More About the Flew.

More About the Flew

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the effects of moving the air about within the dogs flew. Let’s bring this home. Let’s take this topic from hypothetical musing to real life application.

Exercise

Do this little exercise: close your mouth. Move the air from behind your teeth to in front of your front teeth; allowing it to inflate your upper lip; an air bubble under your nose. Notice how your philtrum, that little divot under your nose, flattens. Notice the feeling of pressure against the underside of your nose. Notice the shapes of your nostrils.

Now, raise your lower lip and feel how the pressure within your ears changes. As an added bonus, open your mouth wide and swallow. Did you hear your ears click?

Notice the variations of tension around your eyes, in your temples, in the space between your eyes, and your forehead. Has your heart rate sped up or slowed? Are you breathing easier? Can you see things a little clearer? Alterations in pressure on your face and your entire head are taking place; all from shifting the air inside your mouth from behind your teeth to in front of the teeth.

Here’s the fun part: Look around you. Notice your environment. Do you sense anything around you that you hadn’t noticed before? It could be the intensity of a color. It could be an aroma. It could be an enhanced awareness and appreciation of the space around you. It could simply be the contours of the leaves of the plant next to you.

Expanding the surface area of your flew enhances your capacity to experience and understand your surroundings. Expanding your cheeks, varies pressure into your facial acupressure points; influencing and affecting your body’s metabolism.

Two PetMassage Applications

The effects of opening the flew will be similar with dogs.

With your thumb and forefinger, pull your dogs upper lip out into a stretch. Besides the obvious stimulation of the frenulum inside the lip and the stretching of the skin around GV 27, notice the changes in the shapes of the slits on the sides of the nostrils. It is obvious that this is affecting the airflow through the nostrils. Pulling the lip changes the shapes of the scent receptors on the turbinates within the nose.

Are you familiar with “breathe right” strips? These little adhesive strips that are applied on the bridge of your nose pull the two sides of the skin together. Lifting and separating the fascia around the cartilage, the openings of your nostrils dilate. You can do the same thing if you gently pinch the skin over the bridge of your nose with your fingers. Both sides of the skin are pulled toward midline. Your nostrils widen. Notice how much more air you can inhale. Do you have a deviated septum? Do you snore at night? Do you have allergies? This really helps. You’re welcome.

Apply the same techniques with your dog. Using your two thumbs, or thumb and forefinger, compress the skin over the bridge of your dog’s nose. Notice how the shapes of the nostrils and the slits under them expand and shift as you squeeze and release.

Variations. In addition to squeezing the skin together, you can also move the skin forward and back. You can hold one side in place and move the other. You can move the two sides in opposite directions. You can hold the tissues in a compressed position and lighten your touch.

Each variation has a slightly different effect on the spaces and fluid within.

Working the flew is just one tiny element in the full body PetMassage. Every aspect of the massage supports our intentions of enhancing health and wellness.

Opening the flew, just like opening the flew of your fireplace, affects the qualities and quantities of your dog’s air intake, inner ear pressure balance, body water circulation, and metabolism throughout his body.