The role of the tongue in neidan is one of those instructions I followed without question — until experience made me reconsider. Classical texts describe it as a bridge connecting two main channels, essential for circulating energy. But is it really necessary? And might it sometimes obstruct rather than help? This post examines both functions of the tongue — as supposed connector and as problematic attractor — and what I’ve found actually works.
The Tongue as Connector
When I first started reading about the microcosmic orbit, the instructions were precise: to circulate the sensation, you had to close a gap that supposedly separates the Du Mai from the Ren Mai, namely the mouth. To do so, you placed the tip of the tongue against the upper gums, thereby connecting the Du Mai—which supposedly rises from the perineum up the back to the head and then descends through the head to the upper gums—with the Ren Mai, which rises along the front and ends at the base of the tongue. I followed the instruction, and the sensation did indeed propagate. But as the practice advanced, I began to question what was actually true about this procedure.
On one hand, I had the experience from tantric sex of “making a connection” when the glans touched my partner’s cervix: both of us experienced a clear increase in the intensity of the flow between us, in both directions. It was as if our nervous systems were communicating without synapses, simply through physical contact. This seemed to support the idea that something similar happened when the tongue touched the gums. However, this is a different kind of phenomenon and deserves its own treatment: what occurs between two people in intimate physical contact is intersubjective—both partners observe and confirm the intensification—and involves coupling between two distinct nervous systems. It is not the same as the internal flow of a single practitioner moving sensation within their own body, which is the case of the lingual bridge.
On the other hand, my experience in solo practice was that the sensation could be generated in nodes that had no other previously activated node nearby—as when I first perceived it at the prominent vertebra, aligned with vishuddha, before the posterior nodes of anahata and manipura 2 had been activated. In practical terms, what counts is attention and intention. Qi goes where attention goes, as the classical texts repeat, without needing to follow a specific route.
Ultimately, the goal is to train the nervous system to generate the sensation at will in any part of the body, with no blind spots. And the best technique to ensure no zone is left untrained is the orbits. Once the entire path has received sufficient training, it becomes possible to “move” the sensation along any route through attention and intention, and it appears as if something were circulating along it. But it is also possible to put a whole route into yin or yang mode, so that its full length absorbs or emits, with no apparent circulation.
For all these reasons, at my current point I no longer use the tongue to make a connection that I now consider doubtful. Instead, I let the entire circuit activate, including the two nodes I discovered later—at the base of the tongue and at the chin—which I had never trained before, presumably because I had been focused on the supposed circulation through the tongue.
The Tongue as Attractor
The tongue is a heavily innervated region, and I assume this is why it requires more intensive training. What I have observed is that even when the sensation flows fairly freely throughout the rest of the body, the tongue still appears as a constriction: the sensation there does not flow, it feels like pressure. The same happens with another nearby region, segment 13, which contains a high amount of bone tissue (upper jaw, cheekbones, base of the skull). This “thirst” of certain zones makes them tend to absorb instinctively, which does not benefit the practice when what is needed is to apply civil fire—letting the sensation move on its own, observing without acting—rather than martial fire, that is, trying to push or pull it.
In phases when the sensation already diffuses fairly fluidly throughout the body, that whole area—segments 12 and 13—becomes problematic for this reason. And one thing that aggravates the problem is the position of the tongue. The point is not to bridge it against the gums, but to keep it floating, without touching the sides, which would close off the inner space of the mouth. That creates a vacuum between the tongue and the palate, which the sensation interprets (correctly) as an attempt to force the area into yin mode by brute strength—the opposite of what should be done, which is to apply civil fire only. As a consequence, the sensation of pressure increases instead of diminishing.
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