What Does Your Tongue Have to Do with Your Posture?

The tongue is a fascinating muscular organ with a myriad of functions and purposes. It is a voluntary, sphincter-like muscle, which is vital for chewing and swallowing food, speech, and taste. Of course, as we all know, it is also instrumental in creating pleasure and having fun. In the back of the mouth, the tongue is anchored into the hyoid bone.

(image from WebMD, accessed here: http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/picture-of-the-tongue)

In many yoga classes during centering and sometimes even while doing yoga postures, or asanas, you might be instructed to let the tongue float, release the tip of the tongue away from the roof of the mouth or from pressing into the back of the teeth, and soften and relax both the tip and root of the tongue. Once you do that, the upper and lower teeth stop clenching, the jaw relaxes, and you discover tremendous space in the mouth cavity. On a more subtle level, it's like you shed a heavy coat of tension. You diffuse strain. If you pay attention, you might feel more space overall--from the top and back parts of the head (i.e. the brain, or thinking flesh) all the way down to the pelvic floor, the groins, the hips, and the legs. Your external and internal gaze soften, your receptivity expands, and you realize that the tension in your tongue and jaw has been keeping you on "back-burner high alert," literally keeping you "in your head" at the expense of the rest of your physical flesh. 

Modern anatomy provides a simple explanation of that phenomenon. The tongue is the top part of the Deep Front Line (DFL), as explained to us by Tom Myers. The deep front line starts (or ends, depending on how you want to look at it) deep in the sole of the foot (where the tentacle attachments of the tibialis posterior muscle connect and support the major bones of the foot and ankle like a hammock) and ends (or starts) with the tongue. This is literally your plumb line, gravity line, support line, your posture line. Per Myers, it plays a major role in lifting the inner arch, stabilizing each segment of the legs, supporting the lumbar spine from the front (where we all need support!), stabilizing the chest while allowing the expansion and relaxation of breathing, and balancing the delicate neck and the heavy head on top of it. Here is a fascinating video of Myers (note: this a dissection of the deep front line and therefore, viewer discretion is advised), walking us through the entire deep front line in one piece: from feet to diaphragm to tongue!

Doug Keller calls the DFL the core sutra (thread) of the body. And the DFL is indeed your core! Further, per Myers, the DFL is not strictly associated with any movement (minus a couple of exceptions like the diaphragm!), yet no movement is outside its sphere of subtle and profound influence.

But let me get back to the tongue. So, having a tense tongue can literally create tension (and therefore, inefficiency) anywhere along this core line. If the gravity line is not in optimality/balance, the body will find other ways to function by compensating with other more superficial structures (this is the beauty and the curse of the human flesh). Remember this the next time you feel gripping anywhere in the body when in a yoga pose you find challenging or try to do a pose by clenching your teeth and pushing your tongue against the insides of the mouth.

Here is even a more radical thought: why not remember that throughout the day, not just in your daily or weekly or whatever frequency works for you yoga class. Start noticing how much tension you hold with your tongue throughout your day and release it anytime you notice. This can at first be anywhere from exasperating to annoying as you realize how much you do it, but I think the more you engage in that simple technique of letting the tongue free, the less you will grip it. As you do this, there will be more spring in your step (literally!), you will move and function with more grace and utility, and your engagement with your surroundings will be both more enhanced and less harsh.

What's in a Name?

One of the things that fascinate me in life are the words that we use to describe things. Specifically, their origin and how they came to be used into their current context. That is, I am a big fan of the etymology dictionary. I also love languages and finding connections between words in different languages, usually by figuring out a common root in the words. For example, the word for "life" in my native language, Bulgarian, is "zhivot." In Sanskrit, "jiva" most simply means "living," "alive," among many more subtle meanings. So, that is fascinating, because obviously the Bulgarian word for life is etymologically connected to the Sanskrit word "jiva" (which is also from where the Jivamukti style of yoga takes its name, for example).

So, why is this blog called FleshContext?

Flesh:
I got fascinated with using "flesh" as a way to describe and think about the "body" (most simply, our physical embodiment) courtesy of the fascinating Matthew Remski, a writer, yoga and Ayurveda practitioner, whom I highly recommend that you check out (I've always wondered how I would describe myself in terms of yoga and, thanks to him, as of now, I feel that phenomenological yogi is a fitting description). As most of my readers know, the mind and the body are really one continuum and are anything but separate. However, the word "body" implies a separation from the "soul" at least since the 13th century and it also has the meaning of "corpse" from around the same time. It also implies separation from the world and from one's environment or "livingworld" as Remski calls it. Moreover, the "yoga body" is quite fetishisized in contemporary yoga culture and, like yoga poses, it becomes a thing--static, like a snapshot forever frozen in time. But that is the subject of another post. In short, the connection between mind and body, between thinking and feeling, between thought and flesh is always-already present, regardless of whether we perceive, are conscious, or aware of it. In other words, flesh implies a dynamism rather than stasis, the idea that balance and health occur through our relationship with our livingworld, within our circumstance. After consulting with the etymology dictionary, I was delighted to discover the following under the entry for flesh: An Old English poetry-word for "body" was flæsc-hama, literally "flesh-home." So, flesh is simply one's physical embodiment, the instrument through which we feel, experience, and reflect on the world.

Context:
Context is one of my favorite words or concepts and I find it so useful when self-reflecting and trying to make sense of anything in my life. In short, context is your livingworld, the environment within which you function, your ecology: from the food you eat to the air you breathe to your family, friends, and colleagues, to the driver that cut you off and made you mad this morning, to the weather right now, to what you see in the various media, ad infinitum... To borrow a memorable phrase from another fascinating modern yogi and thinker, Christina Sell, "context is everything." The etymological dictionary reveals this about context: from Latin contextus "a joining together," originally pp. of contexere "to weave together," from com- "together" + texere "to weave". Does this remind you of something else? Yes, that's right! Yoga, which literally translates as "union," "yoking," "to join."

In a nutshell, why FleshContext? Because, for me, it encapsulates what life and one's existence are all about. To borrow from Ayurveda, the meaning of life is your journey towards wholeness (context) that accounts for your uniqueness (flesh). So, we are not one, we are not separate, we are the dynamic balance between the two.

The All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet Way of Selling Yoga

The typical yoga studio is set up something like this. The studio is founded and managed by an owner, most often a teacher her/himself, who usually but not always teaches a couple to a few classes a week at the studio and is responsible for setting the tone/vibe and the direction of the studio (styles offered, workshops, etc.). This person also needs to be a good manager and ultimately has to accept the role of a business person if his/her studio is to be successful and he/she is able to make a living off of the endeavor. Said studio owner also needs to hire teachers who fit his/her vision and are willing to follow his/her direction. This relationship will be the subject of a future post. What I am concerned with here is the way yoga is sold to the consumer and how this ultimately discourages the student from developing their own personal practice that fits their unique needs and requirements based on a specific day, time of life, etc.

This model of selling yoga offers a drop-in for a single class for a certain price, say $20 per class, as well as passes for a number of classes (in packages of 10, 15, or 20, which lead to a discount on the single class drop-in price of a few dollars). The drop-in is a good option for first-time visitors and the passes are good for the occasional consumer, taking into account that they have an expiration date. Most importantly, studios offer an unlimited monthly pass or an unlimited annual pass, sometimes also referred to as membership. I call it the all-you-can-eat-buffet model. In order for this membership to be worth its cost, the student needs to maximize his/her attendance. The more the student goes, the cheaper it becomes to do yoga. Studios, understandably, want to lock in clients and so promote the membership as exactly that: a cost-effective option to do as much yoga as possible and maximize one's investment.

This has a number of effects:
(1) It actually discourages the development of one's own personal practice--a practice that fits one's unique needs and requirements based on a specific day, time of life, etc. Rather than making time, even if it is once a week, for coaxing oneself towards developing a personalized asana practice, this model of selling yoga encourages a lot of class taking and not a lot of practicing and self-exploration. Yoga class is for getting tools and ideas that one can explore in their own practice time and integrate.
(2) The membership locks the practitioner out of experimenting with different studios/teachers. Studio memberships are not cheap, so the idea of going to a class that's outside the studio doesn't make financial sense for most people, even if it costs $10.
(3) On a more subtle level, I think it leads students to "overeat" yoga and/or "eat" some yoga just because it's there, available, and convenient, not because it suits them.
(4) On an even more subtle level, it breeds complacency and conformity. With the all-you-can-eat-buffet yoga, one gradually comes to perceive the studio as their own little yoga world/network: the space is familiar and soothing, you know the people at the front desk, you know who will show up to which class, etc. The whole experience get very predictable and routine to the point of breeding dullness. Don't get me wrong, I am all about having a safe, welcoming, and yes, predictable (in terms of quality, style, vibe, etc), class to go to, one that inspires and motivates you to practice on your own, to explore all the tidbits, take what works for you, and dismiss/file away what doesn't at the moment.

All I am saying is that the all-you-can-eat-buffet way of selling yoga, which is the dominant model, is ultimately not prodding the practitioner to create their own practice. Please feel free to chime in and let me know what you think and what your experience has been. I am of the mind that sometimes to make your point, you have to exaggerate it a little bit :).