126 | Revolutionary Techniques for Improved Sleep with Jessica Miller, Myofunctional Therapist

What if you could sleep soundly and wake up feeling refreshed, free from jaw pain and tension? In this riveting conversation with myofunctional therapist Jessica, we promise to take you through a journey of discovery - from understanding the importance of looking at the body systems, not just the symptoms, to navigating through midlife in a way more graceful manner than before. Jessica's personal journey with her daughter, who experienced feeding, sleeping, and headache issues, serves as a powerful testimony of the crucial need to address the root cause of health problems.

We then dive into the often overlooked connection between sleep disorders and genetics in children and the importance of early intervention. Jessica enlightens us about the negative implications of mouth breathing such as snoring and sleep apnea, and the significance of proper tongue posture and breathing for overall oral health. You'll learn about tongue gymnastics, an innovative technique that can improve our smile, eye movements, and address compensations in our facial muscles.

As we wrap up the episode, Jessica shares fascinating insights on strengthening the muscles in the mouth, which can improve tongue posture and potentially prevent the need for orthodontic interventions. She also highlights the connection to pelvic floor strength and how these changes can positively impact the appearance of the face. Get ready to join our vibrant free community and learn how to move more and feel better. So, tune in and let's engage in this insightful discussion.

Learn more from Jessica:

Checklist she mentioned: Jessica Miller How to Stop Stress-Clenching Naturally (jessicamillerwellness.com)

Snore No More- https://pages.snorenomoremethod.com/stop-snoring-tonight 

Head to www.movingthroughmidlife. com to learn more

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Chapters

• 0:05 Addressing Jaw Pain and Sleep Issues
• 11:13 Sleep Apnea's Connection to Breathing
• 22:10 Tongue Positioning and Breathing Techniques
• 28:17 Tongue Posture and Muscle Strengthening
• 34:07 Improving Smiles and Addressing Tongue Posture
• 47:31 Reaching Out and Promoting Healthy Habits

Transcript

Courtney: 0:05

Welcome to Moving Through Midlife. I am your host, courtney, a personal trainer and movement specialist who wants to help you move through midlife with more grace. Each week we will discuss ways we can show up better for ourselves and our children without the burnout. We will focus on overall health through habit stacking to help increase energy, provide movement snacks to help you move more throughout the day, while also moving your body more, and learn from professionals on moving through midlife with ease so that you can feel confident with aging. Gracefully, grab your earbuds and join me on a leisurely walk while we discuss moving through midlife.

Courtney: 0:54

Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jessica. She helps clenches and grinders find freedom from jaw pain, tension, snoring and sleep apnea by creating step-by-step strategies that anyone can follow to feel better in their body and improve their sleep, energy and focus. As a healthcare provider and educator for over 12 years, she brings lasting change in health by looking at the systems rather than always chasing symptoms. She is an advocate for better breathing and oral biomechanics as a keystone health strategy. She lives in Squamish, british Columbia, with her husband and two little kids, and she is here to share some information with us on how we can work on changing our breathing pattern to help us get better night's sleep. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Hi Jessica, how are you today?

Jessica Miller: 1:55

Hi, courtney, I'm doing really well. Thanks for asking.

Courtney: 1:59

I would love to know how you got started in myofunctional therapy. What is your story? Where did you begin with this?

Jessica Miller: 2:12

Yeah, for me it's been a bit of a lifelong pursuit, I'd say. But everything really snowballed for me when my daughter was three months old. She's almost seven now. I've been in this very specific area of healthcare for quite a while. When she was three months old, I remember just holding her. I was in bed, I was holding her, I was looking at her and just thinking what a beautiful creature and what a dream come true. She just completely melted my heart.

Jessica Miller: 2:47

But at the same time I was full of dread. My baby was struggling. I was on these 45 minute wake up cycles. I never really got to sleep because that was happening, because her belly wasn't full, she was hungry and because she was hungry, she wasn't able to sleep for a long time. If she wasn't sleeping, I wasn't sleeping.

Jessica Miller: 3:12

What I really wanted to do was revel in the precious baby days. I wanted to be there in the moment and appreciate, but more often than not I felt myself wishing this time away of my life. I wasn't being present. Mentally, I was trying to escape the situation, escape the experience. At three months in, I felt like I was failing as a mom, which was really hard experience. Then I had this light bulb moment, that light bulb moment, has forever changed her life, but mine as well, because I realized that you have to look at the systems when you're trying to make changes in health and not just the symptoms, because when you're always chasing the symptoms, you don't ever solve the problem. That's when I realized that my daughter and I had a very similar thing going on Well, actually kind of the exact same thing For her health.

Jessica Miller: 4:22

It was frequent feeding, her milk was dribbling out of her mouth when she was nursing. She was making a clicking noise and it was painful for me. She had lots of wakeups. I'm sure there's many moms out there who have experienced a similar thing. It's not uncommon. Then, as her body adapted to that, the clues started showing up in other areas. She started getting really dark circles under her eyes. She would sleep with her bum in the air or just gymnastics around her sleeping space. She just couldn't settle. She would sleep with her head arched back and her mouth open.

Jessica Miller: 5:11

My problem started really similarly way back when I was a baby, with difficult feeding, and then it progressed Difficult feeding and sleeping, and then it progressed. It wasn't long before as a child I started avoiding food that required chewing, because eating hurt. Then I was celebrated as a really great sleeper my whole life. It was because my sleep was so poor. I needed 10 hours a night and sometimes even that wasn't enough. Some things wrong when 10 hours is not enough sleep. I would fall asleep in the car in the middle of a conversation.

Jessica Miller: 5:50

I remember in university curling up in the hallway for a nap. I was just so exhausted. All the time I also had headaches Headaches so fierce, relentless. It's hard for me to have a memory in that period of my life where I wasn't experiencing a headache. Just looking back at pictures in your feed, you're like, oh yeah, that headache was particularly bad. It shapes all of the memories that you have as well. Nobody wants to be in pain.

Jessica Miller: 6:27

Then I started looking to my like. I could see what was going on with my daughter. I could see what was going on with me and I started looking to my parents. For them it was snoring, sleep apnea and heart disease. These were the symptoms across the generations and they were the clues to that same problem that had been there all along, but just in different stages of the journey. That's why chasing the symptoms doesn't help, because your symptoms will progress and shift and morph.

Jessica Miller: 7:01

Looking at this problem and how it was expressing itself through the generations, it really felt like I was time traveling, because I was looking at my daughter was like looking at my issues when I was her age. Then all I had to do was look towards my parents to see what the next 30 years were going to look like for us if we didn't do something to change the path that we were on. And so you know so much of who we are. It's shaped by our genetics, but we're equally shaped by our behaviors and our habits, and in fact, the behaviors and habits is the only thing that we have control over. So I think it's important to latch on to that right rather than being defeatist and blaming everything on your genetics. But I learned as a child that there's only so many times that you can complain about something before people stop responding.

Jessica Miller: 7:56

You know, if there's if there's no answers, you know, stop beating your head against the wall right.

Jessica Miller: 8:02

You just learn to live with it. You adapt, and I realized as an adult that I had fallen into this trap. I had settled for a life in discomfort and pain and difficulty, and instead of taking responsibility for the system that was causing all of these issues I mean, I didn't even know what that system was until my daughter woke me up to it but instead of taking responsibility for that system and finding a solution, that's what I needed to do is just take responsibility. And so in my, in my research, I realized that there's really kind of like three main areas that that need to be addressed if you're going to find lasting relief. And so I call that my tongue genastics formula, because it's where we focus on addressing the airway, on mouth, muscle mastery, and then on crushing compensations that you've been like adapting around dysfunction your whole life.

Jessica Miller: 9:05

There's compensations that crop up and you have to address those as well, and so in creating this tongue genastics formula, I realized that that is the most effective way to not only relieve jaw pain, tension, jaw issues, but also to address and treat sleep and breathing disorders.

Jessica Miller: 9:27

So it this ended up leading me to create a program where I've helped a ton of people to reduce pain tension, like for some people it shows up as clenching, grinding, snoring, sleep apnea and we see it like excellent results over and over. And I've studied this at a fairly expert level because I got into this work in massage therapy and then I was called to study osteopathy and then I went into just like. Then I was like, okay, osteopathy is such a wide angle of treat everything and all of the problems, and then I really wanted to focus in on the biomechanics in the mouth and so I studied myofunctional therapy, and myofunctional therapy is a therapeutic exercise approach for oral biomechanics, for even sleep and breathing, and this has allowed me a really unique perspective when you combine all of that together to help people connect the dots in their health journey.

Courtney: 10:28

Okay, so with all of this, this is huge and something I find very interesting myself. What do you notice people come to you the most with? So you've mentioned headaches, I would assume with most adults. You are not dealing with, maybe, tongue pain. You mentioned like not being able to chew correctly. So you were dealing with where your mouth hurt a lot, right?

Jessica Miller: 11:03

Yeah. So it's actually really. It's really interesting what I'm finding about who is coming to me, and it really ties back to how we have to address this across the generations. Because what I've been noticing is that a parent will bring their child in and they'll say, okay, this is an issue that we're having and so for children it can be, you know, maybe they need to get their tonsils or their adenoids removed that's a big thing or orthodontic interventions and they don't like the orthodontic plan or they want to really support the orthodontic plan. So parents are bringing their kids in for those reasons.

Jessica Miller: 11:47

And then and another layer I also work with babies zero to three months old, and so that's really the first time when oral function comes up because of difficulty nursing. You know, when you have a baby who's not eating very well, that raises alarm and parents will seek support. And often you know it could be for a variety of reasons. But those are kind of the entry points. And then when I see those, those families come in to see me. I try and help them turn the lens to the fact that this is usually some sort of there's some sort of genetic component to resolve or like why is it showing up for your baby. Oh look, mom has this problem as well, dad has this problem as well, and so parents will bring their kids in. And then I notice, okay, well, you guys also need support. So there's actually a large, a large portion of the people that I work with. It's like the mom and the daughter, or like the dad and the daughter.

Jessica Miller: 12:48

Like there's multiple people in the family that I work with at the same time.

Courtney: 12:53

Okay.

Jessica Miller: 12:54

And.

Courtney: 12:54

I noticed, like for myself, I never really thought about the tongue and the biomechanics of it until I read Breathe or Breath, I'm not sure by James Nester, and then the whole world opened up to me about things that I deal with. It is amazing to learn about all of that. So when you work with someone, let's talk a little bit about the snoring and the sleep apnea. What are some things that? Where is the connection? I mean, I'm assuming I from reading that I understand the connection, but what are some people, so anybody who may not have been identified as having sleep apnea?

Jessica Miller: 13:49

what are some signs that they may be dealing with issues like that, yeah, yeah, good conversation to have, because I think that so often sleep and airway disorders go untreated until they're like the worst case possible, and I think that that's a reflection of the state of our medical system where we're just chasing fires and we're not really focusing on prevention, because there's so many places along the way where we can make life changing interventions that are minimally invasive, exercise based exercise and lifestyle, and so I'll get to that. But I just for the people who haven't read the book Breathe by James Nester, pick it up. It is the best book to open your eyes to sleep and airway disorders. Just like not to do a study club here, but like a quick synopsis is like this guy put himself through a, an experiment where him and his buddy closed their nose, that they did exclusive nasal breathing for 10 days and felt the effects, and then they did exclusive mouth breathing for 10 days and felt the effects, and it's all documented and the like. Long story short is that mouth breathing is basically torture. It affects every single area of your life physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and, and so that kind of leads us into, you know, what is the connection between?

Jessica Miller: 15:33

The connection between the signs that we're experiencing and the dysfunction that we're having, and there's, there's a spread, there's a spectrum, right, and so you know, as I was saying, with babies, they first come in because they're having difficulty feeding very often, and that often relates to oral motor function for a variety of reasons, and it's easy for parents to make that connection between the mouth and feeding, but then there's so many points along the way where that connection is not made and so, and so it can be frequent waking that night for a child. It can be frequent waking that nighttime or or or wetting the bed, or like the dark circles under their eyes, or inattention, lack of focus, hyperactivity. So those are all things in in the childhood years that you really need to be on the lookout and don't just think, oh my, my child's just crazy, or like he just can't focus, we should get him an ADHD. No, let's dial it back first to to breathing and so so the spectrum. It starts really with open mouth posture. So if your mouth is open, you're breathing through your mouth, because the tongue, tongue, posture. I mean we could have a whole conversation about tongue posture, but long story short, the tongue has to be on the roof of the mouth.

Jessica Miller: 17:04

When it's on the roof of the mouth, you will breathe through your nose. When you breathe through your nose, it's easier to breathe through your nose and better for you. So if your lips are open, ever like even just a little crack, chances are you're breathing through your mouth. So that's really the first entry point, because that in itself is disordered breathing and will lead to disordered sleep, and that can lead to snoring, which can lead to upper airway resistance, which is something that nobody ever diagnoses I mean in my experience or ever talks about, but it's the precursor to sleep apnea.

Jessica Miller: 17:42

So sleep apnea is when you have either or both a narrowing of your airway, so it causes so much resistance for your breathing, it creates turbulent airflow and then it progresses to actually complete obstruction of the airway. And so there's mild, moderate and severe, and just the diagnosis is based on how many times you stop breathing in an hour while you're sleeping, and in severe cases it's like every minute. And so if we can start to address that in the early stages by just saying like, close your mouth, just close your mouth, I mean it would be a revolution. Because here's the thing walk around next time you're out in public, or maybe when you're driving your vehicle and you get to a stoplight, look at the person in front of you and see is their mouth open or closed? And just start to take a tally and guess what? You're probably gonna find that about 80% of people I mean, that's my running tally right now 80% of people have oral dysfunction.

Courtney: 18:52

I believe it For sure I have had and I'm very good about, I know my body, I try to study my body and understand everything and I remember a time where I had this heaviness in the back of my throat. It almost felt like I had sinus issues. My nose was clear but I had this heaviness and after reading that book I realized that my I'm guessing it was my soft pal, like my palate, had dropped and I started doing some exercises to kind of get that portion of my throat, my palate, back lifted, and I don't deal with that anymore. I personally have some storing issues, so I want to talk to you about that, but I don't have it like I used to when that palate, that soft palate, was I'm guessing it was starting that restricted airway. I'm guessing that's what it would have been.

Jessica Miller: 20:06

Yeah, Because that restriction comes from anywhere in the upper airway, so the nose, the throat, where there's starting to be either inflammation, which happens through open mouth breathing, or I mean there's a variety of reasons why we can get inflammation diet, whatever but breathing through the mouth will narrow the airway through the nose and the sciences cause inflammation in the tonsils and yeah, so that can cause that upper airway resistance. But it's interesting that you said that you started doing these soft palate exercises. It's interesting to me because through all of my training in massage therapy and in osteopathy so that was seven years right there, a post-secondary education working in rehabilitation, therapeutic exercise I never once heard about this topic at all, and so you know, it's just insane to me that I mean there's so many things to cover.

Jessica Miller: 21:14

So I'm not going to blame the schools that I went to. It's just that this is a highly specialized area of healthcare and you really want to be talking to somebody who knows who's been through it. And it was just such a surprise for me when I started looking into the anatomy and realizing that whoa, the uvula, that little hangy ball in the back of your throat. You have control over removing that. And I mean, I think I was in a similar position to you, courtney, where I was starting to get that upper airway resistance. I was, and I had no idea that you. Anyways, I learned how to control that area of my body. It was crazy that I could do that and as part of what I teach when in my I've got like a little mini course around snoring and that's one of the things that we teach in it is how to gain that motor function and really start toning the upper airway. Okay.

Courtney: 22:11

Yeah. So I don't want to get to because there's lots of questions I have for you but they're more specific and I don't want to do that to the listeners because I think they could be left confused. But I want to go back to where you mentioned closed mouth breathing and tongue position. So I know a lot of people will complain not complain, but they'll say I can't breathe through my nose because I deal with sinus issues. But also you can learn that based on your tongue position in your mouth, it can, and practicing breathing through your nose a lot of times, that will naturally clear up the sinus issues.

Courtney: 23:03

So can you talk to us about where the tongue should be? I mean, I know you said at the roof of the mouth, but is there a specific way? Because when I first initially heard this, I started shoving my tongue into the roof of my mouth and I started dealing with kind of like strains is my guess as to what it would have been, because I think I was just overdoing it. So how is there a way to naturally do this where it just goes there naturally, because it's not natural for me at all to do that. I mean, I do do it because I know I'm supposed to, but I always question if I'm doing it correctly.

Jessica Miller: 23:49

For sure. Yeah, and the devil is really in the details, right? Because just to say, put your tongue on the roof of the mouth, I mean you might think that you're doing it right, but there's some specifics. And it's really important because the specifics of tongue positioning is really the foundation for all of the oral biomechanics. And when I say that, what I want you to hear is chewing, swallowing, breathing, and just think about like that's what you're doing all day long, every day, right, right, and so then, if you think about, like you know, water torture is like one little swallow in the wrong way is not going to cause a problem, but you do that 2,000 times in a day and then you start to feel that strain and tension. And so I think you know.

Jessica Miller: 24:42

Before I get into the details on how to properly position your tongue, first of all I'd like to say you know if it's causing strain or pain this isn't something that you want to push through or push past. It's probably a sign that you need to have a deeper conversation with somebody who is aware of these sorts of things, because when you're having that strain during the day, forcing your tongue, shoving it onto the roof of the mouth, when it doesn't feel natural, can cause clenching and grinding, but when it does feel more natural, it's a treatment for clenching and grinding. So that's where I'm saying, that is, it's in the details, because and so, with that caveat, don't hurt yourself but it feeds into like I've got a larger program and over 12 weeks we start working through like the awareness, building that mental map of the mouth, and then the, the endurance and yeah, just the awareness, where she go, the strength to do these movements, and then the endurance to be able to do it all day long in your sleep and feeling natural, and so, and so the starting point is just knowing what is tongue posture, and so the very tip of the tongue, you need to put it on the roof of the mouth, but like right behind the front teeth, but not touching the teeth, okay, okay. So that's called the spot, okay, because it's the spot where the tongue goes. So it's really important that it's not touching the teeth, because that will help to initiate a proper swallow, and you also don't want it too far back, because that's going to make swallowing very difficult.

Jessica Miller: 26:39

So there's this sweet spot, whereas not touching the teeth, and then the rest of the tongue has to go all the way up onto the palate and you can, to start getting the feeling of the tongue, the whole tongue, being on the palate and and really it's it's. It's important to have the foundation of the tip of the tongue being in the right spot, but it's almost more important for the middle and back of the tongue to be up, because so many people miss that piece of the puzzle and and that's what really starts to tone the airway and so to to get there, you can, just you'll be able to hear this as a listener to the podcast but you want to start making clicks, so I'm clicking the tongue on the roof of my palate. There's nothing really to see, it's just making that noise and you probably did that when you were a kid a little bit. But you can have a different quality to the click so if you listen, hopefully this will will come through.

Jessica Miller: 27:33

But if you're clicking and it sounds pretty hollow and so it sounds like this okay, that's how mine sounded just a minute ago yeah, so that's just with the tip of my tongue, but if you want to have like a more full-bodied, click to get into the nuance, you hear the difference. I'll do them both together we can't.

Courtney: 28:00

I can't hear it at all you can't hear it at all okay, so in any case, play with it yourself.

Jessica Miller: 28:06

Okay, and if, and even just having that awareness, you know you can start to feel does the click sound like it's coming from just the front of my tongue or is my whole tongue making contact? And I talk about the click because if you do clicking for one or two minutes a day, you're going to start to feel like whoa, that's like with lifting weights. For my tongue it it's tiring and it's starting to build the tone in the mouth okay so that is okay.

Courtney: 28:38

Um, when you click, is the tongue kind of pulling back at the same time?

Jessica Miller: 28:46

um, the, the tongue is no sorry. Sorry for the for the break there. Um, the tongue will be suctioned to the roof of the mouth, okay, so it's really forced it. Sorry, forced is absolutely the wrong word. We're not forcing anything. It's suctioned okay, and at some point you can develop this push pull kind of scenario. You know how you can get strong by pushing something, but equally strong by pulling it. You can do that with your tongue too, on the roof of the mouth, and that's okay. Yeah, it is as long as you're relaxing in through the jaw as well, okay because I notice when I do it I don't.

Courtney: 29:28

I go up and then pull back.

Jessica Miller: 29:31

Hmm, so maybe, maybe it will be worthwhile. If you're experimenting with tongue posture, do it in front of the mirror and see when you're feeling. If you're feeling that tongue going back, notice is your. Is the tip of your tongue staying steady on the spot, or is it sliding back as well? Because it's sliding back. It's sliding back, okay, so you. So you need to develop more awareness around the spot and just really get strong in anchoring there okay.

Courtney: 30:02

So when you're doing it, you want the tongue to stay right there, not touching the teeth, a little in front of the palate. Is that or the yeah? The palette right? Would it be sitting right before where it dips back?

Jessica Miller: 30:22

Yeah, and everybody's dip on their mouth can be in a different spot, so it's not maybe the best landmark. But just right behind the teeth, on the hard palate, you might feel some little bumpy bits, like some little grooves, and you gotta anchor it there. It never wavers. That's its home. That's where it feels safe, that's where it's steady.

Courtney: 30:44

Okay, well, and I've learned I had heard somewhere else that the middle part of the mouth, or tongue, is supposed to go up into the soft palate right or the hard, wherever the divot is, and then the tongue's supposed to be free. So I like that you're explaining this better, because that might be what's making the difference.

Jessica Miller: 31:11

Yeah, it's a firm anchor and that provides stability and the foundation for everything else that follows. Okay, okay, perfect, yeah, it's like you're building your pelvic floor strength so that you can develop a strong core right.

Courtney: 31:28

Well, and how much the tongue has to do with pelvic floor strengthening as well. If your tongue's not in the right position, it's affecting your pelvic floor, because if you look at those muscles the muscles in the pelvic floor and the muscles in the throat they look almost identical.

Jessica Miller: 31:46

Absolutely. That's a principle that we talked about a lot in osteopathy, about there's synergy between structures and so, in relation to that, the pelvic floor and the tongue are both horizontal diaphragms in the body and there's another horizontal diaphragm in the middle between those two and that's called the respiratory diaphragm, and that is one of the two primary muscles for breathing. And if your pelvic floor is weak, if your tongue is weak and not in proper posture, you're gonna have a compromised ability to breathe effectively. Yeah, and so as you breathe in I'm sure that you've coached the people that you work as you breathe in, the pelvic floor descends, the respiratory diaphragm descends, and as you exhale, they all come up, and the same is. That's reflected in the tongue as well. In with some nuance, I feel like I'm pouring too much down the rabbit hole here.

Courtney: 32:54

Let me ask you another question. So women in midlife, we start to notice different things with our face. Have you noticed that people that work on strengthening the muscles in the tongue and the structure of the mouth does it affect the appearance of the face?

Jessica Miller: 33:21

For sure it's out of curiosity. Yeah, if you think about, you know, therapeutic exercise or lifting weights or just moving the body in general, not talking about the face. I mean, if you feel that you can build muscle in other areas of your body, just know that you can also build muscle in your face. And so one thing that I've really noticed I think you know we are all our own best examples, especially in healthcare, because so many of us have gotten into the line of work that we're doing because of personal adversity or like overcoming challenges, and so for me and myself, I've really noticed a change in the tone of my face. For sure, definitely a change in the tone of the tongue, but nobody really cares cosmetically about the tone of their tongue, but you care about your smile, right? You care about how your like if your eyes are drooping, because these are the things that change how people interact with us. And so, hands down, 100%, my smile is stronger, more beautiful, wider, more toned as a result of doing this work.

Courtney: 34:40

Yeah, okay, and you mentioned the eyes as well. So does it, by doing certain things with the mouth, does it affect the eyes as well, or yeah.

Jessica Miller: 34:54

So you know how I said in the beginning about the tongue gymnastics formula and we're addressing airway, we are building muscle mastery in the mouth and then we're crushing compensations. So the question that you've had there kind of falls into the crushing compensations category of the way that I look at the body, because what tends to happen when there's any kind of when you haven't dived deep into the specifics of a topic, you end up recruiting muscles that are not necessary for the job. So when it comes to babies who are feeding and they're having a hard time moving their tongue, they tend to move their jaw instead.

Courtney: 35:40

You know, you gotta get milk.

Jessica Miller: 35:42

So they move their jaw to create that vacuum effect. That's one example, but some people will smile and to make people recognize that their smile is really genuine, they also smile with their eyes right.

Jessica Miller: 35:58

So, like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that, but you should be able to disassociate movement, right? Really, you should be able to just smile with the lower part of your. So if you divide your face, you should be able to smile with the lower part of your face. If you divide your face into three sections, you've got the mouth section, the nose section and the eye section. They should all be able to move independently because they have different neurological control centers, right? Different nerves are operating those areas, and so you should be able to squinch your nose without squinching your eyes. You should be able to raise your eyebrow without having to make a frown at the same time. Right, like, oh, I've got a lot of work.

Jessica Miller: 36:50

I mean, the thing is, once you start diving into these specifics, I think it's easy for people to start getting very self-conscious, because you know this is a very personal thing our face, our mouth, how we look, how we interact and I get it Like I've definitely felt self-conscious and incompetent. But when I'm working with my clients, I really encourage them to just take this playful attitude and have fun with it and get silly and instead of being like, oh, I can't do that, it's like, first of all, I can't do that yet, and isn't this funny that I've never considered this as a possibility before. I've lived here for four decades and I've never thought that I could move in this different way and then just like laughing and playing games with it. Right, because it really changes your ability to learn a new skill and also not be so hard on yourself, like why would you think about these things? Right, right, right.

Courtney: 37:58

I want to touch on one other thing that you had mentioned, because you were talking about swallowing and how, if you do it incorrectly, time over, time and again, that can create patterns that you know are negative patterns, so to speak. Are there, are there things that you should be doing that you mentioned chewing as well, like all these different things with patterns. Are there specific ways that we should be doing all of these things? I mean, no one really thinks about that Nobody does think about it.

Jessica Miller: 38:41

And yes, there is specific things that you should be doing and when it comes to swallowing, you know that's towards the end of the program.

Jessica Miller: 38:51

So, I don't think it would be helpful to get into the proper how to swallow, but it might be more helpful for people to start screening. Do I have a dysfunctional swallow? And so well, I'll just say proper swallowing. You're only going to have your tongue on the palate, so on the roof of your mouth, and it's not going to touch the teeth in the front, in the side, down below, in between the teeth, and so what people can look for? You know, in many cases this will show up in kids, where they have something called an open bite, and so the open bite is where the teeth are not coming together in the way that they should, there's a gap, and that open bite can happen in the front, or it can happen in the side or towards the back, anywhere in the mouth, and that's a reflection that the tongue is pushing in those areas and in those areas.

Jessica Miller: 39:50

And the way that our body is shaped is based on the forces that are put upon it. It's wolf's law we grow based on the forces, and the mouth does that as well. And so if the tongue is constantly pushing where it shouldn't be pushing, which is against the teeth or between the teeth, it's going to affect your bite. And so there's also this concept that the tongue is like the natural support. The natural like palate expansion, and so the tongue being on the roof of the mouth supports proper growth of the face, and then having the lips sealed and breathing through the nose is almost like nature's braces.

Jessica Miller: 40:33

And so when you have a balance of those forces, you'd probably be able to intervene from having an ortho like be able to sidestep having an orthodontic intervention if you caught it early enough. But it's never too late to start, and so just start paying attention Like things that a listener could watch for is like when they're swallowing, do they feel like they're ever pushing on their teeth in the front and the side, in between their teeth? They have to consider their tongue posture at rest. Does the tongue naturally want to go on the roof of the mouth? If it doesn't, they will probably have a swallowing dysfunction. Okay, and if they ever had orthodontic interventions, that probably means that they also have an issue with swallowing, and you might not notice it until I don't know, until there's pain or clicking or locking or popping or those kinds of things.

Courtney: 41:32

You're going through everything. I deal with popping of my jaw as well, but so I want to. I want our listeners to think about a couple of things, because most of my listeners are moms and, in addition to working on snoring and things that we can do for ourselves, like you mentioned, this really starts when they're little, and if you have children who are starting to show small palate where they might need palate expanders or different things with their teeth, there is a likeliness that there is an issue with what is going on in their mouth, that they may not be using their tongue properly, which is creating some of these problems. Absolutely Right, so that they should start at that point, working with someone.

Jessica Miller: 42:35

Yeah, just start questioning. You know what's going on in my mouth? Do I have proper posture? And you know it's an interesting journey to start being self-reflected on oral biomechanics. But I think the take home is that you know if your kids are having a hard time with sleeping or energy or all the things that I've mentioned, you need to talk to somebody, because early interventions are the most powerful. But it's never too late to start an intervention because we're constantly changing our whole life long and you can reverse a lot of issues if you catch it in time. And then, yeah, I don't know what I was going to say there, but, yeah, I think just starting to have a little bit of self inquiry about this topic, which most people have never considered before.

Courtney: 43:34

Right, and can you give us, if there's one thing in addition to because obviously, like you you have mentioned before is working on just reflecting, looking at seeing if it's a problem, seeing if is my mouth closed throughout the day. Am I breathing with a closed mouth? Is my tongue sitting in the right position? Is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with of something that they can do today to start making a slight change? I mean, I feel like you've given a lot because you've, but is there one that maybe we haven't discussed yet?

Jessica Miller: 44:12

You know what I think.

Jessica Miller: 44:14

That just makes me think about this resource that I have that I'm just remembering about right now and it's a checklist, and it'd be helpful to just go through the checklist and see, you know, there's a variety of like areas of health and lifestyle and you could just see how many of the boxes do you check off, and that can help help with that self inquiry. And it's an easy, fast thing, like it'll take you like two minutes to go through and be like yep, yep, yep, or, you know, give you a sense of whether you need to reach out and find more support. And then and then, if snoring is something that you're you're dealing with or open mouth breathing, then I also have a resource for that as well. It's just a very powerful mini course that goes through practical exercises that you can do to like stop snoring tonight without without feeling like you need to. You know, I feel like so many people when they're snoring they're told, okay, well, you just got to lose weight. I mean sure, but is that really achievable or a goal? For many people?

Courtney: 45:19

Maybe not, but stopping snoring might be Well, and sometimes it's. One is over the other. The reason you're not able to lose the weight might be because of the snoring and not getting a deep sleep, and all of that so 100% yeah, yeah, because when you're breathing poorly, when you're breathing through the mouth, it messes up your hormones.

Jessica Miller: 45:41

When your hormones are messed up, so is your metabolism. So it's a real great starting point. I really feel. You know, as I was mentioning, we really have to work with the systems of the body, and this work is the respiratory system, and it's set a cardio respiratory system, and it's such a gateway for health and wellness and longevity and just enjoying your life.

Courtney: 46:08

Yeah, yeah, and I think this is one thing that I always try to leave my listeners with which you just touched on as well is it's never just one thing people want to just fix. Just I need to fix my hormones, or I need to fix the snoring, or, you know, I need to lose the weight, but it really is, it's all interconnected.

Jessica Miller: 46:32

It is all interconnected and I think it's also important to validate that it's okay to want to fix one thing and guess what? You're probably going to ignite a positive change in so many other areas of your life that you didn't even think was possible. Yeah, yeah.

Courtney: 46:49

Can you tell our listeners where they can find you, how they can take part in the mini course, the snoring mini course that you offer as well?

Jessica Miller: 46:59

Absolutely so. I have a Facebook group that you can join. It's called JobHane Clenching and Grinding for Ambitious Individuals, but we can link the notes. And then I also have a snoring resource. Again, I think it's probably better just to link it, because that's okay. So there's a snoring resource, the Facebook group and also that checklist. So make sure that you guys have all those. And if you want to reach out to me, my email address or is jessicaatjessicamillarwellnesscom, or my website is tonguegenasticscom.

Courtney: 47:43

Perfect, excellent. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day for this conversation. You're so welcome.

Jessica Miller: 47:49

I really appreciate you and all the work that you're doing too. Thank, you.

Courtney: 47:55

I hope you enjoyed this episode and found something to take away to help you practice healthier habits, move more or handle the midlife in aging with grace. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave us a review to help us reach more moms just like you. Head to movingthroughmidlifecom to join the free community or learn how you can move more and feel better in your daily life.