I probably should have mentioned that we started off doing this (holding her mouth closed and saying "NO" and "No Bite") until she understood the words alone so just like any other training when you are teaching dogs simple commands: "sit", "give me paw", "up", "lay down", "drop it", etc…you say the words and show the dog the action until they eventually understand with words alone (or signs of course). Again, I'm no expert but from enough research, animal behavior conditioning, and from previous experience with other dogs, we've never had a problem (but we've never owned a Basenji until now either 
Our dog is constantly in our faces getting a million kisses everyday so she is very used to face contact and we've never "harsely" forced her mouth down- we simply closed her mouth with enough force as if holding a child's hand and she never seemed terrified of us. We only did this once she was used to us and comfortable so she definitely seems to understand that biting is wrong because now she stops when we tell her "no bite" and we dont even have to hold her mouth down anymore.
I definitely do understand how "harsh" treatment causes dogs to become weary and head shy in time but again, we are not displaying forceful, harsh behavior on our dog. I think it takes knowing your dog really well to know the type of discipline that should be enforced and I know positive discipline is the best way but there arent many methods that I've researched that work on getting a dog to stop biting and being forceful/aggressive with your dog will obviously lead to issues down the road as those of you have pointed out which I agree with.
I am not saying this works with other dogs - it just works on ours and a dog is a dog so an accident can happen at ANY time. Even if our dog continues to be the sweetest thing ever, I am not going to leave my 4 yr old daughter with her alone or let her torment the dog when she wants to play. We have enough sense to know that it doesnt matter if you have a great tempered dog, anything can happen at any time and yes, displaying harsh behavior on a dog will most likely lead to an accident waiting to happen but again, we are not being harsh with her (its one of those things that you need to see for yourself to understand as perhaps I wasnt too clear on exactly how we were doing this in my earlier post).
We've seen too many dogs take control of the household because their owners didnt know how to handle the dog so they would get out of hand and wind up in a shelter (our previous dog was this exact example- the owners were afraid of her and never corrected the negative behaviors until she became aggressive- we took her in for awhile and she was never aggressive with us or our child- in fact she was the complete opposite of what they told us- very sweet and good tempered. She had issues with other dogs but not with us and after awhile we saw improvement in her behavior with strangers and other dogs by socializing her everyday). Animals can sense how people are and even though our dog knows we are in charge-we've NEVER hit her or acted abusive to her in any way to make her understand we are in charge of the household. Holding a dogs mouth to the point where you are causing pain is obviously abusive and that is not what we are doing.
So anyway, not trying to cause a battle here but I needed to clarify exactly what I meant and that I am simply sharing what we do (an opinion) not to offer methods that I claim work on all dogs - just ours and I don't think we are being harsh in any way but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
A dog who becomes head shy or doesnt let you near his/her face, put a collar on, etc was definitely a dog that was mistreated so again, no abuse being done on our dog - by far! She is the most spoiled thing ever and would tell you herself if she could speak
