Might seem strange right? After going through your intake form together and finding out about how you’r sleeping, if you have any pain in your body, how your digestion is etc. often your practitioner will ask you to stick your tongue ALL the way out so they can get a good look.
Today I thought I might explain to you why we do this. In Chinese medicine there is something called the “four examinations” and this includes:
1.Looking
2.Listening/smelling ( apparently these two words are one word in Chinese?)
3.Asking
4Touching
Looking means to examine the body and the tongue is a an important part of this.
The tongue gives us a picture of what the internal environment of the body is.
A healthy tongue is light pink and slightly moist anything that is different from this may be a clue that something in your body is not functioning optimally.
There is also a lot we can see on the surface of the skin, the eyes, nails hair but the tongue really gives us amazing insight into what is out of balance and it also will change quite quickly in response to the changes that are happening internally which makes it a great tool when trying to gauge how your treatments are helping or how the changes to your diet for example are benefiting you.
Some of the things we are looking for in the tongue is:
The colour, it’s shape, if there is a coating and if so the colour of it and thickness as well as markings in certain parts of the tongue.
A lot of people have heard of reflexology and this is a similar concept. The tongue is a microsystem where the different organs in your body are reflected on different parts of your tongue. For example, a very common sign that is displayed in clinic are teeth marks on the sides of the tongue which is representative of weak digestion.
You can see after some acupuncture or herbal medicine/ diet changes that the teeth marks disappear and the edge becomes smooth again.
Tongue diagnosis is wonderful tool when used in conjunction with the above mentioned “examinations”.
Hope to see you in clinic soon.
