Facial Motion: Occupational Therapy Home Exercises for Facial Motion Disorders

These instructions for Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) patients with facial motion disorders describe exercises to stretch and strengthen their facial muscles.

Stretching instructions:

• Gently pull the eyelid down to fully close the eye. Practice closing your eye tightly.

• Open mouth wide (figure 5).

• Place fingers on the inside of the cheek. Gently pull the cheek out, holding for 30 seconds.

Exercise instructions:

Do the exercises below in front of a mirror! Use the emojis as a guide:

• Open mouth smile, show your teeth (figure 1).

• Closed mouth smile (figure 2).

• Pucker lips, like a kiss (figure 3).

• Smile on the right side and then left side (figure 4).

• Curl lower lip down in a pout.

• Press lips together tightly making a popping sound.

• Practice blowing and whistling (figure 6).

Work up to doing all the exercises 4-5 times a day. Use slow controlled movements. You must be able to complete step 1 before moving on to step 2. You need to feel comfortable with step 2 before moving on to step 3.

1. In the beginning, do each exercise 1 time. Work up to doing each exercise 10 times in a row.

2. Once you can do each exercise 10 times in a row (this is called a "set"), try to do 3 sets in a row.

3. After you can do 3 sets well, start to hold each motion for 5-7 seconds. Take a brief rest between each movement.

Other activities to try:

• Chew food using both sides of your mouth, use chewy foods such as licorice gummy bears.

• Suck through a straw and use thicker drinks like milkshakes and yogurt. Use a silly straw to make this harder.

• Blow bubbles.

• Play a musical instrument that requires blowing like a horn, kazoo, recorder or party favor.

• Blow up a balloon.

• Practice whistling.

Reviewed on October 20, 2022, by Tami Konieczny, MS, OTR/L, BCP