Myofunctional therapy is a program of exercises that retrain the muscles of your mouth, tongue, and face to rest and move in their proper positions. Think of it like physical therapy, but for the muscles around your jaw and airway. The goal is to establish nasal breathing, correct tongue posture, and normalize swallowing patterns, creating an environment where your teeth, jaw, and facial structures can develop and function the way they’re supposed to.
What the Exercises Actually Target
At rest, your tongue should be lightly suctioned to the roof of your mouth, your lips should be closed, and you should be breathing through your nose. For many people, that’s not what happens. The tongue sits low in the mouth, the lips stay parted, and air flows in and out through the mouth instead of the nose. Over time, these patterns change how the muscles around your face and airway work, and in children, they can alter how the jaw and face grow.
Myofunctional therapy uses a combination of exercises (isometric holds and repetitive movements) to build strength and coordination in the tongue, lips, and cheeks. The exercises establish four things: a closed-mouth resting posture, a seal between the tongue and the palate, proper placement of the tongue during speech, and a correct swallowing pattern for saliva, liquids, and solids.
These aren’t random stretches. Repeated tongue movements trigger measurable changes in how the brain controls those muscles. Research published in Brain Research found that practicing tongue lifts increased the brain’s excitability in the motor areas controlling both the tongue and the jaw-closing muscles. In other words, the exercises physically rewire the neural pathways that govern these muscle patterns, making the new positions automatic over time rather than something you have to consciously maintain.
Conditions It’s Used For
The three most common reasons people start myofunctional therapy are mouth breathing, tongue thrust, and obstructive sleep apnea.
Mouth breathing does far more damage than most people realize. Chronic mouth breathing changes the balance of muscle forces on the jaw and teeth. In children, it leads to a narrower upper jaw, a higher palatal vault (one study found palate height was 11% greater in mouth-breathing children), and a longer, more downward-growing face. A cross-sectional study of 1,616 children aged 3 to 6 found that mouth breathing was associated with open bite, posterior crossbite, and protruding upper teeth. Beyond structural changes, breathing through the mouth dries out saliva, strips away its protective effects, and raises the risk of cavities and gum disease.
Tongue thrust is when the tongue pushes forward against or between the teeth during swallowing. It mostly affects children and interferes with normal swallowing and with producing sounds like s, z, t, d, and n. Left uncorrected, it can push teeth out of alignment.
Obstructive sleep apnea involves soft tissues in the head and neck collapsing onto the airway during sleep. Myofunctional therapy strengthens the muscles that keep those tissues from sagging, which is why it has become an increasingly recognized complement to other sleep apnea treatments.
Providers also use it to support orthodontic treatment, improve jaw joint (TMJ) function, and help maintain proper lip and tongue positioning after oral surgery or frenulum release (tongue-tie procedures).
How Well It Works for Sleep Apnea
The strongest body of evidence for myofunctional therapy is in sleep apnea. A systematic review and meta-analysis in the journal Sleep looked at nine studies covering 120 adults and found that therapy lasting at least three months cut the severity of sleep apnea roughly in half. The average number of breathing interruptions per hour dropped from about 25 to about 13.
In children, the results were even more striking. One study of 14 children showed a 62% reduction in breathing interruptions. A follow-up study tracked children over four years and found that the 11 who continued their exercises remained essentially cured, with near-normal breathing during sleep, while 13 children who stopped had their sleep apnea return. That long-term finding highlights something important: the exercises need to become a sustained habit, not a short-term fix.
Orthodontic Benefits
If your tongue and lips don’t rest in the right position, they exert constant low-grade pressure on your teeth. That’s one reason orthodontic corrections sometimes relapse after braces come off. Myofunctional therapy addresses the underlying muscle patterns that pushed teeth out of place to begin with.
A systematic review in the Dental Press Journal of Orthodontics compared outcomes in patients who received both orthodontic treatment and myofunctional therapy versus orthodontics alone. In patients with anterior open bite, those who did both had an average relapse of just 0.5 mm, compared to 3.4 mm in the orthodontics-only group. That’s a nearly sevenfold difference in stability.
What Happens During Treatment
Treatment starts with a thorough evaluation. A provider will review your medical and dental history, then examine and often photograph or video-record your facial structures, tongue posture, resting lip position, breathing pattern, swallowing pattern, and speech. They may measure tongue strength with a force gauge, assess tongue range of motion, evaluate jaw joint function, and check for tongue ties or other structural limitations. The goal is to identify exactly which muscle patterns are off and build a targeted exercise plan.
A typical treatment program involves a minimum of about 20 sessions. Early on, visits are usually weekly, then taper to every two weeks, and eventually monthly as you gain independence with the exercises. Each session introduces new exercises or progresses existing ones, and you’re expected to practice daily at home. The exercises themselves are simple but specific: things like tongue lifts, lip seals, cheek resistance work, and swallowing drills. They take just a few minutes per session but need to be done consistently.
Children as young as 3 can begin therapy, though the exercises are adapted to be age-appropriate and game-like to maintain compliance. For children with sleep-disordered breathing, early intervention is especially valuable because their facial bones are still growing. Studies on children aged 4 to 7 have shown that myofunctional therapy improved not only tongue strength and nasal breathing but also measurable changes in facial proportions, jaw growth, and airway dimensions.
Who Provides It
Myofunctional therapy is practiced by a range of licensed healthcare professionals, including speech-language pathologists, dental hygienists, dentists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists. There is no single required license specific to the field, but practitioners typically complete specialized continuing education programs and may earn a certification. The most recognized credentials include Certified Orofacial Myologist (COM) through the International Association of Orofacial Myology, and COMT through the Academy of Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy.
Many myofunctional therapists work independently, while others practice within orthodontic offices, ENT clinics, or speech therapy practices. Because the therapy sits at the intersection of dentistry, sleep medicine, and speech pathology, providers often collaborate across disciplines. If you’re looking for a provider, the certifying organizations maintain directories of trained practitioners, and your orthodontist, dentist, or sleep specialist may have a referral.