RAILING

Myofunktional Exercise  Collect ion

Application:

to enlarge click picture

The exercise may operate as an aid to orientation for an unbalanced tongue or lip posture.

Contents:

Self manipulated hold exercise the invigoration of the positions lip closure and palatalversion of the tongue.

Materials:

Drinking straw, tooth pick, skewer.

Procedure:

- Previous exercises: Generally the first orientating exercise for the posture of lips and tongue.

-Starting position: Postures as the SITTING-POSITION or PAUSE-POSITION.

- Step-by-step-Description:

-1 The mouth opens slightly.

-2 Straw or skewer are positioned flat from mouth corner to corner (somewhat retral to the canines) and:

-3 at first still held with the fingers.

-4 Now the tongue stretches across the railing with its tip to the POINT.

-5 Then the lips close to take over and hold the toothpick.

-Timing: In the general therapy course this is one of the first exercises to practice the stand-by position of lips and tongue in a self manipulated holding mode.

Holding while counting starts from ten and rises to twenty, thirty and further.

Characteristics:

Information, orientation, pause position, coordination, gross motor skills, static, tone raising, motility sedating.

Remarks:

Controlling the tongue posture: After finishing step 5 the toothpick is again held with the fingers while the mouth opens. Previously the order was given: Don’t move your tongue (“Tongue freeze!”). Now the tongue should be still seen sticking above the toothpick.

Discussion:

The exercise does not make great demands regarding sensibility, orientation and strength and rather creates an impression of how the therapist imagines the “normal” posture. Later on it may be proceeded to the  ,L-M’-POSITION. In case of hypermotility this exercise may be well suited

for sedation.

For some exercises the here discussed may be inserted to raise the level of difficulty or as MEMO, similar to the LIPS OPEN for example in  SLURP-AND-WALLOW.

Should the RAILING-Position be internalized it may well serve in later exercises or instructions as a MEMO or slogan to restrict the action room of a pro- or extroverted tongue: “The tongue tip is merely permitted to proceed up to the level of the railing!”

Instructions:

If the tongue always leans out so far it will perhaps fall out of the window some day.

Actually it has no business in front of the teeth. Sure, it will never fall out as it is grown on to the neck; it was just metaphorically spoken but it is true: The tongue has no business outside. It knows that. It only can not get used to it.

That is why we got it a RAILING. Know it may just lean a bit over that rail to get to its POINT.

The RAILING is set in crosswise from the mouth’s one to the other corner and holds it by closing the lips a bit in front of it. Not with the teeth! And never the tongue behind or beyond! The tongue tip has to feel the POINT.

Hold as long as we defined.