For Providers

Have you ever wondered if you’re missing something?

Well, I did. After thirty years of practice, I realized that as hard as I looked, there was still something missing. Self-reflection turned into a deep dive into the research, and a reinvention of everything I thought I knew. And I realized the answers were right in front of me, hiding in plain sight beneath all the controversy and confusion. They were in the role of neurology, and in the tremendous influence the dental provider has over both the form and the function of the human body.

I found a way to explain it, and I called it NeuralFORM: Neural Functional Oral Rehabilitative Medicine. Neural, because the nervous system is where it all begins. Functional, because how we swallow, breathe, bite and rest shapes how we grow. Oral, because the mouth is where we, as providers, hold the keys. And Rehabilitative Medicine, because the goal is to restore function, not just repair structure.

For a while now, I’ve been quietly working behind the scenes, building a curriculum that reflects where I am and where I’m going, not only where I’ve been. Now I want to share it with everyone who cares about how our patients breathe, grow, and sleep.

Dr. Angie Tenholder

NeuralFORM gives us one shared language across our specialties. It teaches principles first and techniques second, so you know why before you choose how. And every step, from babies to adults, is built on gentle forces, light itself, and the published science.

Our assessments find the clues. Our therapies find the keys.

We are surrounded by so much information. Every day. Everywhere. Who to believe? What to do about it? Wisdom is harder to find, but it always begins in wonder. So let’s start there.

I understand the curiosity, and I understand the confusion. I’ve been there, and so many of us can relate. You want to support your patients, and the world of airway, tongue ties, growth and sleep can seem so confusing.

Get comfortable without a big commitment. Love to learn? Have a busy life? Proceed at your pace. The answers are not as difficult as they might seem when you allow nature to serve as your guide.

Your patients are more than just a pretty smile.

We are neighbors, and so are our cranial nerves. The study of neurology may not sound as fun as it is relevant, but it is the language that unites us as humans, and it should be the one that unites us as providers. So let’s put some unity in our community. Let’s take down our fences, knock on some doors, and take a walk with our colleagues through the NeuralFORM Neighborhood, where we put our mind where our mouth is and embrace the power of neuromodulation.

In this neighborhood, every smile has a home address: 555 Airway Main Street, the house of the trigeminal triad. Three branches, three doors, three jobs. Every tooth, every bite, every swallow is felt, guided and kept in balance there, by the same system that helps the brain and the body feel safe. Change how that house is spoken to, and you change far more than alignment. You change how a patient breathes, sleeps, grows, and settles into their own skin.

Whatever your focus, airway, sleep, pain, myofunctional therapy, infant feeding, skeletal expansion, dentofacial orthopedics, guided facial growth or overall wellness, providers working in these fields have been treating the nervous system all along. You just may not have been told. My goal is to guide you in ways to do it on purpose, for the benefit of your patients and your practice.

Every patient you see runs on a simple rule. The brain decides first, and the body follows. Function follows neurology, and form follows function. And it works in reverse, too. Change the form, and you change the signals going back to the brain. That’s the conversation NeuralFORM teaches you to hear.

If your focus is the airway

The tongue is an airway muscle, and it answers to the same neighborhood that decides when the body feels safe enough to rest. An oral appliance may prop the airway open structurally, but when it works, it is likely propping it open neurologically, too. Knowing that helps explain why it works beautifully for one patient and not at all for the next.

If your focus is myofunctional therapy

A tongue resting low isn’t always weakness, and it isn’t always obstruction. Sometimes it’s where the body finds a sense of peace. Repetition can build strength, but if no one asks why the pattern developed, the pattern often comes back. Ask why before you repeat.

If your focus is expansion and growth

The swallow and the bite are small forces repeated hundreds of times a day. Those are the organics. A screw is a large force, turned in steps. That’s the mechanics. They’re rarely used together, but maybe they should be. And because children either grow into their problems or out of them, the earlier we support healthy function, the more growth can follow on its own.

If your focus is pain

A clench is often a compensation. A swallow that can’t seal at the palate gets finished by the jaw. Treat the clench alone, and you take away the workaround without fixing what needed it.

From the outside, a patient who is learning to swallow more efficiently and a patient who is quietly building a compensation can look exactly the same. Our assessments exist to tell the difference before we treat. Understand the why first, and the what becomes so much clearer.

Measure twice, cut once. Knock on the door. Don’t kick it open.

More than you might think. A smile isn’t just something we straighten, whiten, or widen. Every time the teeth meet, every time the tongue rises to the palate in a swallow, the trigeminal triad is talking to the brain. When we understand that conversation, we can help a patient’s smile do real work for them. Not only the joy it brings, but neuromodulation: signals that help the nervous system settle, balance, and find its way back to safety, hundreds of times a day. That’s a smile working for the patient.

And it works for you, too. It can bring back the reason you chose this profession. You can see the patients you used to refer away, answer the questions you used to avoid, and feel the joy of watching a child grow out of their problems instead of into them.

Being different can feel scary. I know. When you step outside of what you were taught, you wonder who will question you, and whether you’ll have an answer when they do. So let me tell you how carefully this was built.

When I started questioning everything, I went back to the literature, and I went back to neurology, the common language underneath all of our specialties.

The science. Every concept in this curriculum is tied to the published science, with references you can read for yourself. We are open about what is established, what is emerging, and what is still a question we are exploring. A formal review of the literature is underway, and our reference library keeps growing.

Every word has a home. Our Lexicon carries each term from the family word, to the provider word, to the term you’ll find in the research, so you can speak with a parent at the chair and a colleague at study club, and say the same true thing to both.

Careful by design. Our therapies use light forces, and light itself. Our releases are non-surgical.

If we dismiss what we cannot prove, we miss the opportunity to prove what we can.

Different doesn’t mean against anyone. There are two ways to have the tallest building in town. You can tear everyone else’s down, or you can build yours up. We build.

You won’t walk this road alone, and you won’t be rushed.

1. Curious

Start with the Neural Neighborhood on-ramp. It’s free, it’s about an hour, and you can listen while you walk the dog or drive to the office. If you’d like one idea at a time, our Nuggets take less than six minutes, and our Notables go a little deeper when you have a little more time. When you want the whole picture, the deep dive is there for listening, too.

2. Aware

The NeuralFORM Aware Series is our onboarding course, a day-and-a-half virtual experience. It’s learning, not doing, so you can become familiar with the principles before committing to the effort of traveling to a hands-on course. The comprehension checks are untimed, so you can take them whenever it suits you.

3. Hands-on

When you’re ready to put your hands on it, choose NeuralFORM Dental Device Therapies, or RestOralase® with BabyLase®. Each is a day and a half instead of three, to save you time and money.

4. The NeuralFORM Network

All along the way, you’ll have company. Nearly two hundred providers practice these protocols one defined way, and document them the same way. In healthcare, there is real safety in numbers.

Most of us didn’t choose this profession because we love airport security lines and hotel conference rooms. So we built NeuralFORM to fit the life you already have. Listen on a walk, while the laundry spins, or on the drive to the office. Hear it once, twice, or a few more times for the more complex concepts. Prefer to see it? Slides are there for the visual learner.

Pick your pace and your mood. Some pieces are super serious; some are kind of silly, because we like putting the fun in function.

Nuggets: short, stand-alone lessons on YouTube. Each one may point you to a deeper provider Notable in our Digital Chalk learning platform.

Notables: for when you have a little more time and want to learn selectively on the topics you’re most interested in. Have a patient with a specific challenge or question? Look through the library and (hopefully) find your answer. Can’t find it? Submit a question through our provider portal. We call this a NeuralFORM Noodle. It might even end up as a Nugget or Notable, so it can help another provider who needs advice on a similar topic.

Three guides: learn from me, from Nora, and from Dora the Doggie.

Chewies (coming soon): our kid-friendly sessions, home to Play with Dora the Doggie. Like a chew toy, they give you something to mentally chew on. First up: Dora’s Device Do’s and Don’ts.

Our resources range from white gloved to wet gloved. As a member of the NeuralFORM Network, you’ll have:

A private provider community where cases and questions are shared safely

Live study club meetings every other month, each with a members’ rumble and continuing education that counts toward your renewal

A growing library of Nuggets, Notables, and paper reviews

Our Lexicon and reference library

A Practice Education Kit with parent Nuggets, the Neighborhood map, handouts, and forms for your own office and website

A listing in the NeuralFORM provider directory once you’ve completed the Aware Series and a hands-on course, where families looking for this kind of care are pointed to the provider nearest them

And more to come.

It’s for everyone who cares about airway, sleep, growth, expansion, tongue function, craniofacial pain, orthodontics, dentofacial orthopedics, fascial entanglement with body movement patterns, human performance, and more. Dentists and orthodontists, myofunctional therapists and speech-language pathologists, bodyworkers and physicians. It’s for everyone, really, except the person who feels there’s nothing left to learn.

We offer a personalized registration process. There’s no pressure to buy. Call the Academy at (618) 281-9739 or email admin@thesynergy.academy, and we’ll talk about where you are and where you’d like to go.

Curious and committed are both welcome here. Let’s explore together.

Science evolves. Awareness follows. Opportunity opens.

RestOralase and BabyLase are registered trademarks of The Synergy Academy, LLC. NeuralFORM is a trademark of The Synergy Academy, LLC.