Ithaca Myofunctional Therapy

Here's a fun little check you can do right now: without intentionally moving your tongue, notice where it's resting.

Is it on the floor of your mouth? Or is it touching the roof?

The correct resting position for the tongue is up, lightly suctioned the roof of the mouth, tongue tip just behind the upper front teeth, with the lips gently closed and teeth slightly apart.

When the tongue rests low, which is extremely common, especially in mouth breathers—it changes everything downstream. The jaw can shift forward or down. The muscles of the face and neck compensate. Breathing patterns shift. And in growing children, it can affect how the jaw and palate develop.

The good news: the tongue is a muscle, and its resting position can be retrained. It takes practice and consistency, but it's one of the most fundamental changes we make in therapy.

Where was yours resting? Drop FLOOR or ROOF in the comments!

Genuinely curious how this one splits in this audience.

And if you want to understand more about tongue posture and how we work on it, visit www.ithacamyo.com.

Did you know mouth breathing can affect your sleep, your teeth, and even how your child's face develops? Most families have no idea until they find out.

Here's something I talk about with almost every family that walks into my office: the way we breathe matters far more than most people realize. Nasal breathing filters the air, humidifies it, and produces nitric oxide, which helps your body absorb oxygen more efficiently. Mouth breathing does none of that. Over time, chronic mouth breathing can contribute to poor sleep quality, jaw tension, dental changes, and, in growing kids, it can even affect facial development. The good news? These patterns can be relearned at any age. I've put together a quick visual breakdown of the 5 key differences; it's one of the most eye-opening things I share with new patients.

If you've been waking up tired, dealing with jaw tension, or noticing your child sleeps with their mouth open, this post is worth a read.

👉 Click the link to learn more or book an assessment at www.ithacamyo.com.

If you have allergies, you have probably noticed that certain seasons or environments make nasal breathing feel almost impossible. And when nasal breathing is uncomfortable, mouth breathing fills the gap.

What most people do not realize is that the mouth breathing habit often outlasts the congestion. The nose clears. The body keeps breathing through the mouth anyway, because that is now what it has learned to do.

And that continued mouth breathing bypasses the nose's natural filtration system, leaving the airway more exposed to the same allergens that triggered the pattern in the first place.

For children, especially, this cycle can have a significant impact on development, sleep quality, and how they function day to day. Addressing the breathing pattern alongside the allergy management is something that most treatment plans skip entirely.

Myofunctional therapy works on reestablishing nasal breathing as the default. If you or your child has a history of allergies and chronic mouth breathing, this is a connection worth exploring.

Link in bio to learn more or book an evaluation.

We think about the tongue when we are eating or speaking. The rest of the time, it is doing an enormous amount of work that most people are completely unaware of.

It is swallowing hundreds of times a day with a pattern that either supports your dental arches or works against them. It determines whether your airway stays open during sleep. It is shaping the development of your palate and face over the years. It is influencing your posture through connections that run all the way into your neck and spine.

All of this happens whether you are paying attention to it or not. The question myofunctional therapy asks is whether it is happening correctly.

Save this and share it with someone who has never thought about their tongue before, which is probably most people.

Link in bio if you want to find out more about how oral function affects your health.

An open bite is one of those things that gets classified as a cosmetic issue and treated as one, which means a lot of people go through orthodontic treatment, watch their teeth shift back, go through orthodontic treatment again, and never get an answer for why it keeps happening.

The answer is almost always functional. The tongue is pushing forward on every swallow. The mouth is open at rest, and the tongue is sitting low instead of lifted to the palate. The same forces that created the open bite in the first place are still fully active the day the braces come off.

Myofunctional therapy does not move teeth. What it does is change the muscle patterns that move teeth, so that orthodontic work can hold and the bite can stay where it was corrected.

If you or your child has an open bite, a history of relapse after orthodontic treatment, or a dentist or orthodontist who keeps mentioning tongue thrust, this is a conversation worth having.

Link in our bio to learn more or book an evaluation.