Children’s Physical Therapy Airway Treatments: Posture, Breath and Swallow Dynamics
Dr. Jenny Hobson, PT, DPT, MTC, CFC, CMTPT

This lecture will explore the vital role physical therapists can play as key members of the treatment team in managing pediatric cases involving compromised airways. Emphasis will be placed on restoring proper spinal alignment, breathing mechanics, and airway function.

Current medical literature links upper airway resistance to clenching and bruxism. Many individuals—including medical professionals and their patients—experience narrowed upper airways due to developmental issues in craniofacial structure, often stemming from childhood breathing and swallowing patterns. This resistance can lead to clenching, grinding, and snoring.

Participants will be introduced to a comprehensive, full-body treatment approach designed for children. This integrated strategy aims to reduce clenching and snoring while improving sleep, posture, headaches, overall health, and energy levels.

Treatment Techniques Covered Will Include:

• Nasal breathing retraining
• Regulation of breath volume
• Uplocker posterior tongue-to-soft-palate stabilization
• Good Oral Posture Exercise (GOPex)
• Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) exercises to restore spinal posture, enhance ribcage mobility, and improve airway patency

Dr. Jenny Hobson will demonstrate how to stabilize the airway by addressing full-body spinal posture, improving ribcage mobility, optimizing nasal breathing and breath volume, and restoring the tongue-to-soft-palate suction resting position essential for proper swallowing.

Learning Objectives:

  Identify the relationship between upper airway resistance, craniofacial development, and functional issues such as clenching, grinding, and snoring in pediatric patients.

  Describe an integrated, full-body treatment approach that includes nasal breathing retraining, oral posture exercises, and spinal alignment techniques to support airway function.

  Apply physical therapy strategies, including Postural Restoration Institute exercises, to improve spinal posture, ribcage mobility, and airway patentcy in children with compromised airways.

Dr. Jenny Hobson, a European-trained physical therapist, has extensive expertise in manual therapy, craniofacial rehabilitation, breathing and oral posture training. As one of only two physical therapists in the U.S. selected to teach Dr. Mariano Rocabado’s methods through the U of St. Augustine Florida where she earned her doctorate, she brings unparalleled insights into airway dysfunction, breathing mechanics, and postural stabilization. Her advanced training in TMD, Buteyko breathing, spinal posture correction, and airway rehabilitation provides invaluable strategies for early intervention in pediatric patients. She treats both the adult and pediatric patients at the Hobson Institute in Chicago at her 3 locations.  Dr. Jenny has many courses available online for patients and medical providers to learn about how to identify and stabilize the airway, treat TMD, sleep disordered breathing and tinnitus.  She teaches the Rocabado TMD physical therapy  method to PTs and Dentists and is teaching her Intro to Airway Eval & RX to all medical providers through the Hobson Institute.

1 CE credit available to AAPMD members