Let’s ALIGN the strength, position, and coordination of your tongue, lip, jaw, and facial movements/posturing to better support your speech, swallowing, breathing, sleeping, orthodontic goals, and overall health!

Services are offered in Align’s centrally located Boise clinic OR your home or office if located within a 3-mile radius of the Bown Crossing area. Some telehealth spots are available.

It is an absolute joy to work side-by-side a variety of clients, not only to help them improve, but to also help them understand each step we take on their journey.

Do you or your child suffer from any of these?

  • Mouth breathing

  • Resting with lips apart
  • Open bite

  • Chronic body tension

  • Reflux/digestion issues

  • Tongue-tie

  • jaw pain/popping

  • Speech problems

  • Tongue thrust

  • Chronic headaches

  • Teeth grinding / clenching

  • Teeth crowding/narrow palate

  • Swallowing difficulty

  • Plateau in speech therapy progress

  • Snoring

  • Sleep apnea, other sleep issues

  • Significant shift in your teeth after braces

  • Harmful oral habits like prolonged thumb sucking, nail biting, lip licking, etc.

Orofacial Myofunctional Disorder

Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders (OMDs) are any habit or condition that interferes with proper development and action of the orofacial muscles. This includes muscles of the tongue, lips, cheeks and jaw. OMDs may affect, directly and/or indirectly, breastfeeding, facial skeletal growth and development, chewing, swallowing, speech, occlusion, temporomandibular joint movement, oral hygiene, stability of orthodontic treatment, breathing, sleeping and more.

There are multiple causes of OMDs, with insufficient day/night nasal breathing as a primary cause. Lingering speech errors, tongue thrust swallow, jaw pain, mouth breathing, low tongue rest posture, sleep issues, neck/shoulder pain, and more are likely your body’s way of coping with a narrow palate, upper airway issues (like chronic congestion, enlarged tonsils/adenoids, allergies, deviated septum, etc.), oral habits like prolonged thumb sucking or pacifier use, tongue/lip ties, and more. These force you to underuse or overuse muscles in function. Simply put…your muscles are used incorrectly! An orofacial myofunctional evaluation can help sort out your compensations and help Joni design therapy to correct your function with neuromuscular retraining of your inappropriate, habituated patterns.

Detailed, 90-minute initial evaluations to uncover your strengths and compensations

30-Minute Consultations

Teletherapy available to all clients on an occasional basis

Limited Full-teletherapy program slots available

High standard of care rooted in research

Continuity of care – see Joni every session

Treatment is beneficial for all people: children, teens, adults, and seniors.

Common benefits can include:

  • Proper breathing
  • Reduced nasal congestion
  • Improvement in sleep quality, teeth grinding, and snoring
  • Improved attention span and mood
  • Supporting jaw growth and improved function
  • Reduction in orthodontic relapse
  • Removing obstacles to progress in speech articulation therapy
  • Decreased body or jaw tension
  • Improved overall health!

Joni Loftin, MSP-CCC-SLP, COM®
Speech-Language Pathologist, Board Certified Orofacial Myologist

What’s My Story?
After practicing speech-language pathology and teaching at a university for several years, I met orofacial myology in 2008, turning my clinical world upside down! No speech error or swallowing issue was viewed the same since! My clients began to reap more efficient results and gain improved nasal breathing, sleeping, and overall health benefits! I knew it was imperative to train the next generation of SLPs. I designed a course taught to graduate students for 10 years, collaborated on several Master’s theses that researched tongue thrust and tongue tie topics, published in the International Journal of Orofacial Myology, presented at (24) state, national, and international conferences, provided service on several professional organization committees, and was Board Certified in 2012.

I have now traded my university job for direct clinical work, to get deeper into the trenches of serving clients. I love the challenge of helping to “put all the pieces together” to figure out how to address the root cause of clients’ concerns. My degrees were earned at Appalachian State University and University of South Carolina. Raised in PA and NC, I’ve lived in Idaho since 1990, Boise since 2016. My loves are my family, hiking, biking, camping, snowshoeing, and learning each client’s own story.

Contact Joni