How Spot Pal Modifies Myofunctional Therapy

If you or someone you know currently receives myofunctional therapy, Spot Pal can be a great tool to help you achieve goals and move through the stages quickly.

Myofunctional therapy is a type of therapy that aims to improve the strength, coordination, and balance of the muscles in the mouth and throat. This type of therapy addresses a wide range of conditions, including speech disorders, snoring, sleep apnea, improper bite alignment, and more.

From the start of myofunctional therapy, we work on spot identification. This is when the patient brings their tongue up to contact the “spot” on their palate behind their teeth. With the use of Spot Pal, this area is easily identified due to the Spot Dot which is customized to the individual to be at the same location we are identifying within therapy sessions. Because of this, patients are able to move through these exercises quickly. After they master spot identification, we continue using this spot in exercises such as sticking the tongue out then bringing it back in to find the spot, and completing swallows while the tongue remains on the spot. With the addition of Spot Pal, clinicians can add more exercises from the start and progress faster with fewer repetitions. For example, when an exercise is mastered with 15 repetitions, we would typically decrease it to 12 followed by 10 repetitions, and then 5 repetitions before the exercise is achieved and removed. When a patient is using Spot Pal we can skip over the 12 repetitions and move right to 10 repetitions for some exercises. While we begin these exercises within the sessions, the patient is already working on proper resting posture at home with Spot Pal as well which is another focus of the myofunctional therapy program. This can lead to faster generalization of skills!

Overall, the addition of Spot Pal to the myofunctional therapy program helps the patient advance goals quickly and more accurately. This reduces the time needed in each of the stages of the myofunctional program. That also means it is a quicker path to achieving your goals whether that is improving speech, reducing snoring, or something else!