I've known about mewing for awhile, but now I'm ready to do some research and make it a consistent practice. The pictures on the left are my "natural" tongue posture, resting in the bottom of my mouth with a gap between my top and bottom teeth. The pictures on the right are me doing my best mew (my posture in the side view is terrible because I'm leaning over the bathroom sink). The instant improvement to my appearance is enough to motivate me, but there are a handful of issues that I'm unclear on. I really appreciate any help you guys can offer me.

I'm pretty sure I have a minor or moderate overbite. The lefthand picture of my teeth is me biting down. That's where they have to be if I want my top and bottom molars to contact. My bottom teeth don't touch gums, they press against the back of my incisors, near where they emerge. The righthand picture is what I do when I'm mewing; I push my mandible forward slightly so my top and bottom teeth can rest on each other.

I don't like the idea of advancing my maxilla, because I'm worried it will worsen the convex angle of my face and leave my lower jaw even further behind.

It's easy to get my tongue to press on the front two thirds of my hard palate. The back third can be reached with some hard effort, but my bottom teeth really want to come away from my top teeth, and I can feel it starting to interfere with my airway. The only way I can reach my soft palate is to smile wide and swallow, and then I can't breathe at all.

When I'm mewing comfortably, my tongue spills out into the space between my top and bottom molars, putting very little pressure on my alveolar ridge. I can cram it up there and squeeze it into a smaller width, but that's too tiring to maintain. Otherwise, I can pull the tip of my tongue off my incisors and press it up against my hard palate, barely behind the front ridges. That puts a lot more pressure on the alveolar ridge, but it's still pretty uncomfortable, and my bottom teeth are constantly being pulled back, away from my top teeth.