How do you do Mewing at night? How do you maintain proper oral resting posture while you sleep?

One of my subscribers recently asked me this question, and it’s also something that’s discussed quite a bit in the forums.

This is actually a really good question. You want to have your tongue on your palate as much of the time as possible to get results. We also sleep 1/3 of our lives, so this is really important

But there is one major problem with this question... and that is that... you can’t do Mewing at night.

Unconscious vs. Conscious Tongue Position

When you fall asleep, you're in an unconscious state. Meaning, you can’t control your tongue, lips or any muscles really, while you sleep.

This was designed evolutionarily for out benefit. During REM sleep for example, all of our major muscles in our body are immobile. This is so that we can’t act out our dreams and potentially hurt yourself or someone else.

You can almost think about it like you have 2 different states, one of them is when you’re awake. You think about keeping your lips closed. You try and think about keeping your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

But when you sleep? Your tongue reverts to its resting position. It’s an unconscious position.

We want to basically close the gap between those 2 so that your resting posture is closer to your ideal posture.

So obviously the objective then is to improve this unconscious resting position. And the keyword here is REST. That means you're not consciously straining or trying to do anything. When you just relax, during the day, at night, you’re tongue just sits on your upper palate, and your lips just naturally stay together.

So now I’m going to give you 5 tips that can help you to keep your lips closed at night, and your tongue on your upper palate.

Tip #1 - Stretch Your Upper Lip

The first thing to pay attention to is your lip seal. Meaning, do you naturally keep your lips closed at night?

If your lips open while you sleep, then you are very likely to mouth breathe, and then of course your tongue will drop from your palate. So one of the most crucial aspects here is sleeping with your lips together, and being able to breathe well through your nose.

So you can actually stretch and strengthen your lips. And doing so will help give you a proper lip seal.

The first stretch you can do which is one of my favourites is stretching your upper lip. Just using a paper towel, you can grab your upper lip right under your nose, and just pull the whole lip down for 10-20s and just do that 3 times.

Many of us have both tightness, shortness in our upper lip, and also weakness in our lip muscles.

What you should notice after doing this is that your lips feel like they just come together more easily without you having to try as hard. And this is super important!

I learned this exercise from one of the myofunctional therapists I worked with in creating our online programs, by the way.

Tip #2 - Strengthen Your Lips

You can also strengthen your lips!

One way to do this is like to kind of make a kissy face, purse your lips forward, and then take a toothpick and hold it in between your lips. Hold it there for 1 minute and notice the difference that makes.

This will also make your lips look better by the way, because it will make them look fuller. Also it will help make your top lip look closer to your bottom lip.

Many people especially girls I know get fillers for their upper lips, but you can just strengthen and stretch it naturally and that will make your lips look fuller without needing to get lip fillers.

Also, you can just put this toothpick between your lips while working or just through the day to help practice that proper lip seal, with NO space between your lips. Because even if they separate a little bit it can cause problems when you sleep.

Tip #3 - Try Mouth Taping

Many dentists have recommended mouth taping to me. I’ve actually tried it and seen that it does help.

So you’re not like using duct tape or forcing your mouth shut, that’s not the point.

You actually just use medical tape, paper or plastic. It’s very thin and breathable so you don’t have to worry about like not being able to breath if you have to

You just take a small piece and put it over your lips vertically or horizontally it’s up to you.

The idea is this just acts as a little reminder and reinforcement while you sleep. I’ve heard lots of people really getting results from this.

I even notice my lips feel like they are getting a bit of a workout when i use it and wake up. It’s like just a reminder for your lips to stay closed.

Tip #4 - Use nasal spray/nasal strips

One of the biggest problems that cause poor tongue posture, and facial development is just having a clogged nose in the first place. This is probably the most important element of this whole equation: breathing.

We can’t go 10 minutes without air, so our body will compensate in whatever way it needs to to get that air.

When we moved inside as humans this started essentially. Many people theorize that’s the reason our faces are developing differently, and worse than our ancestors.

So allergies, dust, pollution, all of these things can have major consequences for your face and your tongue.

If you have a more severe breathing issue, allergies, congestion, inflamed turbinates whatever it is - it’s really important to try and get that cleared up. And I will make more videos in the future hopefully with like a really good ENT, but for now here’s a couple tips.

First is nasal spray. So using a natural spray, like a salt water spray such as Hydrasense or one of these just to clear out your nose before sleeping can help.

Another is nasal strips. Like these breathe right strips, they really work. It’s like a little benefit you get from them, all they basically do is flare out your nostrils so you get a little more air through your nose.

Athletes use them, they really do feel good at night, so give that a shot as well.

Tip #5 - Do exercises for your tongue

This is a really important tip. For the longest time I was just doing Mewing alone, but once I started doing tongue and lip exercises it made my tongue posture way better.

You can think of it like you can get a certain amount of results with just Mewing, but your potential for how good your tongue position could be is limited by just Mewing. You can get much better results doing exercises.

This includes tongue stretches to improve mobility, strengthening, all kinds of exercises.

Again you want to improve your resting tongue posture. And that’s what these exercises do, they make it so that without trying your tongue is just where it’s supposed to be, suctioned to your upper palate.

Some options for this are working with a myofunctional therapist who essentially specializes in these exercises. And if you want to work 1 on 1 with a therapist you can go to myofunctionaltherapy.com

Also if you go to our website, I created a program with some of the doctors and myofunctional therapists I’ve worked with. This program is basically all the best exercises I’ve seen work for me and others as well. I also created a free version for everyone to do.