such progress as I seek is in part going to be down to ever more subtle work in habit and posture. But I think of that subtle work as having primarily to do with removing obstacles to movement or forces which encourage relapse from movement. I think of misalignment in the teeth as being more strongly set than misalignment in the body. While it is all a two way street the experience of my life has been that it was misalignment of my jaw as a result of orthodontic work that twisted my body and that no amount of work to straighten my body without fixing my jaw has had much effect that was not temporary and requiring constant maintenance. I do not believe that any body work resulted in improvement in my jaw until I began to work there directly by Mewing.
Trusting in my level of awareness of my jaw and face to protect me from harm (bit reckless, perhaps), believing that that the teeth are by nature for their function made to cope with short sharp shallow force (more than they they are to the sustained unremitting force that orthodontics submit them to), and seeing that orthodontists do tip teeth in adults (for the most part that is all they seem to achieve with adults), I have set more directly to tipping my teeth by pulsation of tongue in various positions.
In terms of tongue position I adopt the heresy that having your tongue pushing on the roof of your mouth 100% of the time might do wonders for the breadth of your palate and the position of your maxilla but that you might just end up with a bulbous cavern and tipped in teeth. I consider that the ease in the face of the beautiful is not a manifestation of matched and opposing great forces of tongue and jaw that by a lifetime’s practice look easy. Craniofacial dystrophy and narrow palates result from the tongue withdrawing to the lower jaw completely so as to mouthbreathe effectively or to transmit misery by the appearance of the face. I do not consider that living part of the time with the tongue slightly lowered from the palate is wrong. It is a position of greater ease. Smiling feels more natural than in a conscious Mew. I have not made a study of it but those I have asked tell me that is where they think they keep their tongue in repose. When I ask someone this they are in a conversation and poised for speech or smiling so it is perhaps not even the position for solitary repose. Naturally in effort or motion the tongue rises firmly to roof of the mouth to provide useful feedback for balance and a strengthening of the body’s structure. My favourite for generating this is lifting weights in a standing bicep curl.
Perfect teeth are created by millions of tiny nudges by the tongue in correct position. These nudges are not naturally created by conscious movement of the tongue but by it adopting its natural position as the body moves in a healthy active life. It strikes me that this is one reason why there is a positive correlation between sedentary people and bad teeth. Of course that too is a two way street. In seeking to correct our bad teeth we are in the position of trying to pack all these helpful nudges, or the effect of them, into a short time to fix things soonest. It is by excess in this endeavour that we approach danger.
The lower my tongue the less I think pulsing it is the correct way to micmic the natural nudges and the more I restrict myself to creating them by movement of the head and body and to holding the tongue less rigidly as I do. I also use this in an attempt to create width in my lower teeth. These have expanded but lag behind a bit, but they are important. It was the extraction of a single lower incisor and closing of the gap that started my whole disaster.
I proceed with caution in this. It seems wise that it is something I do only part of the time. I have a general thought that the more exercises I deploy in this the less likely it is that I will do any enough for it to be dangerous or cause something to go wrong. I hope I have been clear enough for you to get my drift, but also hope that I have been opaque enough for others less well prepared not to. I will be interested to hear your thoughts on this, particularly if you think I have gone dangerously mad.
@bael All expansion has come from postural correction.
Then wow, wow wow. This is some serious improvements, I'm amazed. Congrats.
I admit I kind of contradicted myself. I am trying to say that >95% of the work, including reversing asymmetry, will likely be completed by posture alone. However, my lateral incisors and canines are surrounded by unsightly gaps (which aren't visible in the pics I posted). Since I'm not sure how much these gaps play into my overbite, nor if maxillary upswing can improve their condition in any way, I think it's possible that I may have to undergo some orthodontic work after all this is done. This would only be a minor correction even in the worst case.
It seems reasonable to assume that whatever is caused by improper posture will be resolved by proper posture. In your case though, with tooth extraction and the subsequent shifting of the whole dental arch as the original trigger of your postural collapse, the matter may be more complex than that. Still, ultimately I'd like to believe that the musculature can be trained to work around the odd-numberness of the teeth ( especially of the lower dental arch) in a way that allows your skull to eventually settle into a state of permanently improved balance.
You are wise to move forward with caution and to incorporate a wide range of exercises. The larger the variety of yoga-like movements you create for yourself, and the more thoroughly you learn to engage your body while performing them, the better off you will be. As the body begins to unwind from its asymmetries you will perceive greater contrast and separation between the balanced body and the imbalanced palate, giving you stronger cues as to how exactly your head is malpositioned relative to the spine and the hips.
@abdulrahman The above is an earlier one. Not that it should matter, since not much change is visible.
Sorry I am not clear about this because you mentioned earlier that your IMW expanded by 10mm. In this picture set there is practically no difference in the upper teeth width. Just to be clear the before picture was taken 2 years ago and after picture is recent?
my story: http://www.aljabri.com/blog/my-story/
@scerif
Oh boy, I feel stupid now. The pics in the dental comparison I posted were both taken in 2016. Here is the correct comparison, left is from 2016 and right from this month:
@scerif
Oh boy, I feel stupid now. The pics in the dental comparison I posted were both taken in 2016. Here is the correct comparison, left is from 2016 and right from this month:
The difference is clear here you have expansion on both upper and lower arches, more so on your left side. Most of the change has taken place at the back, less at the front.
my story: http://www.aljabri.com/blog/my-story/
@scerif
Oh boy, I feel stupid now. The pics in the dental comparison I posted were both taken in 2016. Here is the correct comparison, left is from 2016 and right from this month:
The difference is clear here you have expansion on both upper and lower arches, more so on your left side. Most of the change has taken place at the back, less at the front.
I agree with your assessment. The anterior palate has remained unchanged throughout the process and I have been unintentionally expanding asymmetrically by pushing right side of the posterior tongue more up and left side more to the side. Currently trying to train the tongue to do the opposite of this.
I agree with your assessment. The anterior palate has remained unchanged throughout the process and I have been unintentionally expanding asymmetrically by pushing right side of the posterior tongue more up and left side more to the side. Currently trying to train the tongue to do the opposite of this.
This is due to your scoliosis, what type do you have S or C, and what is the degree?
my story: http://www.aljabri.com/blog/my-story/
I agree with your assessment. The anterior palate has remained unchanged throughout the process and I have been unintentionally expanding asymmetrically by pushing right side of the posterior tongue more up and left side more to the side. Currently trying to train the tongue to do the opposite of this.
This is due to your scoliosis, what type do you have S or C, and what is the degree?
I no longer have scoliosis, and what I had was not properly diagnosed - sorry to disappoint you.
I no longer have scoliosis, and what I had was not properly diagnosed - sorry to disappoint you.
What did you have?
my story: http://www.aljabri.com/blog/my-story/
I no longer have scoliosis, and what I had was not properly diagnosed - sorry to disappoint you.
What did you have?
I would describe it as complex scoliotic collapse of the core musculature. Everything was out of balance from toes to head: one of my feet pointed more outward than the other, the sides of my hips were at different height, abs vertically out of alignment, uneven shoulders, head leaning to one side. It was like a zig-zag pattern, in which every part of the body was simultaneously either too backward/forward and too high/low relative to its opposing side. Here are a couple of visualizations of the problem:
By looking at your photos it seems there is truth to the belief that the lower arch expands with palate expansion.
By looking at your photos it seems there is truth to the belief that the lower arch expands with palate expansion.
This is how it seems to be. The change is occurring slowly that there is no discernible difference in occlusion from day to day.
I would describe it as complex scoliotic collapse of the core musculature. Everything was out of balance from toes to head: one of my feet pointed more outward than the other, the sides of my hips were at different height, abs vertically out of alignment, uneven shoulders, head leaning to one side. It was like a zig-zag pattern, in which every part of the body was simultaneously either too backward/forward and too high/low relative to its opposing side. Here are a couple of visualizations of the problem:
It sounds like you had a functional scoliosis or a major muscle asymmetry. What was the wrong diagnoses you were given before?
By the way the curve in the picture above is a C shape, is that what you had?
my story: http://www.aljabri.com/blog/my-story/
I would describe it as complex scoliotic collapse of the core musculature. Everything was out of balance from toes to head: one of my feet pointed more outward than the other, the sides of my hips were at different height, abs vertically out of alignment, uneven shoulders, head leaning to one side. It was like a zig-zag pattern, in which every part of the body was simultaneously either too backward/forward and too high/low relative to its opposing side. Here are a couple of visualizations of the problem:
It sounds like you had a functional scoliosis or a major muscle asymmetry. What was the wrong diagnoses you were given before?
By the way the curve in the picture above is a C shape, is that what you had?
I meant that I was not officially diagnosed. I self-diagnosed myself, which is why the original degree of curvature remains unknown. Yes, C shape it is then.
@progress Your results are astounding! You look like a completely different person. I have a question about the curvature you said you had in your spine that disappeared and full body mewing. I was diagnosed with scoliosis at a young age shortly after I had tooth extractions and was fitted with braces. I was told my scoliosis was genetic and was given a heal lift to compensate for a "short leg" which made it worse. I later threw my heal lift away and started surfing instead which improved my back problems considerably. I still have an abnormal curvature in my spine and one shoulder is higher than the other but my back pain has almost completely vanished since I started making a conscious effort to work on my posture several years ago. My question is, do you practice any specific exercises that helped with that? I understand that you practice chin tucking and stomach vacuums. I too have just started doing this, but I'm wondering how often you do this or is it an all day thing. Also do you "hard mew" all day or is it mostly "soft mewing" all day? Thank you for your help.
The uptodate photo puts a very different perspective on things. Do you think the ‘unintentional’ pushing up on the right and out on the left was set by habit of the tongue,the shape of your mouth, the shape/tilt of your head or a curve in your neck, or bit of all? For me now the same pushing of the tongue appears to be determined by the misshapenness of my mouth, which I seek to correct. This becomes most obvious to me by bowing my head with my tongue on my palate.
This unintentional seemingly imbalanced tongue pushing seems to have widened what seems to be the narrower side of your mouth. I begin to wonder if it is something you should be balancing out by intentionally doing it in the opposite way, or whether the unintentional choice is just the proper corrective that a level tongue arising out of a balanced body is demanding of your mouth.
My scoliotic collapse was much like one of your diagrams though right foot everted, left side of neck tighter, right side of jaw wider and lower. I take the view that the tilting of my jaw is part of, and largely the seed of, my scoliosis. I remember in Moreno Conte’s book there were diagrams like the ones you posted showing a snaking collapse. First one shoulder rising and then the next. I have at times been adopting intentionally corrective tongue posture as part of attempts to fix a narrower left shoulder and tighter left neck, but in between my tongue posture has been unintentional also. I have feeling that this unintentional tongue posture has shifted from side to side as I have unwound the snaking collapse beneath my neck.
I like to do an Indian head nod to assess lateral balance, and also just because I can now the top of my cervical spine is not jammed tight as it has been since as far back as I remember. It seems to give a little more information than standing straight and bowing my head.
I have a twist to my structural collapse that brings my left side forward from head to toe. It is not as gruesome as description makes it sound but my face is to a small degree turning to the right. I have found this much more difficult to tackle than any lateral shifts. Have you had to deal with this at all?
@odys I think the kind of tongue posturing I mentioned was a habit created by the asymmetric shape of the palate. Even though the rest of my body had achieved a better state of balance, my head was not properly positioned on top of the spine. Due to this, most of my development had occurred on the left side of the face, which may explain why the changes are so contradictory in the earlier photos that I took of the right side, versus the recent, more obvious left side comparison. Now that I began focusing on mewing towards the right side, doing so felt very unnatural, and I had to take few days to consciously re-position the head in relation to the shoulders. Now a week later I'm already able to provide more consistent pressure towards that side, and my spine feels more balanced.
So to answer your question: I don't think the subconscious/unintentional direction of the tongue posture is necessarily an optimal direction to push towards. A balanced tongue posture in an unbalanced skull can feel unintuitive.
Since you have had similar doubts, I should warn you that it can be surprisingly hard to identify the direction into which the tongue should be pushed towards. I have changed my opinion 5-10 times in the last two years. Weirdly, each time I switched the preferred side, I was able to ascend to a higher level of anatomic function, so perhaps such back-and-forth vacillating is not completely unproductive. The actually unproductive part was the assumption that I had finally found "the proper way" of mewing every time I made a correction.
I have a twist to my structural collapse that brings my left side forward from head to toe. It is not as gruesome as description makes it sound but my face is to a small degree turning to the right. I have found this much more difficult to tackle than any lateral shifts. Have you had to deal with this at all?
Definitely. It all takes place in three dimensions: when one side is lower/higher than the other, that side is usually also more forward/backward than the other. The best kind of exercises are those where the body is rotate or twisted to its maximum range of motion. For example, you could sit down on a chair and try to rotate your hips to one way and the shoulders to the opposite way as much as they go, trying to recruit the sleeping muscles along the way into the motion.
My question is, do you practice any specific exercises that helped with that? I understand that you practice chin tucking and stomach vacuums. I too have just started doing this, but I'm wondering how often you do this or is it an all day thing. Also do you "hard mew" all day or is it mostly "soft mewing" all day? Thank you for your help.
@timbertiger I do all kinds of light postural work throughout the day, lazily based on what I feel like doing. For the most part, I try to twist and flex my body in various ways. If I don't feel like putting in effort, I don't feel bad for taking 1-3 days off.
Rather than strictly hard mewing or soft mewing, what I'm doing could be described as dynamic mewing. Whenever I'm performing some movement in my daily life, I try to determine the force with which the tongue needs to press against the palate in order to provide sufficient postural support. If I'm walking in the forest or other demanding environment, I may maintain a static hold of moderate force. If I'm lying on the bed, I maintain a soft hold. I also have brief sessions of pushing very hard a few times a day.
Wow, the difference in your arches is amazing. This is precisely what I hope to achieve with mewing. To widen my top and bottom arches, reduce my buccal corridors and get better lip support. Thank you for the comparison photos.
Hey, your progress is amazing however you mentioned you plan to work on asymmetries. That is my main issue too. After 2 months of mewing my jaw has come forward nicely, my mandible is not that much of a problem when it comes to forward growth so it went fast,however my maxilla is, what’s even worse it’s both vertically and horizontally asymmetric. So after this 2 months I realized my main problem is obvious asymmetry. My palate is wider,forward but down on the left side and right side is narrow, up but pushed back, my maxilla and mandible look just the same, so overall my face looks pretty messed up. I found out my right shoulder was more tensed and muscle was constantly activated and I kind of pushed it unconsciously back. Weird thing is, that I realized that my face got this messed not that long ago, Im 26 and I found a pic when I was 21 and my face was much better developed, right side was nicely forward instead pushed back and jaw was visibly pushed forward. So I was looking for the reason what caused this significant worsening of my facial development and I can only think of one thing.In 2014 I injured my meniscus however the damage was not the acute one that would require surgery so it was supposed to get better and become somewhat chronic, which was right after some time my knee was 100% usable but I could never fully extend it, so I would always for example stand with my left knee bent a bit and my right knee would receive bigger force applied to it as it was basically working more because of my left knee. Long story short 2 weeks ago I got some energetic healing work done on my knee and from that time I can stand on it while it’s fully extend, hard to say if I could not extend it due to a fear or the muscles got really shortened there even though I stretched and worked out but I dont even care, I can extend it fully now and that is amazing. Now it is only my theory but could this cause an imbalance that would affect everything from knees up to spine and of course craniofacial area? Well the fact that my left knee was bent a bit for years, and somewhere around 2016 I noticed that something has happened to my face, my left side of face “fell” down and since my right knee had to handle twice as much pressure, the entire right side of body became more tensed so my right face pushed back more? I have no idea if knee could affect that. I always had overall bad posture which Ive been trying to fix during last few months, same with proper tongue posture, swallowing, mouth closed etc. My head is not forward anymore, my spine is somewhat straight, I consciously stopped activating right shoulder so Im aware and work on overall postural and muscle imbalances in my entire body, but I feel like Im hopeless with asymmetry of my palate, right side need to be pushed forward and out as it needs to be wider, while left side needs to be pushed up. And I dont know how to effectively work on both of these things. What do you think would be the best way to fix this asymmetry? Thanks
Maybe it's just me but I literally see no difference that couldn't just be attributed to the facial hair/lighting.
It's just you. His NOSE has improved definition, for heaven's sake. The buccinator area is less puffy, the lips are sealed and more sculpted, the chin has clearly moved forward, the forehead is more upright. The OP should feel fantastic about these changes.
@Progress, Not sure how often you respond to posts here, but I would be really interested to know whether you have dabbled in thumb/face pulling at any point.
The more time I spend on this forum, the more it seems that the people who have made clear, observable progress, have pulled their face at one point.
Have you tried face pulling at any point in your journey, and what are your perspectives on whether it's essential to cranial restructuring?
Since my changes have been so subtle, I try to hold back the impulse to oversell them. There are people who think my face has changed remarkably, and people who question whether or not my face has changed at all. I understand both point of views. Pictures taken at close distance can lie a lot, to the extent that it can be hard to remain objective. If I had the means to track my progress with actual 3D scans, I of course would.
I tried NCR and belt-pulling early in my journey back in 2016. Based on @greensmoothies and @achilles1 anecdotes in this thread, I might experiment with frequent thumb-pulling in the near future in an attempt to achieve disarticulation in the mid-palatal suture. The changes I have acquired so far I attribute to hard mewing and palatal expansion. I have kept track of my inter-molar width, and it seems that the palate has widened roughly at a pace of 1mm/month:
37 mm 7/2018
38 mm 8/2018
39 mm 8/2018
40 mm 9/2018
41 mm 9/2018
42 mm 10/2018
43 mm 11/2018I made the following gif recently and tried to align ears & eyes. The short-haired picture was taken in 2016, and the other picture last week. In this particular comparison it seems that while the rest of the cranium has expanded, the jaws have moved back and up, instead of forward and up. I remember @SUGR1 saying that many adults actually have bimaxillary protrusion. Back then I questioned the claim, but based on this comparison it seems to make more sense.
As for your earlier question regarding the full-body mewing I mentioned, try to perceive the connection between vacuuming your stomach in and suctioning your tongue against the palate. Likewise, try to perceive similar connection between pushing your stomach out in an expansive manner and pushing the tongue against the palate. One should curve your spine forward, and the other backward. In general you should strive to maintain a balance between these two movements.
you can see progress man you see that your nose is moved a bit forwards
but your lips look weird , it looks like maxillary protrusion somehow
@Progress: So you started mewing 3 years ago, at an IMW of 34mm, right? How long did it took for your palate to expand at least 1mm?
37 mm 7/2018: So in 3 years, your palate expanded 3mm, and then month after month, it progressively expanded faster
How old are you?
Sorry for being honest but I see 0 progress.
Better yet, impossible to see what changed ...
The only thing I see is beard changing.
when I say we cannot see the progress I refer to the chin...
you can see changes in the mouth, and they are positive in my opinion
@mr.mewing
I think the bimax is before
maybe because during mewing he keeps his mouth more closed than before?
or he tapes his mouth during sleep?
@greekgodbrody It's been a very uneven journey. I achieved the majority of the expansion last year, coinciding with the period during which I started taking postural work more seriously. I have now been stuck at around 43-44 mm for several months. I'm born in 1992 and began this journey in 2016.
@dm222 If there was something to show about the chin, I would've of course shaved my beard. In the grand scheme of things, the chin (and mandible at large) is insignificant. Most of the changes I am getting are the midface moving backward due to CCW maxillary rotation. I have now begun complementing this movement by jutting my jaw forward, which activates the lateral pterygoids. The lateral pterygoids are attached to the mandible at the TMJ joint, and to the sphenoid above the sides of the palate. Engaging the pterygoids will thus pull the forementioned two towards each other (since tensing a muscle makes it shorter), which together with the tongue posture should result in a CCW rotation that will resolve my maxillary protrusion, possibly inducing further palatal expansion and improving gonial angle.
When was the first pic? Because your chin looks musch better than the picture you have in the first post
That's interesting. I thought we had the same pattern of CFD but it seems that my maxilla is sunken whereas yours is "tipped over". My midface is protruding with slight CW rotation and our nasolabial angles appear to be changing in opposite ways. I wonder what the reason for this is, pretty sure it isn't that you used to have a posterior-only tongue posture...
Are you just continuously jutting your jaw forward? Have you thought of doing something like stretching a resistance band against the chin and doing reps?
