Is this pandiculation somatics stuff real?

[ironfist]

Pandiculation is the simplest way to restore muscle function and reduce excess muscle tension, but what is it and how does it work?

Pandiculation is something we are all familiar with, even if we’ve never heard of it. A ‘yawn’ is a reflexive pandiculation, and something we have all done countless times. We normally think of a ‘yawn’ as a stretch but on closer inspection this is not the case. When we yawn we actually tighten or contract the muscles of our jaw, neck, upper back and often our arms and shoulders, we then slowly relax back to rest. So far from stretching when we yawn, we first contract and then slowly relax, and that is exactly what pandiculation involves.

If you would like to see some truly expert pandiculating, find yourself a cat. Cats possess incredible agility, phenomenal reflexes, can climb anything, turn on a six pence and contort themselves into some bizarre positions in order to clean themselves. They also pandiculate, a lot. Most animals in the wild will pandiculate somewhere in the order of 40-50 times a day. Whenever they wake from sleep they will automatically pandiculate. And why do they do this?

TO PREPARE THEIR NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THEIR MUSCLES FOR MOVEMENT!

Big cat, big pandiculation.
This lion is pandiculating his back
and neck, not stretching his belly

Source:

Pandiculation: Movement Medicine

Pandiculation is the simplest way to restore muscle function and reduce excess muscle tension, but what is it and how does it work? Pandiculation is something we are all familiar with, even if we&…

thesomaticmovement.wordpress.com

Supposedly this style of exercise is called somatics... I've been finding a lot about it online lately, various titles related to the term.

Has anyone done this? Is it as effective to the degree people mention?

 

[ironfist]

This kind of thing has been stated as being able to repair scoliosis... by relaxing the muscles on the tight side and strengthening the muscles on the weak side.

 

[DoctorBackwards]

Exercising like this won't do much for you, at least athletically. I dont know, maybe if you're very old. I think you'll find yourself instinctively tensing in stretched positions, including the breathing musculature, if you have decent dopamine transmission. Why? Maybe because it feels so good, which it does.

As far as real training goes, it takes a lot more than this to get the kind of adaptations your body is capable of.

 

[ironfist]

Perhaps I should have clarified. I meant as a process for decreasing pain rather than getting stronger specifically.

 

[JanW55]

I find somatics (Sensory Motor Awareness - "SMA") as described in a book of the same name, by Thomas Hanna (which by the way also features a "Cat Stretch" series of particular movements to be done upon awakening), to be incredibly useful. Meaning in terms of neck, shoulder, back, and similar pains' alleviation and posture remediation in my own case. Daytime and nighttime both, since in the latter situation I will do some of the movements in the bed if I happen to wake at 3 am. Recommend highly. Based on foundational work of Moshe Feldenkrais.

Somatics: Reawakening The Mind's Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health Paperback – Illustrated, August 4, 2004​

by Thomas Hanna (Author)

 

[David PS]

I find somatics (Sensory Motor Awareness - "SMA") as described in a book of the same name, by Thomas Hanna (which by the way also features a "Cat Stretch" series of particular movements to be done upon awakening), to be incredibly useful. Meaning in terms of neck, shoulder, back, and similar pains' alleviation and posture remediation in my own case. Daytime and nighttime both, since in the latter situation I will do some of the movements in the bed if I happen to wake at 3 am. Recommend highly. Based on foundational work of Moshe Feldenkrais.

Somatics: Reawakening The Mind's Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health Paperback – Illustrated, August 4, 2004​

by Thomas Hanna (Author)

Thanks is this video close enough?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKU7OPgHGoA

 

[JanW55]

OK, this looks good, and is the "maintenance of your sensory-motor control" per the instructions/writeup on page 88.

I do see this on the page 99 of my copy of the paperback book (as the video states the reference), and the demonstrating person is going through it all properly.

The thing here for me, is that it's more than doing something from a video for 23 minutes or whatever. This is just the tip of the iceberg being shown, in that each movement can take a long time to incorporate into one's brain/body. Each movement in the video is a separate lesson (seven are listed in the page 99 writeup and are what the video is referring to/demonstrating.)

It has taken me YEARS literally to get to the stage of doing this series of movements as a flow, physically that is, because I was "frozen" (Hanna term) and NOTHING MOVED in the proper relaxed criss-cross (my term) manner. Decades of professional IT (sedentary work in hunched, over tense posture) just about finished me off, but I was doing Somatics all along to try to at least combat the effects of that.

Also, note that the demonstrator is not doing this with eyes closed, which is how somebody needs to do Somatics while learning what it's all about and therefore being able to SENSE what is working properly (that criss-cross) and what/where there is a "frozen place."

Years ago, prior to Internet one had to find personal instruction for whatever discipline (e.g. Pilates, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais) and I found that there was only one choice to go to, for "mail order" for this type of thing -- and these were hyper-expensive as well.

I got some VHS tapes done by a student of Feldenkrais. It was a surprisingly large number of tapes and each one was broken into sections by body part and pairs of body parts, as I recall. One could spend an hour or two just doing one tape, such as right shoulder and left buttocks cheek, but it was time and money well spent.

After doing those tapes I was able to turn my head to the sides for the first time in my entire life, and the "frozen" areas were able to let go and enable that, which is how the head was "freed"!

At any rate, the book is not that much money and has some interesting case histories Hanna worked with as well.

 

[Drareg]

Stretching increases ATP in muscles, over stretching has the opposite effect.
A thread or possibly within a thread on here highlighted this along time ago.

 

[JanW55]

Hello @Drareg, although I definitely believe that stretching is good and overstretching not so good (having been a jogger in the past, prior to my IT career), I have to comment that Somatics is not really about stretching OR doing conventional exercise in an aerobic or anaerobic sense. It involves connecting one's brain and one's body through Sensory Motor Awareness (also termed Awareness Through Movement).

As the Hanna book explains (better than I can), for example, surgeries, or injuries such as accidents or repetitive motion activities can cause the person to lose contact -- in their brain -- with the pained area and unconsciously compensate physically, by shifting various body parts and thus "freeze". The freezing leads to worse misalignments and further pain over time but the original cause or correlation is not usually suspected by mainstream Western "back doctors" etc. (Sensory Motor Amnesia is the result of all this.)

He also describes (and treated in patients) what he calls "Red Light Reflex" and "Green Light Reflex" which although "natural" and in balance pretty much in infancy/youth, get increasingly out of whack as the person matures and faces "real life" stresses (e.g., job and similar expectations of Western culture etc.) and the resulting reactions become "frozen" into people's ways of holding themselves and moving around.

I believe from the book's descriptions that I had the COMBO version of both postures, and by the time I got hold of Hanna's book I had nonstop low back pain, shoulders that seemed frozen up around my head and ears, could not turn my head to the sides, and persistent, horrendous aches in the right wrist that would wake me up at night, from the carpal tunnel effects.

In my case, there were a couple of falls: one off a high fence at age 12 or so, and one in my 30s while trying to walk to a bus stop where I had my shoe stick in some gum or tar and I fell headlong (breaking my jaw), plus the years-long wrist pain of carpal tunnel syndrome from workplace constant use of the computer "mouse".

 

[Drareg]

Hello @Drareg, although I definitely believe that stretching is good and overstretching not so good (having been a jogger in the past, prior to my IT career), I have to comment that Somatics is not really about stretching OR doing conventional exercise in an aerobic or anaerobic sense. It involves connecting one's brain and one's body through Sensory Motor Awareness (also termed Awareness Through Movement).

As the Hanna book explains (better than I can), for example, surgeries, or injuries such as accidents or repetitive motion activities can cause the person to lose contact -- in their brain -- with the pained area and unconsciously compensate physically, by shifting various body parts and thus "freeze". The freezing leads to worse misalignments and further pain over time but the original cause or correlation is not usually suspected by mainstream Western "back doctors" etc. (Sensory Motor Amnesia is the result of all this.)

He also describes (and treated in patients) what he calls "Red Light Reflex" and "Green Light Reflex" which although "natural" and in balance pretty much in infancy/youth, get increasingly out of whack as the person matures and faces "real life" stresses (e.g., job and similar expectations of Western culture etc.) and the resulting reactions become "frozen" into people's ways of holding themselves and moving around.

I believe from the book's descriptions that I had the COMBO version of both postures, and by the time I got hold of Hanna's book I had nonstop low back pain, shoulders that seemed frozen up around my head and ears, could not turn my head to the sides, and persistent, horrendous aches in the right wrist that would wake me up at night, from the carpal tunnel effects.

In my case, there were a couple of falls: one off a high fence at age 12 or so, and one in my 30s while trying to walk to a bus stop where I had my shoe stick in some gum or tar and I fell headlong (breaking my jaw), plus the years-long wrist pain of carpal tunnel syndrome from workplace constant use of the computer "mouse".

Very interesting, doctors used to observe someones gait in the past, I think its still an ATP issue of sorts, the stress depletes energetic resources so muscles veer into a sort of rigor mortis, what you describe is present in the elderly for example.
Repleting muscle capacitance with coherent energy will relax posture, you must have some muscle tone to improve posture after this.

 

[ironfist]

to @Drareg when you say overstretching do you mean too LONG or too FAR? I used to watch movies while stretching seated stretch to be able to kick higher, I would pull my legs further apart every 5 or 10 minutes and hold it for the entire movie. You can make a lot of progress in a few hours. Is this overstretching?

I also have an injury from 10 years ago from overstretching too FAR. I was doing the method where to increase a stretch you contract the muscle and then pull further when you relax. I pulled something in my inner thigh which, to this day, still hurts whenever I stretch. I guess this is an error rather than physical injury.

 

[Drareg]

to @Drareg when you say overstretching do you mean too LONG or too FAR? I used to watch movies while stretching seated stretch to be able to kick higher, I would pull my legs further apart every 5 or 10 minutes and hold it for the entire movie. You can make a lot of progress in a few hours. Is this overstretching?

I also have an injury from 10 years ago from overstretching too FAR. I was doing the method where to increase a stretch you contract the muscle and then pull further when you relax. I pulled something in my inner thigh which, to this day, still hurts whenever I stretch. I guess this is an error rather than physical injury.

I would guess until its uncomfortable.