I've been reading through some VoiceGym articles like "Beyond Chewing" and "How Voice Exercises can assist in Orthodontic Treatment." The author, Angela Caine, distinguishes between what she calls group A/group 1 muscles and group B/group 2 muscles. The first group are muscles that radiate from the center of the face, originating in bone and inserting into soft tissue, which she associates with nasal breathing, speaking, singing, smiling, good tongue posture, and proper swallowing, including the zygomaticus major and minor, levator labii superioris, and buccinator. The second group are muscles that run vertically, originating and inserting into bone, and are responsible for chewing, including the temporalis and masseter, which she associates with a forward tongue position to hold food between teeth, mouth breathing, and scowling/unhappy facial expressions. Her assertion that proper development requires prioritizing the first group of muscles conflicts with some of our paradigm including the importance of chewing exercises, masseter hypertrophy, and buccinator atrophy. She discounts the importance of orbicularis oris lip seal in nasal breathing, insisting that with correct oral posture, the tongue and soft palate should prevent mouth breathing, even with the lips parted. She also focuses on a lower positioned hyoid bone so that more of the tongue is in the throat and less of it is thrust forward against the anterior teeth. She implies that myofunctional therapy might be approaching this problem from the wrong direction by starting with positioning the tip of the tongue on the spot rather than focusing on getting the root of the tongue into its correct adult position in the throat. I'm not sure if all of these ideas are accurate, but it is interesting to consider a divergent viewpoint. What do you think? I haven't finished reading all of the VoiceGym literature, so I'll report back if I find anything else of interest.
This is very interesting. One thing I do agree with is that more emphasis should be placed on the posterior third(PT) rather than the n-spot. Once the position of the PT is found, the tongue will quite naturally find the n-spot. The same cannot be said of the reverse.
Where can I find this woman’s works? Do you recommend anything in specific?
Where can I find this woman’s works? Do you recommend anything in specific?
Considering interdisciplinary approaches to my own treatment recently reminded me of the VoiceGym program. When I wrote this other thread about VoiceGym back in 2018 ( /community/community/main-forum/voicegym-article-on-tongue-posture/#post-12676 ), I had just skimmed their website and read their page about tongue posture. Aside from some minor nuances, it seemed pretty consistent with our general understanding. I only noticed the interesting differences in philosophy after I just recently started reading through the articles on their publications page ( https://www.voicegym.co.uk/publications ). They have a whole program you can purchase with exercises that generally involve speaking or singing while doing various body movements. From the articles alone, I'm intrigued by what she says about toning the styloglossus muscle to engage the posterior tongue and close off mouth breathing, and by what she says about using voluntary tongue muscles to hold the tongue back while creating vowel sounds to recruit involuntary tongue muscles and reprogram unconscious habits. I'm less convince by the theory behind her facial muscle groupings (e.g. prioritizing buccinator over masseter and temporalis).
The VoiceGym founder, Angela Caine, sometimes cites the work of John Mew in her articles. However, she seems to have some subtle philosophical differences (as I've mentioned above). Here is a video from the Orthotropics youtube where Mike Mew talks with Alexander Evans, who took over as director of VoiceGym after Angela Caine died. They summarize the VoiceGym program and mention some of this history of friction without going into details. Mew still seems a little skeptical, but concludes "We're both on the same page. We're looking at this from a different angle."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r35MPjjxY2k
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