Well in practice, what would it mean for hyoid to be low? The bone is not directly attached to any other skeletal structure, which makes its positioning dependent on the way the related musculature is used. Rather than the muscles being attached to hyoid, more fitting would be to say that the hyoid is attached to muscles. I can grab my hyoid by the sides of the throat and move it around pretty freely.

One thing that comes to mind though is tongue tie. Many cases of tongue ties are probably caused by some mechanism relevant to what you suggest, and are therefore completely reversible over time. In the very least, it's hard to believe that a good way to get someone to start using their body correctly is to severe a tendon. It's equally hard to believe that it would be normal for otherwise healthy babies to be born with a permanent tongue tie when anatomic function is so important to reproductive fitness. Tight/weak soft tissue sounds like a more probable cause.  In any case, I had my tongue cut when i was just a few months old, and my face still failed to grow properly. After fixing mewing/posture, my tongue is now more mobile than it has ever been.

Posted by: Silver
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?

Posted by: Allixa
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.

I think we have some ambiguity in the terminology people are using on this topic. The hyoid is a bone located between the mandible and the thyroid cartilage. Whereas a prominence of the thyroid cartilage forms the "Adam's Apple." Like Progress said, the hyoid is unique in that it doesn't articulate directly with other bones, so you can find it with your fingers at the base of the mandible and move it side to side. Once you've located it, you can feel that the hyoid does lift up when you swallow. However, the laryngeal prominence of the thyroid cartilage is below the hyoid and this is the bulge that more visibly moves up and down when you swallow, especially in adult males.

In my experience, using a swallowing motion to lift my posterior tongue to the roof of my mouth lifts up both the hyoid bone and the thyroid cartilage, but then I can keep my tongue in that position and both of these structures return to a resting position when the other muscles of my throat relax although I am continuing to engage my tongue.

A low Hyoid position is usually diagnosed by doctors when it's resting below the third cervical vertebrate. This is usually observed visibly and then verified with a cephalometric x-ray.  I think this condition develops along with head forward posture. The Hyoid is pulled up by a group of 4 muscles called Suprahyoid and pulled down by another group of 4 muscles called the Inrahyoid. A low position is usually the result of those muscle groups being out balance, but I am not sure how exactly. The information on this is pretty scarce.  It would be interesting if the head tuck exercise fixs this problem.

I am almost certain that a low Hyoid position makes posturing the tongue difficult. Trying to force the tongue up to counter this problem is not a solution, as one has to strain to do that. There are exercises specifically for raising the Hyoid. They are called Phrayngel and the video below shows how to preform them. I am very interested to know if anyone tried them before.

https://youtu.be/WDCXmZdF0cI

I was thinking of starting the pharyngel exercises to raise the hyoid as I am having a bit of trouble raising the lower third (cannot say for sure if I am having enough force/contact with the soft palate).

Since this is nearly a two year old thread, any feedback from you guys above who tried this? Any positive/negative effects?