Where Does Your Tongue Sit In Your Mouth...and Why Is Correct Tongue Posture Important?

This might sound like a funny thing to talk about, but there is only one place your tongue should be when you are not talking or eating. We will explore what this is and the reasons why this is important. But first, just take a moment to notice where your tongue is sitting in your mouth right now. Is your tongue on the roof of your mouth, somewhere in the middle, or touching the bottom? Your answer will also depend on whether you are breathing through your nose or mouth.

When I started learning how to improve my daily breathing habits, I had to re-learn where my tongue should sit in my mouth! Switching from predominantly mouth breathing to nose breathing 24/7 was a journey. So, let's have a look at where your tongue should sit, why, and how you can practice this if you need to change it.

What is the Correct Tongue Posture?

To achieve correct tongue posture, you must breathe in and out through your nose. Ideally, we should be nose breathing 24/7! When you breathe through your nose, your lips should be closed, your teeth slightly apart, and most of your tongue should lightly rest against the roof of your mouth.

The tip of your tongue should sit just behind your upper teeth, but not pressing against them. Can you find a bony ridge behind your teeth? That is where the tip of your tongue should sit. The rest of your tongue should rest against your hard and soft palate (the roof of your mouth). The most important part is to have the back of your tongue against the soft palate at the back of your mouth. You don't need to apply any force; just allow it to sit there.

Maintaining correct tongue posture offers numerous benefits for our bodies:

• It is vital for the development and alignment of the jaw and teeth in children.

• It enables you to breathe more easily through your nose, as it supports the airway muscles.

• It prevents mouth breathing, which is difficult to do with the tongue in this position.

• It supports an upright head position, keeping your head aligned with your torso.

• It prevents snoring and sleep apnea.

• It holds the lower jaw in the correct aligned position, relieving jaw tension and bruxism (teeth grinding).

• It facilitates correct swallowing, where your tongue should do all the work.

  
  

Development and Alignment of the Jaw and Teeth

The tongue is an incredibly strong muscle. When resting against the roof of the mouth, it exerts pressure on the upper jaw, which helps widen it. This is critical for young children, as this widening allows space for the teeth to develop in alignment and avoids overcrowding. As an adult, you want to maintain this alignment or improve it if you have previously been a mouth breather.

Mouth breathing in children can lead to a high, narrow palate (roof of the mouth), which often results in overcrowding and crooked teeth. Dentists may extract teeth to create more room, but this tends to make the mouth smaller, and the tongue can then be slightly too big for the reduced space. As a mouth breather, I experienced this firsthand. I remember having five teeth extracted as a child and then wearing braces to correct my crooked teeth. My tongue now feels slightly too big for my small mouth!

Another growth issue in mouth-breathing children is that the jaw grows downwards instead of forward. This affects the size of the airways. As a natural compensatory technique, people often stick their heads forward slightly to open their airway, which can lead to a forward head posture and other postural issues later in life.

You Can Breathe More Easily Through Your Nose

With your tongue resting against the roof of your mouth while nose breathing, the air flows easily in and out. Let's compare tongue positions while nose breathing so you can experience the difference for yourself.

Sit upright with good posture (if you're not already!), close your lips, let your tongue hang in the middle of your mouth, and breathe normally in and out of your nose for 3-5 breath cycles (inhales and exhales). Then, place your tongue against the roof of your mouth, as far back as possible, keeping your lips closed, and breathe for another 3-5 breath cycles. Which tongue position allows for better airflow?

Mouth Breathing is Difficult to Do with Correct Tongue Posture

This is a fun exercise to try. Open your mouth and breathe, noticing where your tongue naturally sits. Is it low in your mouth? Now, keep your mouth open and place your tongue against the roof of your mouth and breathe. How easy does that feel? Quite difficult, right?! Notice how dry the incoming air feels, as the mouth does not have the same humidifying abilities as the nose.

When the tongue rests on the floor of the mouth, there is a greater chance it will fall back into the airway, reducing the size of the airway. This can make you push your head forward to get more air into your lungs.

Nose Breathing and Correct Tongue Posture Supports Good Overall Body Posture

As we've mentioned, the tongue is a strong muscle connected to the neck and shoulders. When it's in the correct resting position, the tongue supports the neck muscles, helping maintain an open airway for breathing and supporting an upright head position. This alignment can prevent rounded shoulders and/or a forward head posture.

Nasal breathing also naturally engages the diaphragm, our primary breathing muscle. However, this movement can only occur freely if we maintain good posture, allowing the lower ribs to expand and contract with the diaphragm's movement. We will explore this in more detail in another blog.

Correct Tongue Posture Can Prevent Snoring and Sleep Apnea

Snoring

Snoring is essentially noisy breathing during sleep. It occurs when a person breathes too much air in a narrow space (the upper airways), causing turbulence (vibrations) in the mouth, nose, and throat. Snoring can result from narrow upper airways and/or hard and fast breathing.

If you or your sleeping partner snore through an open mouth, this noise is caused by the soft palate (at the back of the roof of the mouth) vibrating.

This can quickly be remedied by closing the mouth and nose breathing (with correct tongue posture) during sleep. If you tend to breathe through your mouth during the day, you will likely do so at night. Therefore, you may need assistance keeping your mouth closed at night to encourage nose breathing. This can easily be achieved by applying specially designed mouth tape around the lips at night. The tape is elasticated, so it encourages the lips to stay closed while sleeping, but it does not cover your lips, allowing you to open your mouth to talk, drink, or breathe if necessary! Follow this link to find out more about MYOTAPE.

Some people snore through their nose with their mouth closed. This generally means they are breathing too hard and fast, inhaling too much air, which causes turbulence in the upper airways (a small space) resulting in the snoring noise. This can also be improved by learning to breathe lighter when awake, which will translate to your sleep once it becomes a habit.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Obstructive Sleep Apnea is more serious. It occurs when the upper airways collapse, or the tongue falls back and blocks the airway during sleep, causing breathing to stop (apnea) or airflow to be reduced (hypopnea). Correct tongue posture helps keep airway dilator muscles working and reduces the chances of obstruction during sleep. The brain is extremely vigilant, even when we're asleep, and it identifies a drop in our oxygen levels when breathing temporarily stops or reduces, waking us up so we start breathing again. If you have mild sleep apnea, you may wake up five to fifteen times a night. With moderate sleep apnea, you may wake fifteen to thirty times, and more than thirty times with severe sleep apnea.

If you do not maintain the correct tongue posture while breathing during the day, you will definitely not have it when asleep. Again, if we train ourselves to breathe through the nose and adopt the correct tongue posture when awake, we will eventually do this when asleep.

Correct Jaw Position Relieves Jaw Tension and Teeth Grinding

When the tongue rests against the roof of the mouth, the lower jaw is more likely to be aligned, creating the right balance of muscle tension. Mouth breathing or poor tongue posture can lead to Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) pain or issues and/or teeth grinding during the day and night. External stressors can also cause these conditions, but poor breathing mechanics can create or exacerbate them.

Correct Swallowing Using the Tongue

If you have correct tongue posture when you are not talking or eating, you are more likely to use it correctly to swallow your food. The cheeks and head should not move when you swallow; only your tongue should do the work. Next time you have a drink or eat something, pay attention to what happens.

How Do I Train My Tongue to Sit in the Correct Position?

Have you heard of Mewing? This technique was developed by British orthodontists Dr John Mew and his son Dr Mike Mew. Mewing is a set of exercises designed to strengthen your tongue muscles, improve your forward jaw growth, and correct forward head posture. You can download the "Mewing" app, which guides you through these exercises, and there are many videos on YouTube explaining the technique. I had to practice this correct tongue posture as part of my journey to better breathing. Like learning to swim better, it takes regular practice to adopt more efficient habits.

However, correct tongue posture can only be achieved if you habitually nose breathe during wakefulness and sleep. I can help you retrain your breathing to ensure you breathe through your nose with correct tongue posture at rest, during physical exercise, and when asleep. If you have children who breathe through their mouths, I strongly suggest you encourage nasal breathing or seek help with this to ensure their craniofacial and airway development is not negatively impacted.

Breathing properly is multidimensional. To assess or improve our health and wellbeing or sports performance, we must consider the biochemistry, biomechanics, and psychophysiological aspects of breathing. We have only discussed one aspect of the biomechanics of breathing here, so I'll be writing more about these other aspects in future posts. But ensuring nasal breathing with correct tongue posture is a fantastic start!