TONGUE KLICK

Myofunktional Exercise  Collection

Application:

to enlarge click picture

For a palatal orientation of the tongue-tip in a case of a deep lying or proverted tongue during the initial phase of the therapy. (Anatomy: Through its contents as a simple auto respectively organ stereognostic exercise for the tongue it is less targeting muscles; nevertheless  involved are presumably the superficial extrinsic longitudinal fibres  [II/A, 1] and the intrinsic transversal and vertical ones for norrowing the tongue body [II/B, 2 and II/B, 3].

Contents:

Simple and function orientated move-exercise for orientation.

Materials:

Not requested.

Procedure:

- Previous exercises: Simple POINT exercises like TONGUE STORY, DRIVING SEAT, PROVE-THE-POINT or LICK.

-Starting position: Recommendable is a definite body posture (see BASIC-POSITION).

- Step-by-step-description:

-1 The therapist at first shows how to make CLICKing noises which come up when the tongue-tip is pressed against the rostral part of the palate and suddenly torn off (see “Discussion”).

-2 Now the patient tries to imitate the sound under control until the therapist gets the impression that the coordinated movement described under “Discussion” is managed largely.

-Timing: The prescription is given to do the CLICKing  frequently over the day.

Characteristics:

Motivation, sensibilisation, orientation, tactile kinesthesis, stereognosis.

Remarks:

Only the very tip of the tongue produces the “little” CLICK. (In contrary to the TONGUE-PLOP).

Discussion:

The exercise may be seen as stereognostic as the patient experiences the very first orientation of the tongue tip whilst an acoustic feed-back is involved. The exercise is especially myofunctionally engaged as it contains a function mechanism of the swallow reflex.

The click may be seen as an easy simple prestage of the TONGUE-PLOP which beeing, thus, named ‘Plop’ in contrary to ‘Click’. The click will be more easily imitated by patients not (yet) being able to do the big plop sound which enables it to function as a bridge leading to the plop. For the expert the muscle action proceeds as follows:

The rostral part first third of the tongue surface lays down on the incisal papilla and forms around it a dimple margin. ( This makes the here discussed exercise suitable as  ALTERNATIVE EXERCISE under the changed conditions.) The dimple margin is capable of keeping a small vacuum which, plucking down the tongue-tip,  is perceptible acoustically as a small plop, the ‘Click’.

The ,ZIP’-EXERCISE is based on the same mechanism of tongue movement with the difference that it has to be coordinated with a simultaneous lip movement to reach the functional aim of the action, namely, to clean/empty the vestibulum from foodstuff. That is what makes the TONGUE CLICK serviceable as a direct pre-exercise for the ,ZIP’-EXERCISE while the ,ZIP’ while the latter is not readily to be seen as a follow-up of the TONGUE CLICK because of the described coordinative momentum. This is recommending the ,ZIP’ to be employed in a later stadium within the coordination phase.

Instructions:

The tongue will be able to recognise how wonderful it feels not to lie on the mouth floor being misused as a foot mat.

She tries to experience it when she is repeatedly allowed to go up and do a CLICK.

The more it does that, the sooner it gets used to its cosy favourite site where it sits enthroned above all and can overlook everything.

And so it is done:

Only press the tip of your tongue on the POINT at the front on the palate and the: Pluck it back down with a small jerk. You may open your mouth wide and see in the mirror if the tongue doe not get to far to the front. You should do that quite frequently and several times in succession.