Posted by: t3nace

In my own experience, I feel that not being able to breathe while mewing is the biggest obstacle. How to cross this? I've been mewing for two months now, the first month was consistent but the second month was a bit less focused but still somewhat consistent. It is easy for me to do a suction hold, but unfortunately I have to tone it down in order to breathe. 

Any exercises (for i.g. the chin tuck) to open up the airway faster? And if your airway opened up, how much did it take you? I don't think I'm doing anything wrong to be honest

Theres a few threads on this already. 

Focus on body posture first if you don't breathe well.

You should search a few videos on body posture for better understanding but here goes real simple:

Train yourself to start breathing more deep and calmly. We over breathe these days. Relax. Use your DIAPHRAGM. This alone will relax your shoulders and your upper thoracic spine ALOT, while protruding your chest. Get this right into your head and posture will fix itself. That's why exercise is so important.

Get your chest up.

Both big fingers(feet and hands) pointing forwards. 

Rotate your shoulders outwards for some scapula activation.

Pull you occiput up, sort of feel you're elongating your spine. Make sure it's up straight. the lil bump in the back of your head is the occiput.

Do these and start experimenting. You'll get the hang of it.

DO NOT over do these, main focus is diaphragm breathing and relaxing and your tongue posture WILL fix itself without you taking much action.

Start stretching. Hamstring stretches alone will do wonders for hips, which pretty much dictate the way your spine is laid out.

This is easily the least talked about and arguably the most important part of mewing but very few people seem to talk about it.

First we gotta establish if your tongue posture is even correct.  It's easy to raise and suction the mid section of your tongue to the point where it cuts off your oral airways and stops you from mouth breathing; you can part your lips and try to breathe orally and you shouldn't be able too. That is fine but it is not sufficient. 

What is actually hard is raising the BACK of your tongue i.e your hyoid/tongue root. Most "mewers" don't even know how to do this and even if they do, it very often means that the root of the tongue pushes into the back of their throat/anterior soft palate and not only cuts off their oral airway but also their nasal airway too, making it impossible to breathe. This is typical for the majority of people who have craniofacial recession (in my estimation).

So, how bad is the recession? If you do the easy/weak tongue raise like I talked about first and it cuts off your oral and nasal airways, you likely have serious recession and it's going to make this process so much harder because it means you not only need to expand enough to accommodate that movement but also enough to eventually accommodate a full tongue root/hyoid raise.

To anyone reading: If you do a Proper Swallow aka raising the tongue root and you aren't able to breath nasally momentarily, then you have recessed airways that need to be expanded ESPECIALLY if you can't do it even when you're not doing a Mckenzie Chintuck. Our goal is to get the point where we can do a chin tuck + proper swallow/tongue root raise while still being able to breath nasally.

some videos on what I mean:

Lord Mew talking about it

Astro demonstrating proper tongue raise

Another Astro video

Me doing it but not as sexily

Okay, so.. the million dollar question: how do you expand your airways enough to breath nasally while practicing proper tongue root + chin tuck posture.. if you aren't even able to breath while practicing it? The only answer is "in bursts". Do it between breaths at first: A very good chin tuck + a proper swallow. I have come up with an exercise that you can read here.

Once you've mastered that exercise I would recommend taking the next step and learning to master your control of your hyoid/tongue root so you can not only raise it at will (aka without doing a proper swallow) but also push hard with it. It is critical that you build up this muscle so you are able to press it firmly into your throat/anterior palate constantly without tiring, and trust me you will get tired at first. It will take a few weeks to build up the strength of the tongue root sufficiently and I think it usually takes a couple of months for people to expand their nasal airways assuming they take this topic very seriously.

If I were to make a scale on the stages of ones nasal breathing capability it would probably look something like this:

• Can't breath nasally AT ALL (mouth closed or open): Rare and extremely recessed/congested. Probably requires professional attention.
• Breathing nasally is difficult when mouth is closed and/or mid tongue is raised + No chin-tuck + No tongue root lift: Very recessed/congested. Will require a lot of effort.
• Breathing nasally is difficult/impossible when chin tucking (either w/ mid tongue lift or no root lift): Not as common but still very recessed.
• Breathing nasally is difficult/impossible when root of tongue is raised (i.e by swallowing or root lift) + No chin tuck: Common but still recessed. (me)
• Breathing nasally is difficult/impossible when BOTH chin tucking + root lift/proper swallowing: Extremely common but if the previous stages don't apply to you, you are likely in a much better situation than the vast majority of people.
• Breathing nasally is easy/possible when BOTH chin tucking + root lift: Congrats, you likely don't have a recessed airway (our goal).

To the other nerds on this forum: get in here and talk about this stuff because we don't do it enough and it's really fucking important. Maybe we should make a thread on it?

e: I'd also really like to hear some discussion on hyoid exercises/stretches; there are a few others floating about but I don't know which would be beneficial. 

This will be my first post here so please forgive my noobiness, i will address this topic from own personal experience

The initial stages: Breathing

1. When you first start mewing their is no doubt in my mind that your airway will be constricted, this is by far the most fundamental step to acheive the proper process of mewing
2.  The practise of putting your back third of your tongue to the root of your mouth, so in the beginning you will find it very difficult to have enough tongue strength to have your tongue on the back third of your palate, this is were you practise short and powerful bursts of pressure via the tongue.                                           You should feel a mushy like substance that is your soft palate, now practise a "ng" sound, you should feel the tongue go up on your soft palate this where you put into practise the method of short and powerful bursts of force to the soft palate, everytime you swallow i recommend using the same method. 
3. Assuming you have the previous method down to a T, we move on to actually breathing, by now your airway should of expanded somewhat to were you can conviently rest your tongue across the whole roof of your mouth including your root. Now this seems to not be discussed among the mewing community but this by far one of the most important factors to acheive consistent and proper mewing its the way you breathe.
4. The way you breathe is more important then you think, if you are like me in the initial stages you are breathing very shallow almost as if you were breathing from your neck, also im guessing your shoulders raise up everytime you breathe.. this is a no no, if you want to acheive mewing. You can never go back to this way of breathing.
5. Rewiring your brain, to breath from your diaphragm you need to practise at least 1 hour everyday of diapragm breathing with your tongue completely on the roof of your mouth, you should already have the capacity to breath this way assumung you acheived the previous step, this will be very uncomfortable, until you make it an unconscious act.     So what should this sensation feel like, diaphragm breathing? First of we need to make sure your tongue is correctly positioned, so put your tongue in the back position with the ng sound, now leave your mouth slightly open, now and try and breathe from your mouth, you should be unable to breathe from your mouth, Good! then you are on the next step.  You wont be able to breathe the same from your nose the flow of air going through it will feel different you will feel it more at the top of your nose.  You need to become accustomed to this sensation, this sensation will also feel uncomfortable when breathing, also your stomach should be the only thing expanding when breathing which is an indication of proper breathing.  And your shoulders should stay in position without elevating. You need to make this an unconscious thing, to were you subconsciously do these things which can be acheived by practising those two methods.                                                                                              Anecdotally i can address the issue of hyoid bone, my hyoid was low when i started of mewing after incorporating the previous methods it slowly raised up. But that wasn't enough.. chest chin tucks. What is that? Its where you put your chin flat against your chest and incorporate swallowing and short and powerful bursts of tongue pressure this is less about body posture and more of raising your hyoid bone. Leave your chin flat across your chest and practise 3 mins of exercises in this method. My theory is it forces the hyoid bone to go higher and consistently stay higher whilst simultaneously rotating the maxilla upwards and outwards.                              Also evertime you lay on your back in bed or where ever i want you to do a chin tuck  mckenzie form, but leave it their while pushing the anterior root of your tongue up. This will also raise your hyoid bone up.  This consistent pressure will leave your hyoid in better position becoming your new default position.                                                                                       

@reidh Nice dude. The diaphragmatic breathing bit was great. I was a bit worried I'd have to relearn to breathe but apparently I've always done it the right way i.e from my belly / no shoulders raising.

How long did it take you to expand your airways before you could raise the hyoid and breathe nasally at the same time? Most people seem to take a few months. I believe that once this is achieved, results should start to accelerate because in theory you can maintain the posture all the time (or at least while awake). Sleeping might be another matter; are you able to keep the hyoid up with or without a suction hold whilst asleep?

How long did it take you to noticeably raise the hyoid bone and does your stay higher now even when you don't put in effort i.e its resting position? Do you do any other hyoid related exercises you might recommend?

cheers.

To everyone else; I found reid on a youtube comment section and he shared some really profound advances with his mewing journey so I forced him to share his insight here lol

 

Breathing nasally is easy/possible when BOTH chin tucking + root lift: Congrats, you likely don't have a recessed face or airways (our goal).

 

thats probably not true. I can breathe/proper swallow easily while chin tucking and still have a recessed face as evident by my mew indicator line and "hookish" nose

ye fair. i meant to say airway and not face

@Krollic  

It took me roughly 3 months to raise my hyoid bone and keep it there, mind you i was going hardcore with mewing like that was the only thing on my mind at the time.

• To keep my tongue up i chew falim gum just before i go to sleep,  i find it adds enough tension to where i can keep my jaw closed but not grind my teeth together, i sleep in a fetal like position on my side with a slight chin tuck, for me this keeps my tongue and hyoid bone high.. the whole night, i even find myself waking up with my jaw closed and tongue still up. 
• My hyoid bone is high by default now wether i mew or not if i take my tongue of my palate it only drops by about 2 cms, i don't need to apply effort like before.

Posted by: ReidH

also your stomach should be the only thing expanding when breathing which is an indication of proper breathing.

This isn't entirely true.  It's a fallacy that comes from the yoga & fitness world.

Breathing with diaphragmatic control creates negative pressure, which in turn expands your thorax.  You want to be breathing in to your chest and back.  So if you're functioning correctly, they should expand too.

This can be trained using the 90/90 position (lay down, legs bent with feet on the wall, slight hip lift).  The idea with this is that your body is in flexion (considered a state of relaxation - think the fetal position) so the diaphragm can position itself and dome properly.

You want to relax as much as possible, so think about sighing the air out during exhalation.  If your stomach gurgles, that's normally a good sign as digestive processes happen when we're in a state of relaxation.

More about belly breathing here:

https://www.coreexercisesolutions.com/belly-breathing/

Thanks for the extra insight i usually feel it in my stomach but also the expansion was not only in my stomach but behind my back, specifically the kidneys and actually throughout my whole torso, i just wrote stomach because it's easier to focus on in the initial stages of learning diaphragm breathing. Its a bit easier having one focal point than focusing on the whole body for breathing, in the initial stages. But it's also a point i over looked which will also add to the extra help and information for people reading so thank you. Awesome community support we have here. But i will have to read that article you linked for deeper insight into the topic.

Cheers :)

I've always been able to breathe with the back of my tongue on my palate, even when doing a maximal chin tuck. However I also started out with a decent face. Im pretty sure I have the root up there, as its really far down, under my adams apple. I basically just do a proper swallow and hold the position. Its strange though, when activating the very back portion of my tongue Im not able to spread it out at all. Its just bunched into a small point basically, and Im only able to push straight upwards on the palate. However if I focus on the back part of my tongue that is further up, the tongue is able to spread out and widen like it should. So Im guessing the very back portion of my palate is more recessed? Im also able to breathe orally while holding the tongue there, and I can maintain this tongue position while asleep for the most part.