I've been in full kechari for a while --- tongue in the nasal pharynx.
What I've been finding is that with my tongue in the pharynx, the gets tender after a while, mildly inflamed. This is the 'fickle pharynx' thing that Yogani has been talking about. The inflamed-ness seems to come with the pharynx getting dryer.
More or less as I expected, the amount of time my tongue can stay in there has been increasing with practice. That is, my pharynx has been getting used to the tongue with time.
Another interesting thing is that it seems that the pharynx gets used to the tong bit by bit. I made significant advances into the pharynx in a short amount of time using 'Tooled Talavya' and found that the new pharynx territory was not yet used to the tongue and became tender more quickly.
At this point, I can reach the 'secret spot' but I can't stay there for long because of this tenderness.
One thing is surprising though -- it takes the pharynx much less time to recover from the tenderness than I expected. In the earlier days I thought that after the tenderness sets in, there would be no more tongue in the pharynx for a whole day. However, I found that even 40 minutes later, it can be OK again.
The pharynx, BTW, also seems to have a mind of its own, independent of the tongue -- at certain times of the day it would just be randomly more unwilling to take the tongue than others, even if there was no tongue in there in the meantime.
Not everyone's pharynx, btw, gets tender like that. It seems that Victor never had any of that tenderness.
I discovered something by accident -- drinking orange juice seems to salve the tender pharynx for me, significantly. Drinking a little allows me to continue for much longer.
How does drinking orange juice do this, since no juice gets into the pharynx? I don't know the details of course, but I think it is something reflexive -- I think it may be the sourness, the saliva-generating aspect of the orange juice that does the trick (so presumably lemon or grapefruit juice would work nicely). Maybe that saliva generation starts liquids going in the pharynx also, and reverses the tenderness. I don't know how it works, but one thing I am certain of -- it works very well for me.
A little drink salves it for about ten minutes or so. So occasional sipping during kechari is perfect. I slosh it around in the back of my mouth to get the saliva going....
When we think about it, cold/flu/congestion-congestion-relief is often provided with lemon is probably related and no accident! I think salivation probably relieves tenderness in the pharynx in general, regardless of whether kechari is the cause of the tenderness.
-D