Take a moment now to note where your tongue naturally sits in your mouth. Where is the tongue resting? At the top of the palate? The bottom of the mouth? Where is the tip of the tongue? Pushing against the top teeth? The bottom teeth?
It turns out there is a wrong and right way to rest your tongue and ‘proper tongue posture’. Bad tongue posture can have a negative effect on your eyes, nose, head, neck, shoulders, and teeth. Improper tongue posture can contribute or lead to sleep apnea, TMJ (jaw pain), problems with vision, bad body posture, tooth damage.
Whereby "proper tongue positioning" can lead to improved sleep, better breathing, and decreased neck, jaw, or head pain.
Proper tongue positioning- Really!? How?
Close your lips gently
Have a tiny gap between the back teeth. Though there is some controversy whether they should be together or not. (I love the fact that this is controversial...of all the things in the world that might spark a fight…) In my humble and respectful opinion is we tend to hold tension in our jaws, let’s create a little space to avoid grinding and gritting them, so I vote to keep the tiniest gap.
Rest your tongue gently on the roof of your mouth and about a half an inch away from your teeth
Another way of finding the position is to smile really widely (we’re talking about really cheesy smile), raise your eyebrows, and try to swallow without unclenching your teeth. You should feel your tongue rise to the roof of your mouth into its ideal resting position.
Why are you on about the tongue, Sandra?
Great question. Well, it’s because I have gone down a new rabbit hole all about the anatomy of breathing. In my research, I discovered that by not having the tongue support the arch of the upper palate, it changes its shape some times dramatically. This effects the nasal passages, which in turn means we have difficulty breathing through the nose and now we begin to mouth breath, which really is not a good idea as our default breathing. (that's for another blog post)
Random tongue facts that peaked my interest:
The average human tongue is about 3 inches long. The longest is 3.97 inches (10.1 cm) see Nick Stoeberl
Your tongue can get fat. If you get fat, so does your tongue
Your tongue print is as unique as a fingerprint
The tongue beats every other muscle in our body in terms of flexibility
In Tibet, sticking your tongue out at others is a greeting
Cats have backwards-facing spines to help in cleaning their fur. Big cats have the same structure strong enough to scrape the flesh off the bones
The largest animal tongue belongs to the blue whale weighing over 2.7 tons
The tongue-eating louse (an isopod) is a parasite that attaches itself to the tongues of various fish. The lice essentially replaces the fish’s tongue by consuming it
Today’s challenge is -honour the tongue!
You may have heard about Kechari mudra where you curl the tip of the tongue to reach through the back of the throat to the nasal cavity...by slicing the frenulum. Nope, I am not asking you to do this. (this week ;-)
Instead, be mindful of where you position your tongue in the mouth. How easy is it to change the position? If this simple action is proving hard, then perhaps we can be a little more patient when we or others struggle to change our positions on bigger things. Perhaps…
A version of this was sent in my newsletter- subscribe here