Featuring: Your Tongue!

By Cate Stillman

Read your Body like a Book (your tongue)

The tongue is a funny organ. It’s inside your body, but you can open your mouth and reach it outside your body. Visualize and feel your tongue to anus channel like a snake.Squeeze your anus. Wiggle your tongue. Slither your innards. Okay… now we’re in.The tongue is one of the 5 organs of action. It’s actions are expression (try talking without your tongue) and choosing food (anna) to become the body (annamayakosha).

If your body/mind doesn’t have ama (undigested food stored as toxins) your tongue chooses that which your inner snake desires.Meaning when you eat you choose from your innards. Is this food what your innards want? If not… you spit it out.

If you have ama, your tongue is more like a neurotic narcissistic snake that is simply out of touch with it’s lower half. That might describe what is out of balance with our culture in a nutshell.

Let’s look back on how we may have arrived at this crisis of disembodied tongues. Back in school we learned about protein, fat and carbs.. nutrients and vitamins. We didn’t really learn about food being “1) intelligent, 2) dumb and 3) dead. ” (Dr. Mishra). Where did that get us? Now we’re in the maelstrom of new food products, newly identified nutrients, phytonutrients, and superfoods. With each new micronutrient scientific analysis is your tongue/snake any closer to choosing intelligence over stupidity?

Not in my case. So, our tongues (mine, included) may be a little dumb; our snakes a little disconnected. We crave that which is a little dumb and a little dead some of the time. But, we notice we crave with greater intelligence with every cleanse, with every yoga class, with every meditation session, with every intimate awakening experience. Our tongues are getting smarter and our snake is waking up. Is this what those yogis meant by kundalini rising? ; )

Our tongues recognize the main job is to choose for the whole snake. All this scientific wisdom pulses us back into animalistic knowing of our local plant superfoods. And we’re smarter for the whole journey. Because now we know that:

denaturing food makes food dumb or dead. (“refining” the nutrients, processing & cooking at high heats)
eating dumb or dead food makes our tongue dumb (and neurotic and narcisstic)
a dumb tongue may then crave dumb/dead food based on the basic emotional issue of disconnection from the whole
a connected intelligent tongue chooses and speaks for the whole organism
an intelligent tongue craves prana from locally cultivated or locally wild seasonal plants (greens, roots, fruits, nuts and seeds.
An intelligent tongue indulges in texture, diversity, a full spectrum of the 6 tastes, and rejects that which is dumb or dead.

And, oh my goodness, we’re growing in numbers and starting a revolution pulsating awareness back into our inner ecosystems and our outer ecosystems. We are super rad walking talking snake with smart tongues.

Cate Stillman
Let me know about your snake/tongue.