Dr. Steven Lin: Your tongue acts as a rudder and support system through a fascial line that runs right down to your toes! In nearly all my patients, I see poor tongue posture, and the links to bad spinal posture, breathing, and other issues are felt right throughout the body.
The simplest way we can see how the tongue is so influential is how it supports proper head posture. When the tongue is down and forward, forward head posture and mouthbreathing occurs. Over time this associates with a narrow jaw, crooked teeth, and sleep disorders. But… you guessed it, as always the mouth is a gateway for so many other systems in the body.
The tongue is an extremely complex muscular and fascial rudder system. It guides all the structures of the myofascial continuity that runs from the inner arch of the foot all the way up through the middle of the body to the tongue and jaw muscles. Isn’t that amazing?
Actually the tongue is potentially more important for core stability than turning on your actual core. Our core begins deep under the arch with the insertions of the tendons from the lower leg, especially tibialis posterior. To find its insertion, feel just under the inside arch of the foot, just underneath and forward of protrusion of the navicular bone you can feel a bit over an inch in front of your tibial malleolus on the inside of your ankle.
This point will respond to a soft-but-energy-rich touch that is held, and also to a more firm and direct fascial release. Pressing here can make a flow of feeling run up the fascial line. So for better core support, spinal, hip and leg strength, you need to work on your tongue posture. During exercise practice sealing the tongue to the roof of the mouth, this turns on the fascial rudder to the toes. It takes time and you need to work on making the BACK of the tongue connect to the soft palate. More on this to come.
