Stick Your Tongue Out to Insomnia

The next time you find yourself lying in bed, tossing and turning, unable to shut off your your mind so you can fall asleep, give this simple trick a try:

Relax your tongue.

It’s not something we give a whole lot of thought to — our tongue. But, when you stop to consider its importance in your life, you’ll be quickly amazed. That’s one heck of an intelligent and active muscle you’ve got hanging out in your mouth.

Inherently linked with the brain, your tongue can be the key to falling asleep at night.

Like many others, I tend to live a busy life leading up to bed. It can be quite difficult to simply let it all go and drift off to sleep. Often, bedtime is the first chance I’ve had to be with my own thoughts. So there I lay with a monkey mind ready to play, play, play.

There are many relaxation techniques and each has it’s merits. But sometimes you feel you’re pulling out all the stops and nothing works. I’ve found this one works nearly every time.

THE POWER OF THE TONGUE:
It’s a remarkable relationship we have with our tongue. In fact, it’s one of our primary sources of info when we first come into the world. Watch a waking baby and it won’t be but a moment before something’s in their mouth. Anything is game. And they’re not doing that because it all tastes good. (I’m sure much of it doesn’t!) What babies are doing is learning. They’re learning with their tongues.

That’s how we began. We had to develop our oral and motor skills, learning movement of the mouth and tongue, so we could graduate our way to speech. And all along our tongue was sending lots and lots of data to the brain.

If you wanna sleep, learn to bite your tongue.

When a kid’s doing a task that requires concentration, their tongue will likely escape out the side of their mouth — suddenly clenched between their teeth as if it would otherwise run away.

What’s with all the tongue biting?

Researches Gillian Forrester and Alina Rodriguez studied children doing tasks, paying specific attention to their tongues. All of the children being studied stuck their tongues out during tasks and games. It’s quite a common & normal phenomenon. They also found it was most prevalent during tasks requiring deeper thought and concentration.

Our human instincts understand it’s hard to concentrate when our tongue’s involved. The deep connection our tongue has to the brain’s language centers means it’s working on our words even if we’re just thinking them. Thinking creates tiny micro-movements in the tongue and that sends more information to the brain. When it’s time to concentrate kids naturally aim to cut off the flow of data — literally biting their tongue.

And so we come full circle: Lying in bed unable to sleep.

When it’s time for bed, you turn everything off — the TV or device and lights — so you won’t be disturbed. But, you may still find yourself being bothered by the noise of your thoughts — that mind chatter that’s activating the tongue, sending more input to the brain.

Quiet your tongue and your thoughts will follow suit.

More effective (and civilized) than biting one’s tongue is to relax it. It’s a strategy sleep experts suggest and I’ve found it to be quite helpful.

My basic routine is as follows:

FIRST STRETCH

Muscles love a good stretch to relax. Most adults avoid sticking their tongue out, which means it hardly ever gets to stretch out. Bedtime’s the perfect opportunity to let your tongue escape. No one need see.

Think about the way an animal will yawn. Usually its tongue extends way out and even curls. Be inspired by that mental image and let your tongue really stretch. I call it the “Yawn Pose” and it often results in an actual deep yawn.

THEN RELAX

Once your head hits the pillow (I recommend face-up while doing this), focus your mind on the back of your tongue and let it relax. Feel it becoming more and more free of tension. It has nothing it needs to do right now. Let it have it’s well deserved rest. It may feel like spreading out, suddenly taking up a little more space in your mouth. That’s good! Let it be free.

NOW BREATHE

Once you’re feeling like the tension has melted away from your tongue, it will start to spread into your jaw and face. Simply breathe into the relaxation.
That’s all there is to it. Bring your focus to your breathing and before you know it you’ll have drifted off to the land of dreams.

Your glorious slumber awaits.