Hi,

Sorry in advance for the long post, I tend to ramble and over-describe. 

Background:(You can skip this if you don't care about my ramblings so much)

So after seeing and reading about all the incredible results people have gotten here I've come to the conclusion that this is something I need to start doing. I've been dealing with some sinus and craniofacial issues for a few years now, starting with decreased ability to swallow, pain in the back of the neck when chewing, feeling tingly/numb/different on one side of the face, muscle tensions in facial, neck and shoulder muscles on one side, tensions headaches, double vision, pressure under one cheek, and I could go on. At first I thought it was something medical going on, but as I've researched and experimented it's become clear that basically all the issues I have are bio-mechanical and stemming from poor movement and posture habits. I'll be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for some slight remodeling of the face as a bonus, but my primary motivation is to start feeling OK again.

I'm only about 2 days in of attempting to do this correctly, but I can feel that I'm influencing the spots where I feel tension in the left side of my face and that it's certainly doing something. Sometimes I'll even feel my left shoulder and the longer neck muscles on the left side of my neck release, which is something no amount of stretching, yoga or deep breathing has been able to do on accomplish consistently, which makes me feel like I finally have the last piece of the puzzle to my puzzling symptoms and that in itself is so uplifting and amazing.

Questions:

I'm unfortunately cursed with a tongue tie that starts about 1.5cm from the tip of my tongue and goes all the way back, or at least as far as I can see. It isn't restricting my ability to place my tongue in the roof of my mouth, but I'm worried it's influencing my ability to keep a suction hold and keeping the very back of my tongue pressing up. I'm looking to get it fixed ASAP, but I wondered if I'm still able to perform a mature swallow and can with great effort put the back of my tongue on the soft palate, if it's gonna hinder my progress too much before I can get it fixed?

Another thing is I've noticed a lot of neck and throat tension when trying to maintain a proper tongue posture for more than a few minutes, specifically at the base of the back of my skull sort of like a burning sensation of tiny muscles wearing themselves out, and I also experience a lot of tension and muscle soreness at the front of my neck. Is this simply because I'm not practiced and that with time as I create a stronger mind-body connection and build the right muscles I'll be able to hold the posture for longer? I hear about it being hard when starting out, but I'm wondering if my tongue tie is creating stress that makes this all less than ideal.

Lastly, my palate is sort of narrow. Certainly narrower than my tongue wants it to be as I can feel my molars when mewing, and palate expansion is what I'm mostly looking for here. I can only hope I'm doing this correctly as there is no way to use photos to determine it, but if I were to explain it, where it feels most "complete" is I'll perform a swallow and as the very back of the tongue reaches the soft palate I hold and roll the rest of my tongue forward so that the tip is almost touching my front teeth. This produces a lot of different tension spots around my skull at the eyebrows, forehead, below the eye and even at the crown of the head. I can hold this for maybe a minute or two, and I've been trying to do reps of this throughout the day(which is probably why my throat muscles are sore today). Is this normal? It does eventually produce headaches, but not doing anything during the day gives me a headache from poor posture anyway, and at least this feels like I'm targeting the right areas/building strength/releasing tension. If I keep doing this, does the hold eventually becomes easier? even automatic?

I just wanna mention that I'm also targeting my overall posture with various programs and exercises so I'm focusing on everything from the crown of the head to the arches of my feet.

Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and stories, honestly with all the age bias I read so far, as someone 29 years of age I feel elated reading about everything shared here and while I feel the work is a bit daunting at the moment, to me it's an answer I've been searching for for years now and I feel like this is finally it.