Tuning Up the Tongue

I first began thinking about the tongue in 1986 when my son, Frank, began seeing a speech pathologist for a slight speech impediment. I was using muscle balancing in my work as a massage therapist, and after watching the therapist’s speech evaluation, I began to think of the tongue as a muscle, or a network of muscles, controlled by the different hemispheres of the brain. With a little experimentation, I soon discovered that, by putting the tongue in extension and testing an indicator muscle, I could find the tongue posi- tions that seemed to cause stress to the system.