The Fascial Connection: Breathing, Tension, and the "Mewing" Question in Brass Playing

By Dr. Logan Chopyk | SanDiegoTromboneLessons.com

In the studio, when I am working with a player navigating focal dystonia—or even a healthy player struggling with upper register tension—there is a highly predictable moment where things go off the rails.

It almost always happens right before the note speaks. It is precipitated by a tense, "over-breathing" breath. You can actually see the player setting their tension. The chest tightens, the breath is held for a fraction of a second, and then the tongue reflexively retreats into the throat, blocking the airway.

Traditionally, brass pedagogy treats this as a mouth or tongue issue. But what if the tongue is just the victim of a much larger chain reaction? To understand this, we need to look past the muscles and dive into the body's connective tissue: the fascia.

The Concrete Facts About Fascia

Fascia is the continuous web of connective tissue that wraps every muscle, organ, and bone in your body. It is not just inert packing material; it is a highly sensitive, communicative system.

Here are a few concrete facts about how human fascia is structured:

• The Deep Front Line (DFL): There is a continuous fascial "sleeve" that runs through the core of your body. It starts at the arches of your feet, runs up through the diaphragm, wraps around the lungs and the heart (the pericardium), travels up the front of the throat, and terminates at the hyoid bone and the tongue. Physically, your tongue is tethered to your diaphragm.

• Fascia Can "Freeze": Fascia contains smooth-muscle-like cells called myofibroblasts. This means fascia can physically contract and stiffen independently of your actual muscles in response to mechanical stress or sympathetic nervous system arousal (the "fight or flight" response).

• The Tensional Drag: Because the DFL is continuous, a restriction or tightening at the bottom of the line creates a physical, downward "drag" on the top of the line.

Questions for the Brass Player

When we observe that tense, "over-breathing" inhale—the moment the chest and diaphragm lock up to brace for the note—it raises some profound questions about what is actually happening to our anatomy:

• If the fascia in the chest and diaphragm becomes stiff and locked during a tense breath, is it physically pulling the hyoid bone and tongue backward and downward into the throat?

• Is what we experience as "tongue-retreat dystonia" actually a localized symptom of a massive fascial restriction originating in the torso?

• In healthy players, how much of our daily struggle with range, endurance, and resonance is actually a battle against our own locked fascial network dragging our tongue out of optimal position?

• If the root of the problem is a locked torso, does consciously trying to force the tongue forward only create an unwinnable isometric tug-of-war?

The Internet Phenomenon: What is "Mewing"?

This fascial connection brings us to a surprisingly relevant trend currently dominating TikTok and YouTube: Mewing.

Coined by British orthodontist Dr. Mike Mew, "mewing" is the practice of maintaining proper oral resting posture. Instead of letting the tongue rest lazily on the floor of the mouth, mewing requires resting the entire tongue (including the back) flat against the roof of the mouth, keeping the lips gently sealed, and breathing exclusively through the nose.

Why is it so popular? Mewing has exploded in popularity because of aesthetic claims. Influencers promote it as a "glow-up" hack, claiming that keeping the tongue pressed to the palate can radically redefine your jawline, lift the submental area (under the chin), and even alter facial bone structure over time. While the claims about changing adult bone structure are highly exaggerated, the muscular and fascial mechanics behind the posture are very real.

Should We Be Mewing?

When you place your entire tongue against the roof of your mouth, it acts like a tent pole for the Deep Front Line. By anchoring the top of the fascial chain to the hard palate, you create an upward lift. This lift provides "slack" to the fascia running down your neck, around your airway, and into your chest.

So, should brass players be mewing?

If a tense, over-breathed inhale creates a downward drag that pulls the tongue into the throat, could adopting a daily resting posture that gently lifts and tones that exact same fascial line provide a counter-balance? Could training the tongue to comfortably inhabit the "penthouse" of the mouth help prevent it from fleeing to the "basement" of the throat the moment we bring a mouthpiece to our lips?

As we continue to rethink how we train, recover, and play, looking beyond the mouthpiece and into the continuous web of the body might just hold the key to truly free playing.