My Favourite Myofunctional Therapy exercises (so far) as a tongue tied singer.
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hi everybody my name is Gemma Milburn I'm a vocal coach and a professional singer and in July 2023 at the age of 38 years old I found out that I have a tongue tie something that had never occurred to me but that explained quite a few things that I'd had all my life and also pointed some out to me that I'd been completely oblivious to um if you want to know more about those things I've made up video on those topics so please go back and watch them um on my channel there's a playlist all about tongue TI stuff um and you can catch up there today I've actually had a request to do a video with some of the myofunctional therapy exercises in that I've been working with my myofunctional therapist I'm on week eight now I'm having my surgery soon and it's all going really well it's really fun really interesting um so I'm going to show you some of the exercises but before I do that I would like to be really clear I'm showing them for entertainment and curiosity purposes for anyone who just kind of doesn't know what a Mya functional therapy exercise might entail I am not in any way qualified to um teach anyone these exercises and I'm not coming from a place of hey if you do this your X result will happen CU I don't know that I have no idea I'm not trained in that area um also bear in mind that I have a tongue tie still and I'm still in the treatment process so I am very likely not doing these exercises very well um I'm not a role model to copy if you're looking for someone to learn the exercises off please don't learn them of me please contact a professional and get them to assess your unique situation and assign you some exercises that's the third thing I want to say is as well something I found is that when I went for my assessment my tongue tie assessment with my Maya functional therapist she did a real thorough assessment of my whole needs and all the things that um my tongue tie has affected for me and I'm quite certain she's put together a program of exercises unique to me and my situation um so I cannot for a start claim to that these exercises will be at all appropriate for you and your situation because I don't know that um so I'm basically showing you these for fun so if you want to see some fun exercises that you might not have seen before then you've come to the right place and also to see me fumble over them because I've been doing it for eight weeks now and the ones I'm going going to show you a ones that I actually haven't done for a while some of the easier ones um I'm on like a different phase of treatment now and I might show you that further down the line but these ones all have like props and things I thought they were cool for you all to look at so one thing I've learned is that my functional therapy is not just about the tongue I thought it was going to be like tongue exercises and some of them are but some of them are lip exercises because being able to have a good mouth seal is really important and many Tongue Tied people do not um we have a tendency to mouth breathe because the tongue is on the bottom of the mouth rather than on the roof of the mouth and that means we have more of an open mouth seal and these lip muscles don't get strong enough over time so some of the exercises are for the lips and the face some are for the jaw I had had is better now but I had a very restricted jaw probably from having to compensate keeping my jaw quite closed in order for my tongue to be able to do the things needed to do inside my mouth I had to keep my jaw quite closed and from a lifetime of that my jaw was quite restricted some of them are for the jaw um some of them are for the tongue a lot of them are for the tongue but um I was surprised it was more of a multi face throat tongue you experience you'll see you'll see in a second so um right I'm gonna show you the first one then so the first one is button pops so I haven't done this in ages so I'm probably going to get wrong so you put the button in your mouth I just gave it a little firm tug to kind of create some resistance between my lips and the button and then pull it out so makes a little pop noise
I didn't do that very well it's been a
while yeah and then over time I then graduated to doing side ones as
well on the other side might as well balance it
out so you kind of pull it gently so you feel muscles in your face and the button sort of create a bit of resistance against each other and then pull it out so makes a little pop nice when I first started this one it didn't always make a pop because it didn't always have the strength there to create the resistance but I do now it's just fun it's a really fun exercise and surprisingly tiring I can feel it in my face now already having done that so that's a really fun little exercise um and hidden benefit to some of these exercises is actually my face is changing so I'm seeing in um in the mirror when I look in the mirror I can see changes in my face and in some of the update photos that me and my my functional therapist are taking my face is changing due to the change in the muscles so that's pretty cool as well so button Pops that one is the next one is don't know the name of this one but I have a piece of string it's just come and done with this little hoop is basically a weight tied onto the end now this is an I started off with a much lighter weight than this so if you are feeling like trying this at Home Folks you might find it hard like I you I started off with like a sandwich bag clip so much lighter um this one I'll show you it so right
here uhhuh so I'm gathering the string up in the middle of my tongue and basically weightlifting so that one I think um is too strengthen my tongue has to pull back retract a bit so it's helping me do that and I can really also feel it in my face and jaw muscles as well at the same time try
again at the end you check that the strings are all gathered up on your tongue and that's how you know do it right um that one as well you have to make sure that your lips are closed CU I guess it would be tempting to
that by keeping your lips closed I think it helps the tongue to do the work believe mhm definitely does so that one's good fun haven't done that one in a while actually um and I'm doing these not the I've moved on actually I'm not doing these ones anymore but I'm doing my myo exercises three times a day every day so it's a big commitment it's a lot of work and it's tiring so you know if you are considering the process yourself it's fun and I recommend it but it is it is a big commit so next one oh I like this one and just so you know I should have said this at the start I'm not doing these in any particular order I've chosen a selection of exercises that I found particularly fun that I think would be cool for you to see on a video um they aren't a well balanced program I don't think I'm sure that my Mayo looks each week and makes sure that I have like a balanced program of exercises that week I haven't done that here this is literally me picking ones that I think are good fun that span the weeks that I I haven't necessarily used these in the same week as each other every week they kind of move on a little bit so if you are remotely tempted to copy these exercises please know this is not a well balanced program and you need to go and see someone who actually knows what they're doing so this next one one of my favorites and I haven't done it in a while and I definitely couldn't do it when I first started so I'm going to show you it first so you stick your tongue out horizontally I never used to be able to do that and then you're going to I'm going to move my tongue side to side and then
up
and the idea is that your jaw shouldn't follow the tongue uh it's tempting for the I actually can't do that anymore but when the tongue goes to the side for the jaw to follow it kind of thing to
happen this was a really I don't know what the word is impactful exercise for me I found after doing this for a week like my tongue looked different it's Slimmer I never used to able to stick my tongue out like that and have it be like slim it used to be more like uhuh and now it's cuz I have that strength in the length of my tongue which is really cool so yes one of my favorite
ones and I do find the singers I work with I have experimented with this on them again not in the context of them having a tongue tie but in terms of having a strong tongue it's a really really really useful exercise for singers um I think as long as you uh I recommend looking in the mirror to do it and being aware of what your jaw is
doing it's basically a very beneficial exercise to do so give it a go but not too much so okay the next one is the cave now the cave is I think a really famous one I actually seen it on YouTube before I even was asigned this exercise the cave is you it's um lingual palatal suction and it's an exercise that lifts the body of the tongue so I can lift the tip never us be to do that either so lift the tip and put it behind my front teeth on the incisive pillar that one's like a lift but then the next step in this is lifting the body of the tongue up in like a suction as if you're going to make a click sound
so I don't if you can see let going try that angle that would be it just touching the the spot as they call it but then to
suction the body of the tongue has to go
up and it's called The Cave because the idea is that with strength you will correct these two caves down the side separated by the frenulum in the middle I did not used to be able to do that um and it's got tons better the cave hold is a really good one and in mayo it has progressed each week so I've had to add more complicated things to it over time um again I suggest just starting off with a simple one so if you can do like a click or a one you hold it for so you go so holding it for three one two three
click my screen is liking what I'm doing
here and over time that body of the tongue gets stronger uh I don't know if I can do the next more difficult one on camera but um if you want to experiment with it some more you can do the
cave I don't know what that's called with your jaw opening and
closing can really see how lopsided my face is when I do that one that's a fun one um one of the exercises I did at the start I think was in the very first week of my when my jaw was really restricted was this called this I think it's called a wafer slide so you put this wafer thing in between your teeth around I haven't done this in ages so I'm probably going to get it completely wrong uh oh yeah I'm getting completely WR basically I'm using the piece of plastic to slide my teeth against so I can move my jaw forwards and back forwards and back
there you
go yeah this is harder than it was a few weeks
ago yeah I'm not going to embarrass myself on camera anymore but you get the idea so it's it's um addressing range of motion of the jaw as
well yeah there there we go and then the final one that I thought I'd show you all is using my Mayo munchie so it's piece of it's made of silicone I believe and it's designed specifically for myof functional therapy and what I do with it is I put it in my mouth it's got a little bit on here which is your reference point for where you should put your tongue again because many of us Tongue Tied people our tongues tend to rest on the floor of our mouth and this shows us um a spot to aim for on the roof of the mouth so you use that as your place to First of what enough if you put in it in your mouth the right way up
mhmh and what I did there was I Clos my lips around it first to make sure I had a seal around it and then once I've done that I put my tongue up to this bit
here and have to do a mixture of static so holding it in my mouth for quite a while at a time is surprisingly
hard and chewing That was supposed to be I have to chew it in my mouth for minutes at a
time when you pull it out you do a little suction to make it less messy let's face it so um this one it's surprisingly difficult it is first of all a way of encouraging the tongue to sit higher in the mouth and a way cuz my my chewing personally is lopsided from yours of struggling to move my tongue around my mouth i' I've learned to just kind of chew on one side of my face I'm now chewing equally on both
sides trying to anyway and it's I know for me I don't know if this is necessarily one of the things that this is supposed to do but um with me having like a restricted jaw and also jaw malocclusion it guides my jaw into a good place um there's also that element of lip seal at the front as well and um yeah it's a really great tool I really like this one I gu it's harder than it looks when I have to hold it in there for like 30 minutes at a time by the end I'm really desperate to remove it from my mouth because it is strenuous and I like dribble and it's not attractive but um it's been a really useful part of the whole process um so there you go those are my top six fun myo EXC exercises there are load more and like I said it progresses every week um and at the moment I most of what I'm doing or a lot of what I'm doing is around swallowing and chewing as those are things that I haven't done very well throughout my lifetime I'm now having to relearn how to swallow drinks and how to chew my food which I didn't even know I was doing wrong but in order to make sure that I'm in good habits going forwards then I have to do this also you might notice that I have quite a pronounced overjet with my teeth and that is due to tongue thrust swallow so making sure I don't continue to do that um that my tongue function is good means that I may be able to actually get some orthodontic treatment that will work at some point which I'm pretty excited about um and the strengthening of my lips and my face mean that um there's some kind of backwards resistance against my teeth so they're less likely to creep forward so it's really cool I'm really enjoying it I've noticed I think my main priority in starting this process was that it would help my singing and at this point it definitely has if only because I can open my mouth more than before um that is definitely helping um a downside is that even though I can now my mouth more my tongue can't move with my jaw well it can only move with my jaw I can't move independently of my jaw so I can open my mouth more my tongue is still very much stuck down there so I can't still can't move that as well as I would like to but hopefully once I've had the release next month and that will change so these were some of my favorite myo exercises if you'd like to see some more I'm happy to share um another thing I've been doing is Beto breathing and I've really surprisingly loved that that has helped me to sleep much better and that's been a surprising result that I've had from all of this my functional therapy in fact probably even more than the improvements to my singing is the improvements to my sleep and the awareness that I've gathered through having a couple of good night sleep and going oh I haven't been sleeping that well for my whole life so yeah it's really eye opening and like as you can see it's fun like there's lots of little tools and things to use um quite hard quite a big commitment um but super fun super worth it and I've learned some stuff that I can use to help my singers to improve their function of their tongues and their strength of their faces which is pretty cool too so um I will be back soon to chat about the next stage of things um if you have any specific questions um let me know and I will make sure I do a video about that um but in the meantime let me know what you think of these exercises have you done any of these yourself in as part of your myo Journey what results have you got from them um yeah I'm really curious to know but thanks for watching speak to you
soon
