Tongue Posture Guide · Baseline-First

How to mew

By Randy · RealSmile

Facial Analysis Research

Verified

Updated

August 8, 2026

The full tongue-posture technique. Plus a baseline jaw scan so you can tell whether anything actually moved 90 days later.

Mewing will not rebuild your skull. It can shift soft-tissue presentation and resting posture, which moves the photo a little. The scan separates real change from placebo.

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The technique in 4 steps

Step one: get the tip in the right spot. Place the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge directly behind the upper incisors. The contact point is the small ridge between the teeth and the soft palate, not on the teeth themselves and not on the roof of the mouth further back. Get the tip stable first because the back of the tongue follows the tip.

Step two: lift the middle and back thirds. The hardest part. Suction the entire upper surface of the tongue against the palate so the rear third is not pooled in the floor of the mouth. A useful cue is to imagine swallowing a peanut butter teaspoon and freezing at the moment the back of the tongue presses up. That is the resting posture.

Step three: close the lips, light tooth contact. Lips sealed, teeth lightly touching but not clenched. Breath through the nose. If you cannot breathe through your nose comfortably, get the nose checked before going deeper into mewing; chronic mouth-breathing is itself the root cause of many of the issues the technique is trying to fix.

Step four: hold and forget. The posture is meant to be passive and continuous, not an active hold. Set a reminder every 30 minutes for the first two weeks. After about a month most people stop noticing they are doing it; the tongue defaults to the palate even during sleep.

What baseline metrics to capture before day one

Mandibular plane angle

The angle the lower jawline makes against the horizontal in a left-profile photo. Smaller angles read as a more horizontal, defined jaw. Mewing claims to flatten this slightly over months; baseline before so you can measure the delta.

Lower-third ratio

The vertical proportion of the lower face (nose base to chin) against the total face height. Long lower thirds are sometimes attributed to low resting tongue posture during growth. In adults this number is largely fixed; track it anyway so the data is honest.

Submental projection

The distance from the underside of the chin to the front of the neck. Tightens fastest of any metric under consistent tongue posture because submental soft tissue responds to resting muscle tone within weeks.

Gonial angle estimate

The corner where the jawline meets the rear of the mandible. Photo-derived gonial angle is approximate but useful for tracking apparent jaw squareness across the 90-day window.

Lip seal score

Whether the lips rest closed without conscious effort. Captured directly in the resting-photo metric. Improving lip seal is itself one of the documented effects of consistent tongue posture.

Neck angle

Resting head posture relative to vertical. A more upright neck reads as a sharper jawline in photos even without any change to the underlying bone. Baseline so you can isolate posture from any real structural shift.

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Why the baseline scan matters more than the technique

Most people who claim mewing changed their face are looking at four photos: one selfie from the year they started high school, one selfie from the year they got serious about working out, one selfie from the year they fixed their skincare, and a recent selfie taken with a better camera under better lighting. Almost none of the change comes from tongue posture. The scan exists to remove that confound.

Capture the same shoot (straight-on plus left profile, plain background, flat daylight, neutral expression) on day zero and re-run every 30 days. The 17-metric vector will surface real shifts in mandibular plane, submental projection, and lower-third proportion that you can attribute to the intervention, separated from camera and lighting confounds.

Honest limits

No large randomized trial in adults has shown skeletal change from voluntary tongue posture alone. Treat any claim of bony restructuring with skepticism.
Recessed maxilla, severe overbite, or long lower third in adults rarely respond meaningfully to mewing. These often need orthognathic surgery to move; tongue posture is not a substitute.
The most reliable visible change in the first 90 days is soft-tissue tightening under the chin and improved head posture. Both can read as a sharper jawline in photos without any underlying skeletal change.
Excessive tongue pressure can cause TMJ discomfort, dental wear, or unintended tooth movement. The technique is meant to be passive, not constant muscular effort.
If you cannot breathe through your nose comfortably, treat that first. Chronic mouth-breathing is the root cause of many of the issues mewing is trying to address.

How to mew FAQ

What is mewing in one sentence?+

Mewing is the practice of resting the entire tongue, including the back third, against the roof of the mouth with the lips sealed and teeth lightly touching, in the belief that consistent tongue posture over months or years can subtly influence midface and jaw development. The technique was popularized by orthodontist Dr. Mike Mew building on his father John Mew's orthotropics framework.

Does it actually work?+

The honest read: in adults, peer-reviewed evidence for measurable bony change is thin. There is some small-sample work on tongue posture and palatal width in growing children, but no large randomized trial in adults has shown statistically significant skeletal change from voluntary tongue posture alone. What many adults do notice is a tightening of submental tissue and a more upright resting head posture, both of which can read as a sharper jawline in photos without any underlying bone moving. Treat that as a real but modest soft-tissue effect, not as bone restructuring.

How do I baseline my jawline before I start?+

Take a neutral straight-on photo and a left-profile photo against a plain wall in flat daylight. Run both through the free 17-metric scan to capture mandibular plane angle, lower-third proportion, gonial angle estimate, and submental projection. Save the report. Re-run the same shoot in 30, 60, and 90 days. The metric deltas will tell you whether anything visible has shifted, separated from the placebo of staring at your face in the mirror every day.

How long should the tongue actually touch the palate each day?+

The orthotropics framework calls for as close to 24-hour resting posture as the practitioner can sustain, including during sleep. In practice, most people building the habit start with a few hours of conscious daytime posture and slowly extend the window. The mistake to avoid is forcing the tongue up while chewing, swallowing, or speaking; the technique is about resting posture, not active pressure.

What does proper tongue position feel like?+

The flat of the tongue, from the tip behind the upper incisors back through the middle and rear thirds, lightly suctioned against the entire palate. Lips sealed, teeth gently touching but not clenched, breath through the nose. The most common error is tipping only the front of the tongue up and leaving the rear pooled in the floor of the mouth; that is not mewing, that is tongue tipping.

Can mewing hurt me?+

Pushing too hard with the tongue can cause temporomandibular joint discomfort and, in rare cases, accelerate dental wear or shift tooth alignment in unintended ways. Anyone with existing TMJ symptoms, orthodontic appliances, or sleep apnea should ask a dentist or orthodontist before starting. The technique is meant to be passive resting posture, not constant muscular effort.

What do the free scan and the $14.99 report actually give me?+

Free: composite 0 to 100, universal percentile, and your two strongest plus two weakest of the 17 metrics. The $14.99 Looksmax Report breaks every metric down with percentile bands, identifies which of your metrics are doing structural heavy lifting versus dragging, and writes a soft-tissue-first plan that includes posture, sleep, hydration, and grooming changes ranked by expected impact.

Will the scan tell me if mewing changed anything?+

Yes, for the metrics that are visible in a photo: mandibular plane angle, lower-third ratio, submental projection, and jawline definition. It cannot tell you anything about palatal width, soft-palate position, or airway dimensions because those are not visible from outside the face. For those, you need a CBCT scan from an orthodontist.

Baseline now. Re-scan day 30, 60, 90. Real deltas only.

Capture all 17 metrics with the written breakdown.

The $14.99 Looksmax Report ranks every metric, names which two are dragging the composite, and writes a soft-tissue-first plan ordered by expected impact.

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