Most muscles serve to attach one bone, usually to via a tendon, to another. There are few places in the body where that is not entirely true: at the eyes, where the scapula and ribs meet, the diaphragm and pelvic floor. The tongue is also an exception. It’s a boneless mass that you can stick out at will. You can fold it, invert it, lay it flat or fill the mouth with it. The tongue is capable of a whole lot more when it’s mapped correctly and your neck is free.

You can refer back to an earlier post, Mapping the core of the neck (January 26th), where I point to the tongue in relation to how the head balances on the spine.

As the neck frees, the tongue can relax, not before. When the cervical vertebrae are jammed the tongue bunches and invades the windpipe from the front, affecting our ability to breath. All the more reason to keep the tongue in mind when freeing the neck. You can use your tongue to help free your neck. Curling it over to turn it backward in your mouth will place the tip of it right in front of the weight bearing part of the spine. As we covered in previous posts, this is where the head balances from. Not further forward and not further back. Right in the middle of our neck.

Tomorrow we’ll take a peak underneath the jaw.