Lip Posture & Speech
- Irene Michelle Iancu
- Oct 25, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: May 26
“Repeat after me; Lips together, teeth apart”
Myofunctional therapy plays a significant role in improving lip posture and speech by addressing and correcting oral and facial muscle function.
Here’s how it helps with each:
Lip Posture:
Strengthening Lip Muscles: Myofunctional therapy includes exercises designed to strengthen the muscles around the lips, improving their ability to maintain proper posture. This can help correct issues such as chronic lip pursing or open-mouth posture.
Promoting Proper Lip Closure: Exercises focus on encouraging proper lip closure, which is crucial for preventing mouth breathing and supporting overall oral health. Improved lip posture can also contribute to better facial aesthetics and function.
Correcting Bad Habits: The therapy helps address and modify oral habits like thumb sucking or habitual mouth opening, which can adversely affect lip posture. By correcting these habits, the therapy supports natural lip positioning and function.
Speech:
Improving Tongue Placement: Myofunctional therapy trains the tongue to rest in the correct position, which is essential for clear and precise speech. Proper tongue posture helps ensure that sounds are articulated correctly and that speech is more intelligible.
Enhancing Oral Muscle Coordination: The therapy helps develop better coordination between the muscles used in speech production, including the lips, tongue, and jaw. This improved coordination can lead to clearer articulation and smoother speech patterns.
Addressing Speech Disorders: For individuals with specific speech disorders, such as lisps or difficulty with certain sounds, myofunctional therapy can provide targeted exercises to address these issues. By improving muscle function and control, it can aid in overcoming speech impediments.
Overall, by focusing on the muscles involved in lip posture and speech, myofunctional therapy helps improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these functions, leading to clearer speech and more appropriate lip posture.