Mewing: 13 Easy Steps Tutorial for Beginners On How To Mew

If you’re struggling to achieve significant results while practicing mewing – you’ve come to the right place.

Learning how to mew properly is CRUCIAL.

Otherwise, you’re doomed to fail or even damage your facial structure.

So, if you’re willing to learn how to mew correctly, begin with a quick quiz below and get:

Personalized mewing program;
Daily exercises;
Video guides, tips, daily reminders, tutorials, etc.

Mewing can lead to some incredible results that you might not have even dreamed possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or are slightly familiar with the practice, here you’ll learn everything there is to know about mewing and so much more!

Through a series of exercises and techniques, you can change the shape of your face and it all starts with this revolutionary practice developed by two British orthodontists – a father-son duo, Dr John Mew and Dr Mike Mew.

Mewing works, and you could be one of the latest to reap the rewards!

🔎 Revealed on this page…

• 📝 The 13 Steps To Mewing: We provide you with a step-by-step guide to help you learn mewing! It’s easy to follow with our video and written guides!
• 👀 We Explore Every Avenue of Mewing – Not only do we guide you through the method, but we go far beyond the basics. We’ll answer questions like how to chew while mewing, how to eat while mewing, and so much more. We’ll even provide pictures and diagrams to show you the right methods so you can avoid improper mewing.
• 😢 Common Mistakes: You need to know how to do mewing correctly and to do this you need to ensure you’re not making some of the most common mistakes. We’ll show you what to do, and more importantly, what not to do.
• 💪 How To Practice: Mewing doesn’t happen overnight; it takes time. So we’ll explain how to do it correctly to avoid improper techniques.

What is Mewing And What Does It Do?

Recently there’s been a growing movement in the health and wellness field regarding a practice known as mewing. This practice is by no means new or undiscovered. It’s simply enjoying its well-earned moment in the sun, thanks to renewed interest online.

Now, if you’ve never heard of mewing before, don’t worry, you’re not alone. A lot of people around the world are wondering, what is mewing?

Simply put, the process aims to improve overall jaw posture which will help reshape and realign your face.

But how does it achieve this? Mewing requires a person to change their tongue placement to its rightful position – against the roof of their mouth. It’s first a conscious change that slowly becomes unconscious, almost habitual.

Through mewing, you are improving your tongue, jaw, and general posture while reshaping your facial structure.

Mewing is a natural, cosmetic corrective treatment with added health benefits such as helping with sinusitis, sleep apnea, oral health, and much more.

How Long Does It Take For Mewing To Work

A lot of people who start mewing question how long it will take to see results. It’s not necessarily the easiest question to answer. For starters, there are multiple benefits of mewing that can be achieved from any age, from aesthetical to general health, including:

• Improvements to one’s facial appearance and attractiveness (stronger cheekbones, jawline, etc.)
• Corrections to speech impediments
• Decrease in temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ)
• Reduced sinus infections
• Improved oral health
• Decreased nasal congestion
• Improvements to breathing and swallowing

So while many of these benefits can be obtained at any age the question remains: how long does it take to see results?

How Fast Are Results for Younger People?

For younger people, mewing can show signs of working far quicker than it can in adults.

This is because their bodies are still developing, so they’re controlling how they develop by taking charge of their tongue muscle placement at a young age. Children can likely start seeing significant benefits of mewing 3 – 6 months after starting the process, with some individuals even seeing results within 24 hours!

How Fast Are Results for Adults?

Adults will have a somewhat more challenging time with mewing, and that’s because it will take longer to see meaningful results.

When mewing as an adult, you’re changing what is, not what is becoming.

Because of these factors, you should expect to start seeing really impressive results anywhere between 6 months to about 2 years – but positive benefits could be seen in as little as 24 hours.

This is why it’s important to note that in some cases, adults will experience effects far more quickly than others might. We’re all different, and how our body responds to things like mewing exercise can be vastly different from person to person.

How to MEW In 5 steps

1. Keep your mouth closed. Tip: Seal your lips and keep facial muscles in a resting position.
2. RELAX your jaw and put your front teeth slightly behind the upper ones. Important: Your front teeth shouldn’t touch while mewing. Back teeth (molars) can only touch lightly.
3. Flatten your entire tongue against the roof of your mouth while pushing slightly and evenly. Important: Leave a small gap between your front teeth and the tip of the tongue. Tip: Say words like ‘Sing,’ ‘King,’ or ‘Ring’ to find the proper tongue position. Advanced mewing technique: Increase the pressure in short bursts, eventually pushing as hard as possible (hard mewing).
4. Hold this position for up to 30 seconds, then gradually increase the mewing length. Tip: You don’t need to hold your breath while mewing. Instead, breathe through your nose. Important: Swallowing shouldn’t be difficult while mewing. If it is, you might be doing step 3 incorrectly.
5. Practice Mewing daily. Tip: Following a daily routine is easier with the Mewing.coach app. It provides daily reminders and a Mewing exercise plan.

Is it still not clear? Then, read our in-depth analysis on how to mew below for additional steps and visual examples.

How To Mew Properly Diagram

Before diving into our comprehensive guide, check out our how to mew properly diagram above. The mewing technique consists of only four main principles:

1. Keep your mouth closed and your teeth gently touching;
2. Move your tongue to the roof of your mouth and lightly press it;
3. Be sure to not block your airway as you breathe;
4. Your tongue is resting at the top of your mouth;

In-depth Mewing tutorial: 13 Steps On How To Do It

1. The Most IMPORTANT Thing: Make Mewing a HABIT

When it comes to mewing, the most crucial part is to make it a habit.

If you’re unsuccessful at making it a habit within the first three months, you’ll likely fail. Understanding how to mew is only part of the process. Making it something you incorporate into your life as a conscious and eventually unconscious habit is where most people drop the ball.

So as we dive deeper into the process of implementing this method, keep in mind that it all starts with making it a habit.

If you’re wondering how to remember mewing, then you’re in luck!

A great way to make this a habit is by using certain tools to remind you. With our Mewing.coach app, you’ll be able to stay in the zone, thanks to our reminders.

Instead of blindly trying to mew and wondering, ‘how often do I need to mew?’ the Mewing.coach app will be your guide.

2. Develop a Proper Tongue Posture

It might be strange to hear that there’s such a thing as ‘proper tongue posture,’ but it’s true. Next, we’ll get into how you achieve this proper tongue posture. Still, we need to ensure you’re aware of how important it is to develop, but more importantly, maintain adequate tongue posture.

While there are many positives to mewing, there are also some downsides resulting from improper posture or inconsistent application of the mewing process. – so it’s important to get it right.

2. 1. Mewing Tongue Posture Diagram

To achieve correct tongue posture, you need to do the following:

• Take your tongue and place it on the roof of your mouth and press it against your mouth’s roof.
• Ensure your entire tongue is against the palate.
• Ensure the tip of your tongue doesn’t touch your front teeth at any time.
• Your tongue’s applied pressure should be evenly distributed across the palate.
• Don’t clench your teeth together with force. Instead, they should be lightly touching.
• If you’re doing everything correctly, you shouldn’t be able to breathe through your mouth. Instead, you should be able to breathe through your nose easier. When mewing becomes habitual, this will be the method by which you breathe normally.

2. 2. Place Your Tongue Against The Roof Of Your Mouth

While we’ve already mentioned that the first step is to place your tongue against the roof of your mouth, it’s also important to understand that doing so shouldn’t feel forced.

Instead, your tongue needs to be relaxed and entirely against the roof of your mouth. This includes the back of your tongue. This is often considered the most difficult part of mewing. There are many different techniques available to help you achieve this pivotal step to mewing, which we’ll cover a bit later.

The main point is to start by placing the tip of your tongue and use suction to pull the rest of your tongue into position flat against the roof of your mouth. It’s going to be challenging at first, but with practice and time, it will become far easier.

2. 3. Where Should I Feel My Tongue When Mewing?

When mewing, you should have your tongue against the roof of your mouth while having your bottom teeth slightly behind your front upper teeth. The tip of the tongue should be placed just before your front teeth, but not touching them.

So, in essence, you should be feeling your tongue on the roof of your mouth with a slight gap between the top of your tongue and your front upper teeth.

2. 4. Should I Fold My Tongue?

No, absolutely not. The point is to relax the tongue and unconsciously have it against the roof of your mouth with a gap between the tongue and front upper teeth. If you’re curling your tongue, you’re not relaxing it and therefore aren’t mewing properly. This can have unfortunate consequences.

The point of this technique is to start mewing consciously until it becomes an unconscious habit, but curling your tongue is a process that requires thoughtful execution and goes against the mewing method.

2. 5. Should Your Tongue Touch Your Teeth When Mewing?

No, your tongue must not touch your teeth when mewing. As previously stated, mewing requires your tongue to touch your palate and the tip of your tongue NOT to touch your front upper teeth.

When you ignore this and allow your tongue to touch your front teeth, you inadvertently push your teeth forward.

If your teeth are well-aligned going into mewing, you’ll hate what happens as a result of this improper method. However, for those with teeth that are misaligned, it can make them far worse. So the bottom line is don’t touch your teeth with the tip of your tongue at all!

2. 6. How To Know If Your Tongue Posture Is Correct?

Understanding the mewing method and then implementing it is one thing – but it’s essential to make sure you’re actually doing it correctly.

To ensure you’re mewing correctly, start with the basics:

• Close your mouth tight.
• Move your jaw and allow your front bottom teeth to go before your front upper teeth.
• Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth, applying evenly distributed pressure.
• Leave the gap between your teeth and the tip of your tongue.
• Breath through your nose.
• Relax your mouth muscles and practice this consciously to build up the ability to make it an unconscious habit.

Beyond just self-checking based on this set of instructions on how to mew, you should also be using apps like Mewing.coach to help guide you only your mewing journey.

An app like ours provides you with guidance how to do mewing technique properly, progress evaluation, workouts, reminders, and even personalized training programs. This means that you’re not alone in your mewing journey.

2. 7. Easy Tricks That Will Help You Achieve Perfect Tongue Posture

There are several methods that are frequently used to help people achieve perfect tongue posture. Some of these techniques include:

• The ‘Cheesy Smile’ Technique
• Say The Letter ‘N’ To Rest The Tip of Your Tongue
• Say Words Like ‘Sing,’ ‘King,’ or ‘Ring’ in order to rest the tip of your tongue
• The Chin Tuck

Let’s take a look at these different techniques so you can start applying them to your mewing routine.

2. 7. 1. The “Cheesy Smile” Technique

The ‘Cheesy Smile’ technique is a great way to learn the correct posture for mewing.

This method is really easy to do and starts with you smiling broadly and showing off your teeth. Then, naturally, your tongue will be pressed against the roof of your mouth in the right position for mewing.

When you do this technique, try holding your tongue in the same position when releasing the smile.

2. 7. 2. Say The Letter “N” To Rest on The Tip Of Your Tongue

The ‘N’ technique is yet another way to learn the correct tongue placement for mewing.

It’s also extremely straightforward and requires you to say the letter ‘N’ and to hold it and say ‘Nnnnnnnnnnn….’

When doing this technique, your tongue will be pressed against the palate naturally and in the right position for mewing. When you say ‘N’ and hold it, attempt to hold that position even after you cease to say ‘Nnnnnnnnnn,’

2. 7. 3. Say The Words “SING”, “KING” or “RING” To Rest The Back And Middle Of Your Tongue

Also known as the ‘Sing Method,’ is the process of saying the word sing, king, or ring and holding it. The tongue position will be against the roof of the mouth in order to make that ‘ing’ sound.

Try to do this during the day every once in a while, to just get used to the feeling and to emulate it in normal circumstances.

2. 7. 4. The Chin Tuck

In order to achieve the ‘Chin Tuck,’ you want to bring your chin back as if you’re making a double chin before tucking your chin back. You should feel how your tongue curves against the palate and how the back third is pressed up.

Once you feel this position, hold it. Then, continue doing chin tucks to get familiar with the position and practice it repetitively to strengthen the muscles.

3. Achieve Proper Teeth Position

The proper technique for teeth positioning when it comes to mewing is as follows:

• Close your mouth= Ensure there are no gaps and that no breathing can be achieved using your mouth.
• Have your lower front teeth lightly touching the upper front teeth= Make your jaw relaxed and loose, don’t bite down; just let them rest in place.
• Your lower front teeth need to be resting behind the upper front teeth=Your lower teeth won’t meet; instead, the lower teeth slide in behind the upper teeth just a little bit.
• Molars should be resting slightly on each other=All the teeth on top should be lightly resting on the lower teeth.

Once you’ve got this nailed down, you can focus on tongue posture!

3. 1. Should Teeth Touch When Mewing?

No, your teeth shouldn’t be touching when mewing. Instead, you should have your lips closed and your front bottom teeth slightly before the upper front teeth.

3. 2. How Hard Your Teeth Should Be Clenched?

Your teeth shouldn’t be clenched when mewing. Instead, you should relax your jaw and jawline while keeping your teeth close without clenching them.

3. 3. Should Your Molars Touch?

Yes, but only slightly! All your upper teeth have to rest lightly against the lower teeth in your mouth but where they truly begin resting on one another is at the molars, which are at the back.

3. 4. How To Move Front Teeth Forward and Is It Necessary for Mewing?

Simply place your bottom front teeth slightly before your front upper teeth while resting them slightly on each other from the molars onwards. It’s 100% necessary for mewing as it helps with the alignment of your teeth, both correcting them and adjusting them to your evolving facial structure.

3. 5. Mewing and Braces

Mewing while wearing braces is tougher than without braces, but not impossible. It does depend slightly on the braces you’re wearing, but there’s one unavoidable truth. You’re not going to be able to easily have your lower teeth behind your upper teeth the way that’s necessary for mewing. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible! It’s just more challenging and time-consuming, but ultimately still worth it if you want to get those positive health benefits of mewing.

With Invisalign, you’ll have an easier time because there are the least intrusive braces. However, lingual braces and metal braces are tricky.

3. 6. Should I Still Wear Night Dentures While Mewing?

While wearing night dentures for mewing is absolutely okay, and helpful to the process, it’s not advised to sleep with them on throughout the night.

Wearing dentures while sleeping can speed up the loss of bone in the gums, stop bacteria growth, induce gum inflammation, and make dentures become a loose fitting in your mouth.

4. Adjust Correct Lips Position

When you’re mewing, you need to keep your mouth closed. As a result, you won’t be breathing through your mouth. Instead, you’ll be doing nasal breathing.

The mewing method requires you to breathe through your nose as you use your diaphragm to breathe more than you would if you were using your mouth. Finally, by breathing with an open mouth, you also do not support the muscles in your face.

To achieve the correct lip position, you need to:

• Put your lips together.
• Don’t squeeze them together. You don’t want tension in the lips.
• Don’t do things like reverse smiling or duckface. Just leave your lips in a resting position.

5. Jaw And Jawline Position When Mewing

Building on what’s already been said, you want to have your jaw in slightly so that your front bottom teeth can lie behind the front upper teeth. The most important thing is not to tense up your jaw; it needs to be relaxed to avoid clenching your teeth.

6. Nose Position When Mewing

You should be practicing good posture, in general, to help the mewing go smoother. Therefore, your nose should be directed straight ahead.

Remember that your nose will become your primary source of oxygen into the body as you use it for breathing instead of your mouth. Therefore you don’t want to obstruct it in any way.

7. Make Sure Your Body Posture is Right

Body posture is aided by mewing but is also required for mewing to be entirely possible. We’re not just talking about your tongue but also general body posture. So ensure you’re standing up straight with your head held high to redefine the shape of your body and facial muscles.

You can achieve this by:

• Sitting down or standing up with your back straight.
• Put your shoulders back.
• Engage the core.
• Look directly ahead throughout your workout.

8. How To Breathe While Mewing

To breathe while mewing, you’ll need to use your nose to inhale and exhale. When mewing, you cannot breathe from your mouth as it’s now preoccupied with mewing techniques to strengthen the muscles in your face and jaw.

You can breathe by:

• Breathe through your nose while your mouth is closed.
• When you’re mewing, you won’t be breathing through your mouth and shouldn’t be able to.
• If you’re struggling to breathe, try to relax the muscles at the back of your tongue until you regain control and the ability to breathe through your nose.
• With practice, this will become easier to achieve.

8. 1. Proper Oral Position While Mewing

The proper oral position is to relax your tongue, have it against your palate, and breathe through your nose instead of out your mouth.

8. 2. Why It Can Be Hard To Breathe?

Changing how you breathe isn’t an easy task to undertake. You’ve likely grown up using your mouth to breathe, so now changing it through mewing means it’s going to be a habit you have to break in order to change it to a new habit.

It also takes some time to adjust to the amount of air you need to inhale and exhale.

8. 3. Can You Breathe Through Your Mouth When Mewing?

No. Mewing requires you to breathe through your nose instead of your mouth to tighten and support the muscles in your face.

8. 4. Can You Mew And Breathe Through Your Mouth When Running?

If you’re breathing through your mouth, you’re no longer mewing. This, unfortunately, goes against the practice and therefore doesn’t count. You’re allowed to breathe through your mouth. It just means you won’t be mewing while doing so, as it’s almost impossible.

9. How To Swallow While Mewing

Swallowing while mewing isn’t as complicated as you might expect it to be. The process requires you to have perfect posture while sitting down to enjoy food and then relying on the use of your tongue instead of your facial muscles and cheeks.

9. 1. How To Properly Swallow Food?

To properly swallow your food while mewing, you need to use your tongue more than anything else. So, as you consume food, you will roll it into a ball using your tongue before doing a slight chin tuck and finally swallowing.

9. 2. How To Deal With Saliva?

Through all this, you might be wondering, ‘how do I deal with my saliva while mewing?’ Well, first of all, saliva is a good thing for mewing as it keeps the mouth lubricated and prevents tooth decay.

However, suppose you’re experiencing excessive saliva. In that case, you can repeat the same process you did when dealing with food. You just roll the saliva onto the tongue and swallow it back with a slight chin tuck.

9. 3. How To Swallow Drinks?

When wondering how to drink while mewing, you’re dealing with a similar situation. Keep the liquid on the tongue, slight chin tuck, and swallow the liquid. Again, this needs to be done while maintaining good posture.

10. How To Chew And Eat Properly While Mewing

When it comes to the process of how to chew food and eating when mewing, it’s a rather straightforward process. It requires you to have extremely good posture both in your face and your body in general.

You’ll find that the most difficult step you might encounter is how to properly swallow food while mewing. But as we get further into the explanation, and with some attempts of your own, you should be able to grasp the concept fairly easily in time.

10. 1. Chewing while eating

When you’re looking at eating while mewing, there are several aspects of the process you need to keep in mind.

For starters, your posture at the dinner table. Ensure you’re:

• Sitting up straight.
• Feet flat on the floor (if necessary, you can use a stool to raise your feet to the required height).
• Thighs parallel to the ground.
• Elbows are never on the table.
• Don’t go to the food. Instead, bring the food to your mouth. If you lean over your plate, then you’re no longer sitting up straight.

When actually eating the food you want to:

• Chew thoroughly.
• Maintain the seal and attempt to not move your lips too much.
• Allow your tongue to do all the work and avoid your cheeks. Your cheeks won’t be doing any work. This is between your teeth and tongue.
• Look straight ahead. Never up, down, or side to side.
• When swallowing, you’re going to bite your teeth together, push your tongue to your palate, chin tuck, and swallow, all without the use of any muscles in your face.

While it sounds complicated, it’s something you get used to over time and with practice.

10. 2. Chewing Gum – Is It Good?

Chewing gum is good for building and defining muscles in your jaw. However, it’s one thing that is best done in moderation. You shouldn’t be doing a marathon of gum eating to achieve this effect, as overindulging has downsides like tooth decay and jaw pain, to name a few.

10. 3. Chewing Tongue – Does It Help?

Dr Mike Mew has spent a considerable amount of time determining whether or not the method is helpful or not and he’s determined that it’s better to improve your tongue’s effect rather than building up the muscle effect.

11. How To Talk While Mewing

When questioning how to speak while mewing, you have to understand it’s not really possible. If you’re talking, you’re not truly mewing. This is because you’re allowing air into your mouth and expelling it as you talk.

However, while you’re engaged in conversation, your tongue can still be relatively relaxed, and the air should be towered in your mouth. While listing to someone, you’re able to mew – it’s really that easy! But while eating and talking, it’s not possible due to your tongue’s rapid movements.

12. How To Keep Mewing While Sleeping

If you’ve ever started mewing, you’ve probably found yourself wondering how to know if you are mewing correctly at night while sleeping. We’re going to show how to continue mewing throughout the night and share some tips.

Considering we sleep for ⅓ of our lives, and this is a crucial time, you could continue to mew through the night instead of ignoring the method during your sleep. The issue, however, is that when you’re sleeping, you’re unconscious and therefore have no control over your lips, tongue, etc.

The tongue has two states: conscious and unconscious.

• Conscious State= When our tongue is in the conscious state, it’s when we’re also conscious. This is where we think about how we want our tongue to behave, where it’s placed, etc.
• Unconscious State=This state allows the tongue and lips to go where they’re most comfortable.

So while you can’t entirely bridge the gap, you can bring them significantly closer together.

Here are 5 tips to help you mew in sleep:

1. Focus on your lip seal: What this means is to focus on if you keep your lips naturally together at night. Make this as much of a habit as possible to reduce the chances of mouth breathing while sleeping.
2. Stretch your lips: You can stretch your lip(s) by pulling them down and holding them in place for about 10 to 20 seconds.
3. Strengthen your lips: Purse your lips, take a toothpick, and hold it in place for about a minute.
4. Mouth taping: By purchasing medical-grade thin paper tape and placing it over your mouth, you’re reminding yourself to keep your mouth closed at night.
5. Nasal strips or sprays: If you have trouble breathing through your nose, ensure you get this checked out by a medical professional. This is pivotal to mewing and, therefore, should be unobstructed. A quick and easy solution to minor nasal breathing issues can be solved with nasal sprays or strips.

13. How Often Should You Do Mewing

It’s recommended that anyone trying to do mewing should be doing it for about 20 to 30 minutes daily, every day! However, this is the exercise. Mewing itself should be done continuously throughout the day as it’s a posture you’re trying to adapt and turn develop into an unconscious habit.

When we say every day, we mean every day.

If you are worried about forgetting or not doing mewing technique properly, then definitely get our app to ensure you always stick to the plan. By engaging in 30 minutes of mewing a day, you’ll be able to eventually see and feel the results while also building up the unconscious habit of mewing.

While this is the recommended minimum time, it doesn’t mean it should be the only time you’re doing it. Instead, treat this as a minimum requirement that you do in case you’re incapable of doing anything more than the required 20 to 30 minutes.

13. 1. How Many Times a Day

The thing you need to remember about mewing is that it’s not a quick fix. It takes time to achieve the results that got you into mewing in the first place.

So if you’re wondering how many times a day, as many times as possible. Pick an exercise and do it for 20 to 30 minutes. Later on, take another exercise and do that for 20 to 30 minutes, and repeat.

13. 2. How Many Times a Week

Every day. With mewing, you cannot afford to miss a day as it can consciously break the habit you’re forming. If you can’t do more than 30 minutes daily, ensure you’re at least doing that bare minimum.

13. 3. How Many Times a Month

Once again, this is not a matter of skipping a day. As a result, the answer stands that you should be doing mewing for a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes a day, every day of the week, and in turn, the month.

The Most Common Mewing Mistakes

There are many potential mewing mistakes to be made. So let’s review some mistakes you should seek to avoid:

• Breathing with an open mouth: This is the most obvious mistake you could make as it goes against the practice entirely. Instead, you need to redirect your breathing to your nose instead of your mouth to use more of your diaphragm but, more importantly, support your facial muscles.
• Grinding your teeth: When most newbies start engaging in mewing, they often go a little too hard when starting off. This process calls for a more relaxed but correct posture. So while you’re meant to clench your teeth, you’re not meant to put too much strain on them that you end up grinding them.
• Inconsistent approach: this is something that does become easier with time and practice, but in the beginning, you’re bound to make mistakes in your approach. Be sure to be mindful of the inconsistencies, and instead of ignoring them, fix them.
• Entire tongue not touching the palate: Your entire tongue needs to touch your palate. This can be easily achieved with some of the previously mentioned exercises. The secondary mistake to this is not evenly applying pressure with your tongue across the palate.
• Touching your front teeth with your tongue and pushing them out: potentially the most devastating effects can come from touching your front teeth with your tongue and pushing them out. This will potentially give you buck teeth and negatively reshape your mouth.
• Poor body posture: having poor general posture can impede your ability to fully engage in mewing successfully. For example, if you’ve got poor forward head posture, then your tongue back third would struggle to reach the roof of your mouth due to it being stretched out.
• Not engaging your Hyoid muscles: Our Hyoid muscles help our tongues make contact with our upper palates. However, suppose you’ve ever found yourself struggling to get the back third of your tongue fully up to your palate. In that case, these muscles aren’t engaged enough. To fully engage them, you’ll need to engage your neck muscles around the hyoid bone to aid it in moving upwards.
• Incorrectly swallowing: it might sound bizarre that there’s such a thing as incorrect swallowing, but it’s true. When you do it correctly, you help to push your palate, thus giving you hollow cheeks. To swallow properly, you must use your tongue to roll your food into a ball before swallowing.
• Treating mewing as an exercise and not a correction of everyday posture: while this is a technique and has exercises, it’s overall nothing more than a correction to your facial and body posture. Unfortunately, treating it as nothing more than an exercise means not taking it seriously enough and potentially losing sight of the goal.

How To Know If You Are Mewing Correctly

It’s difficult to know if you’re mewing correctly, considering someone can’t see what’s happening inside your mouth and judge it for you.

However, there are two ways you can determine if you’re, in fact, successfully mewing. 

The first method is the sing technique. We’ve already covered this, but to recap, it’s just saying the word ‘sing’ and holding onto that ‘ing’ sound. This reminds you of what it should feel like and helps to judge what you’ve been doing.

The second method is called the ‘chin up hold.’ This method’s extremely useful in the earliest stages of learning to mew. This method requires you to lie down on your stomach, lift your chin up, look forward and place your tongue up against your upper palate. This positioning should help to straighten your tongue, making it easier to get it into the correct position where you can get used to the placing of your tongue.

These two methods will help you self-correct your performance. Mewing should feel like you’re experiencing mild pressure across the middle of your face, chin, and jaw. If you’re not feeling these things, you’re not doing it correctly.

It also helps to have an app like Mewing.coach, which helps you to identify the issues and prompts you with ways to improve.

Practice These Exercises To Help Speed Up The Results of Mewing:

1. Exercises To Strengthen And Develop The Tongue Muscle (Hard Mewing)

Hard mewing is a practice that can help not only with achieving results from mewing faster but has various other benefits to it as well. We’ll briefly explain how to hard mew and what the positives are. Let’s start with how to hard mew:

• Push the back and front of your tongue to the top of your upper palate.
• Apply as much pressure as you can.
• Hold this position for 10 to 15 seconds.
• Continue to push even harder.
• Hold this position for 10 to 15 seconds.
• When you feel a burn in the muscles underneath your chin, you know it’s working.

The benefits of hard mewing include:

• Stronger tongue
• Improved posture regarding the tongue
• Improved swallowing
• Improved facial structure
• Helps with sleep apnea

The end result of this exercise should be your tongue naturally wanting to go up to the top of your palate, which is what you want. Continuing this exercise can help in the long run.

2.  Exercises To Fix Forward Head Posture (McKenzie Chin Tucks, Pec Stretch) 

Poor head posture can impede your ability to mew successfully. So you must consistently address head posture to ensure you’re doing it right. By correcting and strengthening your posture, you make your mewing exercises more likely to succeed. We’re going to talk about two methods that will help you with that:

• The McKenzie Chin Tuck
• The Pec Stretch

McKenzie Chin Tucks

• Stand back against the wall.
• Move your feet slightly forward while your back and bottom remain against the wall.
• With your head back against the wall, you’ll notice that only a bit of it is touching the wall.
• You then chin-tuck and repeat this several times. It is recommended to do a set of 20 reps at a minimum.
• The point is not to continuously nod but instead raise the back spot of your head as far up as possible while doing a chin tuck.
• If you’re giving yourself a few double chins, you’re achieving the McKenzie Chin Tuck.Pec Stretch

• Stand facing the corner in a relaxed upright position.

• Your feet need to parallel to one another, and your knees slightly bent.
• Keep your eyes fixed ahead of you.
• Have your chin tucked slightly toward your neck.
• Inhale and exhale.
• Pull your stomach towards your spine.
• Place your forearms over the seam of the wall where the walls are merging.
• Inhale.
• Exhale and pull your lower abdominal muscles into your spine.
• Lean towards the wall.
• Hold this position for 5 – 30 seconds.

3. Exercises For The Jaw Muscles

By keeping your jawline muscles active, you can strengthen them, which helps when it comes to mewing. There are several exercises that will help to define your jawline.

• Chewing gum: this is a great way to move your jaw and get it working correctly to reduce extra fat while strengthening the muscles surrounding your jawline.
• Rolling the tongue: while keeping your head straight, roll and stretch your tongue towards your nose as far as possible. Repeat this process and hold for 10 seconds, take a 10-second break, and repeat several times.
• Simha Mudra: While sitting in a kneeling position, legs folded, you will place your palms on your thighs. Keep your head and back straight as you stick out your tongue and stretch it as far as possible. Deep breath in and out, but when you’re exhaling, roar like a lion/lioness and repeat this five or six times.
• Face-lift motion: Open your mouth wide, flare your nostrils, lift your head up and hold for ten seconds before releasing and repeating several times.
• Lower jaw push: Keep your face facing forward and lower your jaw forwards and backward while you’re raising your chin. Repeat this ten times.

4. Exercises For Facial Muscles (Face Yoga)

Face yoga is a natural technique that uses various massages and techniques to target the shoulders next, and most importantly, the face. The positives of face yoga are similar to mewing as it helps strengthen your facial muscles and helps facilitate a better appearance.

You’ll achieve these results thanks to face yoga:

• Firming your neckline.
• Promote proper nasal breathing.
• Deepen control over facial muscles.
• Build to a more symmetrical face.
• Tone facial muscles.
• Reduce roundness in your face.
• Improve symptoms of TMJ disorders.

You can do various yoga exercises for your face that will aid in your mewing practices, such as the ‘Jaw unlocker.’

• While seated, take your hands and make a fist using your left hand.
• Place that clenched fist on the outside of your jaw and have your thumb facing down.
• Turn your head towards your clenched fist and feel the stretch on your neck.
• Don’t let your hand move.
• Press your jaw towards your hand for a couple of seconds.
• Release gently.
• Repeat the process on the other side.

The Mewing.coach app is perfect for showing you all kinds of exercises to help you mew successfully and to walk you through these exercises.

When you get them right – you’ll be amazed at what mewing can help you achieve!

Frequently Asked Questions

How Hard Are You Supposed To Press When Mewing?

If you’re getting into mewing, you’re probably wondering, ‘should I put any force when I’m mewing?’ or ‘how much pressure should I apply when mewing?’

These are reasonable questions, and the answer might surprise you. When mewing, you want to apply hard pressure with the entirety of your tongue.

The back part of your tongue is considerably stronger than the rest of your tongue. Therefore, you can apply force from there instead, as long as you’re not pushing with your tongue.

Is It Possible To Reverse Mewing Results?

This is a complicated question. Proper mewing and the results of this method take months, if not years, to come to fruition.

The short answer is yes, sort of.

There’s a process known as ‘reverse mewing.’ You already understand the bright side of mewing, so if you’re asking this question, it’s for a reason.

To engage in reverse mewing, you’d need to throw everything you’ve learned, the habits you’ve become accustomed to, and the knowledge you’ve acquired out the window. Instead of the correct oral posture, you want to have improper oral posture.

This means breathing through your mouth and ignoring proper tongue placement.

Unfortunately, going from successful mewing to reverse mewing can negatively affect your facial appearance. For example, it can result in you having an imbalanced face. The harsh reality is that reversing what you’ve already done can result in unattractiveness.

Sometimes people seek out this process because they’re unhappy with the results they’ve achieved from mewing. That’s understandable. However, there are ways to address that.

First, identify what went wrong, and learn new methods to correct the imperfections. In this scenario, sticking to the method means you should eventually achieve the desired results.