Hallie BulkinAsk HallieAI:Your On-Demand Mentor in Pediatric Feeding & Myo

What is Myofunctional Therapy? (Myo 101 for Therapists)

22 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this introductory segment, Hallie Bulkin defines myofunctional therapy as the assessment and treatment of oral and orofacial muscle function and patterns. She explains that "myo" refers to muscle and "functional" to how it works, emphasizing that the therapy focuses on how muscles are positioned, their tone, strength, and the resulting functional patterns such as swallowing, breathing, chewing, and tongue posture during rest, speech, and eating. Bulkin then grounds the definition with a concrete visual of a child's oral system, describing the tongue, lips, and jaw positions, and noting that muscles may be relaxed, tense, weak, or strong—all of which are central considerations in myofunctional therapy.

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So myofunctional therapy, myo meaning muscle, functional meaning like how it works, right, is the assessment and treatment of oral and orofacial muscle function and patterns. That's it. Like, that is the baseline. It's about how the muscles work, how they're positioned, how they're functioning to create patterns, patterns like how we swallow, right? Swallow patterns, breathing patterns, chewing patterns, our tongue position during rest and when we're functioning like speaking or eating. And now that definition might seem a little academic, so I'm going to make it a little more concrete. Okay, when you look at the mouth, when you look at a child's oral system, you're looking at a bunch of muscles that are doing something, right? The tongue is positioned somewhere, the lips are doing something, the jaw is in this— in some position. The muscles have tone, like some form of tone. They're either relaxed or they're holding tension, or they're weak or they're strong, right? The strength comes into play as well. All of that is myofunctional stuff.