Hi Meg,
I've done an experiment and I have become very convinced that 'milking the tongue' is very helpful and particularly important when you do rapid-snipping like this.
This contrasts to the normal slower-clipping regime, when it might be less important.
What I did was do a tooled-talavya cutting one week and did not 'milk the tongue'. I compared the result to the result when I did do milking the tongue, and in both cases I allowed the same amount of healing time (one week).
More or less as I expected, the tooled-talavya cut after the milking the tongue was much better; the fibers had come to the surface and were densely packed near it, with very few capilliaries. There were more fibers cut for a given depth, and less blood.
There's yet another reason to milk the tongue if doing 'tooled talavya' ; if you are milking your tongue regularly, when you pull your tongue out hard for tooled talavya, the frenum will get harder (and easier to cut) if the tongue is already at the 'frenum limit', where it will be if milking the tongue is being done regularly.
If you are not doing or have not done 'milking the tongue', the tongue muscles themselves will be part of what limits the tongue, and the frenum will not come up as hard and strong when you pull the tongue. Therefore it might be harder to cut.
I do one minute of milking the tongue each morning. That's 100 pulls. It seems to be plenty. I use a cotton handkercheif to grab the tongue with.
Regards,
-David
