About Functional Well-being
Functional Well-being is a holistic breathing and orofacial myology practice, also known as orofacial myofunctional therapy. We help children and adults improve the everyday functions we rely on most: breathing, resting, sleeping, chewing and swallowing. Our goal as a practice is to provide highly individualised care and to meet each client where they are at.
What we aim for
Our goal is to help you understand how breathing and oral function are connected, and to build healthy muscle patterns in the face, head and neck. Our therapy goals are:
- Functional nasal breathing
- Correct tongue posture against the roof of the mouth
- Lips together at rest
- Normal chewing and swallowing pattern without the tongue pushing in between the teeth (tongue thrust)
Who we help
We support children and adults with oral myofunctional disorders and dysfunctional breathing. Every program is tailored to your individual goals, and common concerns include:
- Mouth breathing and open-mouth posture
- Chronic nasal congestion
- Snoring or irregular breathing during sleep
- Jaw discomfort
- Tongue thrust, low tongue posture or a weak lip seal
- Tongue, lip and cheek ties
- Thumb or finger sucking, pacifier use and other oral habits that can affect tooth alignment and jaw development
Our focus is on practical, meaningful changes that improve your daily function and quality of life.
How we work
We prescribe targeted myofunctional therapy exercises and awareness practices, usually practised twice a day for about five minutes each time. We use a variety of tools from our toolkit to achieve therapy goals, which may include intra-oral appliances such as Myomunchee to support healthy oral posture and function. We also use educational capnography to help you understand and change your breathing patterns.
Local care, with reach across Queensland
We strongly focus on serving our local community, especially in the south of the Gold Coast, where our connections with local care teams are the strongest. A myofunctional therapist never works alone, so we coordinate care with dentists, orthodontists and other medical and allied health professionals to support each client’s goals.
While we can help clients located elsewhere, we prioritise caring for our local residents. We see clients from the Fraser Coast area, where we offer in-person appointments a few times a year, and we work remotely with clients across South East Queensland and regional and rural Queensland, especially where there’s no local myofunctional therapy provider. If we know a suitable therapist closer to you, we’re happy to recommend them.
Meet the team
Our four therapists offer telehealth. Janna, our founder, conducts all initial consultations and in-person evaluations, and provides both online and in-person therapy. Giovana, Ingrid and Tanele provide online therapy for clients aged seven and older.
All four of our therapists are mothers. This gives us a natural rapport with children and a genuine understanding of the demands of parenting, and it helps us guide families through the myofunctional therapy process with empathy and practical support.
