Generally yeah, the cheeckbones would follow the direction of the arches, as that signifies the shape that your jaw developed, with the further back teeth wider than the front, filling out your buccal corridor region. 

There are also two different orthodontic measurements for the zygomatic arch, and the forward facing part of your cheeckbones (can't recall the name). I also wonder if having a lifetime of not mewing has caused some irreversible zygomatic shaping, whereas if you had been mewing your whole life, these measurements would be closer together than someone who has experienced change as an adult.

But whatever the case, keep mewing until someone loves you!

My face is more symmetrical now, but the cheekbones look lowered and less prominent! What the hell? Can you make yourself look worse from mewing?  http://sluthate.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57189  

No, you cannot look worse from mewing. That guy that made that post is an idiot. How can you possibly look worse from mewing if the tongue is pushing up and out on your palate? Makes no sense. Mewing is the natural state of humans however our environment causes us to have less than ideal posture.

I am definitely more symmetrical. Is this perhaps the first step on the way to looking as good as possible?

Could I be making more problems by mewing during the day and not when I sleep, like a reply to that link said? Could I be pushing things just out of place enough for it to get worse without holding it up 24/7?

Sounds like you are mewing incorrectly. It's very possible to make negative changes if you are doing something wrong. I read your other post about molar issues too. Can you describe to me what your mewing technique is in detail?

Posted by: Allixa

Sounds like you are mewing incorrectly. It's very possible to make negative changes if you are doing something wrong. I read your other post about molar issues too. Can you describe to me what your mewing technique is in detail?

Well I have a very high arched palate and didn't use to have enough transverse space so I folded my tongue until recently. The tip of my tongue is at the alveolar ridge, and to keep the back of my tongue up I swallow and then try and hold that position. I'm not quite sure if I should still fold my tongue or not because it seems like I have enough transverse space now but my palate is so high arched that I can't really connect my tongue to most of it.

Often when I swallow I can feel pressured across the space between my eyebrows and lower forehead. Recently I have noticed that my supraorbital ridge feels more prominent.

I have seen my face definitely get wider, and maybe my midface length decrease. I have felt my mandible swing up like it's supposed to many times, but often after forgetting to mew for a bit or when I wake up in the morning, it seems like it's back.

Can negative changes be reversed with correct technique?

Negative changes can absolutely be reversed once you get the proper technique down. I've done it a couple of times myself.

You might be pushing up too hard with the front of your tongue. Proper mewing is more about the throat than the tongue. Does it feel like your tongue is trying to force your jaws apart when you mew? Does the middle of your face feel like it might be being dragged downwards?

One thing you can try is to forget about the alveolar ridge and just push your tongue as far forward as possible (the front of your tongue will go down into your mouth near your bottom teeth) and then try pushing up with the posterior part of your tongue. If you get it right your adams apple should lift up, your jaws should naturally feel glued together, and there should be no strain in your tongue at all.

Posted by: Allixa

Negative changes can absolutely be reversed once you get the proper technique down. I've done it a couple of times myself.

You might be pushing up too hard with the front of your tongue. Proper mewing is more about the throat than the tongue. Does it feel like your tongue is trying to force your jaws apart when you mew? Does the middle of your face feel like it might be being dragged downwards?

One thing you can try is to forget about the alveolar ridge and just push your tongue as far forward as possible (the front of your tongue will go down into your mouth near your bottom teeth) and then try pushing up with the posterior part of your tongue. If you get it right your adams apple should lift up, your jaws should naturally feel glued together, and there should be no strain in your tongue at all.

My gosh, you're spot on! I was really confused because there definitely was a lot of strain in my tongue. I didn't think that I was supposed to be flexing my submental muscles like that 24/7.  I have a few questions:

I tried your exercise, and it feels right. Where do I go from here? Where should the front of my tongue go? How should I swallow? Should my tongue be folded ever, or when I swallow?

Thank you so much!

edit: wait so how exactly do i push the posterior part of my tongue up? is that basically swallowing?

edit 2: I think that the suction I was creating with my tongue against my high arched palate was pulling my palate down instead of pushing it up!

Yes suction will definitely pull things downwards. That probably why you were getting negative aesthetic effects from your mewing.

As far as finding out the exact correct technique to do, it all depends on your anatomy. When a person has CFD, they have to get creative with their tongue position and posture in order to mew correctly. And when you find something that works, it might only work for a few weeks until your body adjusts you have to find a new posture again. The goal is to be able to have the normal mewing posture with the tip on the ridge and the posterior part up against the palate effortlessly, but that can only happen when there's enough space for the tongue.

So depending on your palate you might only be able to push up with the middle of your tongue, and the tip might be on the ridge, or it might be touching the front teeth, or it might be pushed into the bottom of your mouth. You're just going to have to feel it out and see what positions you can get in. One thing you can try is to bite down lightly and relax your tongue as much as possible, and then clench down with your back teeth and flex your throat and the floor of your mouth and see where your tongue goes. That might be a good place to start mewing from. I don't think folding the tongue is the right thing to do.

You can read this post too to see if it helps clear things up:

He talks about it in the post so I'll bring it up, suction is fine in order to get your tongue into position, but once it is there you have to flip from suction to pushing with your muscles. Really focus on trying to flex your throat and lift your hyoid.

But the main takeaway is that you are going to have to experiment and see what feels right for you, because it's going to be constantly changing as you make progress, so you have to learn how to find the correct technique on your own. Just spend some time in front of a mirror alone until you get it. From your other posts it sounds like your body makes very quick changes so there is a chance you will see some amazing results. I saw you had an issue with pops and clicks and cracks but if you aren't having pain I think that might just be anxiety getting to you. If you're really worried about it though seeing a real doctor is the way to go. It might be best for a while to not try to force things too much, and to just let it be kind of effortless and easy until you get the hang of things.

Oh, f—! This is the advice I was looking for. Thank you so much.  I think you should make a post with just that. TGW has written great articles but he completely contradicts your method. I wonder if just one is correct.

Another thing: just tried all that, and I have a really hard time getting my Adam's apple and I guess tongue to go up. I'm doing that exercise and looking in the mirror and when I flex, my Adam's apple almost always moves down, or else it jumps and twitches in both directions. Do you have any tips?

Also: I am feeling pain in my one cheekbone, right about the bottom outside corner.

If it moves down when you flex, that probably means that you are engaging muscles that you don't need to be engaging.

After experimenting with it some more myself, I think that the hyoid might not actually have to move up at all, or if so just very very slightly. But I remember when I first found that technique out that it was very helpful though. Perhaps it is simply a good transition device until your posterior tongue muscles can lift on their own. Because right now when I mew my hyoid doesn't lift anymore like it used to, and I just realized that. When I mew now it's simply me pushing up hard with the back of my tongue effortlessly. I feel it in the base of my tongue and the beginnings of my throat very slightly.

One thing that you can try is to place the tip of your tongue as far to the back of your palate as possible and then slowly slide it forward while trying to bring the rest of your tongue into contact with your palate as you move it forwards. I think the muscles that it takes to make this happen are the same ones you should mew with.

Experiment and see what you can come up with and let me know what happens.

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.

Pushing my tongue against the back of my palate did indeed push my maxilla forward, but then the whole thing fell down a little. Here's what's new:

• My smile is now slightly more gummy.
• I can feel that the posterior edge of my hard palate is farther forward in my mouth now.
• My bite doesn't line up right now, and my tongue wants to jut out beyond my top teeth. Only the front two teeth, top and bottom, really touch now, and I can't really bite differently to make more teeth contact each other—it's very uncomfortable.
• The whistling /s/ that I'm pretty sure I gave myself from inadvertently tipping my front teeth out when I started mewing is completely gone.
• The gap between my ears and cheekbones is bigger now, and I can much more prominently palpate the blood vessel or lymph node or whatever it is in there.
• I can definitely palpate a small gap where the zygomatic bones connect to the frontal bone, both sides.
• If I push my nose down like I'm making a frown, I can see the edges of the maxilla around my nose poking up. It looks like everything around the top two-thirds or so of my nose has retruded.
• I might be wrong, but it looks and feels a little like the inner third of my eyebrows have slipped down a little, like all the surface tissue is pulling on it.
• I might be wrong about this too, and it's hard to be certain, but I think the skin on my cheeks where facial hair grows has slid down a little, and—more sure about this—the skin where hair grows on my chin has slid down slightly, below my chin. (I don't yet grow a full beard.)
• Odd unilateral brief paresthesia in my cheek earlier. Kind of like a very low intensity stabbing pain in a very small spot.
• My head kind of hurts like it has been for a few days, but now it's a little worse. It's like a regular headache, except around my eyes and brow.
• I might be imagining this, but it feels like my eyes are slightly physically lower in my head.
• Mild pain with quick eye movements.
• Odd pain inside one of my ears. No idea if related.

And this is all in the span of what, not more than 10 hours? Now my bite is all screwed up. I should probably see a doctor, huh? I shouldn't be able to make these kinds of changes with my tongue this fast, right??

Yup, if you are making negative changes this quickly you might indeed have some issue that needs to be diagnosed by a professional. Most people mew for months in order to get tiny changes. I'd recommend seeing a real doctor and doing a consultation with Mew in order to figure out where to go from here. The advice and discussion in this forum is not for you right now; not until you figure out what is going on.

Because of the nature of your posts and the possibility of your situation being so unique, I can't give you any more advice and I can't recommend that you look to this forum for any more solutions either. You have to figure out the next steps on your own now.

The last thing I will say is that if things got bad so quickly, there is a chance you can fix them just as quickly, but that's up to you now. But do let us know how things go for you once you get in contact with those professionals, I'm interested to see what the issue ends up being.

Would you be willing to take some demonstrative pics of your face, profile, bite and body posture from side? You can blur out whatever you don't want to show. I'm just not ready to give your case much thought without seeing something concrete, because in the end most of what you have written about is normal, only described in a way that makes the changes seem more significant than they probably are in reality. One explanation could be that you are more in tune with your physical self than the average human. I'll divide your concerns between what is normal and what is not, based on what I and others have been going through:

NORMAL:

• My smile is now slightly more gummy. (as smile widens, molars swing down, which exposes wider horizontal area of the gumline. Vertical gumminess is mostly a matter of the relationship between head tilt & jaw position)
• I can feel that the posterior edge of my hard palate is farther forward in my mouth now.
• The gap between my ears and cheekbones is bigger now, and I can much more prominently palpate the blood vessel or lymph node or whatever it is in there. (google a picture of skull and notice that there is are a couple of gaps around the tmj/ear/zygo area. These gaps become more noticeable as the jaws come forward)
• I can definitely palpate a small gap where the zygomatic bones connect to the frontal bone, both sides.
• If I push my nose down like I'm making a frown, I can see the edges of the maxilla around my nose poking up. It looks like everything around the top two-thirds or so of my nose has retruded.
• I might be wrong, but it looks and feels a little like the inner third of my eyebrows have slipped down a little, like all the surface tissue is pulling on it. (@Yay had similar progression in his latest pics)
• Odd unilateral brief paresthesia in my cheek earlier. Kind of like a very low intensity stabbing pain in a very small spot.
• My head kind of hurts like it has been for a few days, but now it's a little worse. It's like a regular headache, except around my eyes and brow.
• I might be imagining this, but it feels like my eyes are slightly physically lower in my head. (As the face beomes more concave the eyes appear as if they have moved down)
• Odd pain inside one of my ears. No idea if related.

UNCOMMON:

• Mild pain with quick eye movements.
• My bite doesn't line up right now, and my tongue wants to jut out beyond my top teeth. Only the front two teeth, top and bottom, really touch now, and I can't really bite differently to make more teeth contact each other—it's very uncomfortable.

Like Allixa said, use your own jugement to decide whether or not this is something you should see a medical professional for. I would wait it out, but I'm very do-it-yourself-oriented person and enjoy the challenge of fixing myself.

Posted by: Progress

...

NORMAL:

• My smile is now slightly more gummy. (as smile widens, molars swing down, which exposes wider horizontal area of the gumline. Vertical gumminess is mostly a matter of the relationship between head tilt & jaw position)

Is this going to improve eventually? Is "normal" also better, or going-to-be-better-eventually?

• I can feel that the posterior edge of my hard palate is farther forward in my mouth now.

Again, is this supposed to be normal?

• I can definitely palpate a small gap where the zygomatic bones connect to the frontal bone, both sides.

Are you sure this is a good thing? Aren't the bones not connected? This gap does feel smaller, now.

• I might be wrong, but it looks and feels a little like the inner third of my eyebrows have slipped down a little, like all the surface tissue is pulling on it. (@Yay had similar progression in his latest pics)

Is this a good thing?

• Odd unilateral brief paresthesia in my cheek earlier. Kind of like a very low intensity stabbing pain in a very small spot.

This has been hurting a little, too. An intermittent ache, mostly, and occasionally very painful.

• I might be imagining this, but it feels like my eyes are slightly physically lower in my head. (As the face beomes more concave the eyes appear as if they have moved down)

Did you mean convex? I hope my face isn't becoming more concave!

• My bite doesn't line up right now, and my tongue wants to jut out beyond my top teeth. Only the front two teeth, top and bottom, really touch now, and I can't really bite differently to make more teeth contact each other—it's very uncomfortable.

This hasn't changed.

Thank you all so much.

Like I said, I'm not going to diagnose words alone. Words are vague. Their meaning gets lost in translation. Without seeing anything concrete, my only suggestion for you is: stop worrying over what you see and start focusing on what you can actually sense. Chase the things that make your physique function better and feel better. Looks will follow.

For example, you say that your breathing has improved. That is an extremely positive change. Variation in nasal congestion can also be used as a guide/reminder on how to mew. If one nostril is congested, it can often signal slacking tongue posture on that side. 

Lastly: there are basically two mutually balancing actions to mewing:

1. one where you "push" the posterior tongue up and forward

2. one where you "suck"  the posterior tongue up and backward. 

For neck/tongue activation, 1. is like pushing a boulder forward. It "closes" and stabilizes the body. 2. is like doing a pull-up or trying to or sing like an opera singer.  It "opens" the body into a confident and emotionally vulnerable posture. Your posterior & outers parts of the body serve as subconscious psychological and physical armoring that protects the anterior & inner body (=ego/self). Movement should be led by the anterior/inner chain and stabilized by the posterior/outer chain. The former has superior motorics, the latter superior strength.

So the reason I'm telling you all this is that any goofiness in your facial development could be result of Mewing that is lacking either sufficient pushing or sucking motion. Both chains stabilize each other, and both are related to the neck musculature in different way. Pushing & pulling. Become aware of this difference. It defines a very fundamental part of your anatomy. 

As for concave vs convex, to me facial convexity is synonymous to a birdface, which comes from the combined visual effect of a sloping forehead, downpointing jaw and a relatively overprojecting nose. The face just kind of splurges out to every direction. In contrast to this, a face with pleasing concavity would be one where forehead, jaw and nose are all pointing to the same direction. Of course, an actual concave lens would reflect light the opposite way I described. But I am merely talking about concavity and convexity as shapes.

It could also be possible that extreme convexity/concavity are different ends of the two-action mewing I talked about, with the truly balanced face being somewhere in the middle. If so, then facial asymmetry is caused by pushing too hard on one side and sucking too hard on the other.

How long have you been mewing for you to notice this change? Did you apply extreme pressure? Did you hold your posture (Mewing) for the whole day?