Pandiculation is innate stretching, the kind of stretching we and animals do before we even ‘learned’ to talk or read or ‘stretch’. I have studied and practiced this for many years and feel it may be the least practiced but most valuable of all exercises, and undeniably the most natural. Even though most will identify with a ‘yawn’ as the kind of pandiculation they do, the fact is that any and all muscles can be pandiculated in similar manner with the same benefit. In my case, my muscles/fascia became so severely contracted or tetanus, thru trauma of different kinds beginning in childhood that pandiculation by itself was not able to release them. However with the adjunct use of ices, which in my experience so far appears to charging up my system including musculature, I now seem to be able to pandiculate my musculature beneficially, and thereby gradually resetting them to resting state. Also I’m thinking that my motor-running feeling is actually a micro-tremoring in the fascia as a result of induced pemf charge. Sunlight is induced into plants and becomes a nutrient thru photosynthesis. so why not magnetism being induced into us animals and becoming electrical nutrition.
My intuitive imagery for this is that the muscle works like a sponge. When it’s dirty, sticky, and dry, no amount of stretching or squeezing will get it back to normal. But when saturated with water, as a muscle may be charged electrically, then the sponge can be easily squeezed back to the clean and relaxed state. Similarly a muscle once charged electrically may then be successfully pandiculated back to its normal, relaxed, resting state.
I just looked up the definition of photosynthesis. The major sites define it as the conversion of sunlight energy into chemical energy. Aren’t they ignoring the seemingly obvious but maybe undetectable? electrical component as in…
sunlight->electrical->chemical?
Interesting. I still may not understand the difference between stretching and pandiculation, but I liked knowing which part of the brain was involved and that it was affecting the neuronal wiring.
When I get stressed, I have done guided meditation where you contract and then relax every muscle and I don’t know if that does something similar, but that always made me feel amazingly relaxed after. It was always so effective.
I guess this will remind me not to waste those yawn times. If you need to yawn, why not add in a stretch.
So, stretching before walks or runs is not included in this and doesn’t do the same thing?
There is this common misinfo that a muscle can be stretched like a rubber band. But actually we can only contract muscles. Try reaching your arms to the sky. You think you are stretching your arms since they do become longer right? Wrong! We can only contract, relax, and allow muscle to gently lengthen afterwards. So when we reach , we are contracting one muscle around the shoulder ball joint which causes the ball to rotate and thereby push up the fascia/arm bone on the other side of the ball joint. Pretty nifty trick eh…like a teeter totter…when one side goes down, the other side goes up automatically. Notice that if you try to make your arms rise higher, notice what are you actually doing. You are actually contracting your shoulder muscle even harder.
The usual routine of putting a leg out and bending over it in order to ‘stretch’ it before a run actually causes the muscle stretch reflex to fight against it and makes the muscle weaker. This has been demonstrated scientifically.
Yawning is involuntary, pandiculation is voluntary.(conscious)
Yes, and that is what I know. I have learned to just cover my mouth when I yawn, when I was younger, I would stretch my arms. Social pressures change our natural tendencies.
I see it a bit differently. Yawning is a pandiculation by definition. All pandiculations are the same because the reset mechanism is the same once invoked properly. The only reason that we assume there is a difference between yawning and other pandiculations is because we sense when we need to do a yawn, whereas we have generally become insensitive (sensory motor amnesia) to when we need to do other pandiculations. When we have resensitized ourself then we do all pandiculations as needed when needed with the same automaticity. Have you ever seen cats and dogs contort themselves into very strange positions, especially while lying on their back, and hold it for a bit? They are pandiculating automatically.
We live in a self destructive world where natural and healthy impulses like pleasureable animal-type yawning are suppressed. We can undo that for ourselves at least in privacy, and then we can be model for others. Another such self destructive modern aberration is suppressing a sneeze .
Sorry, I meant to say that pandiculation includes both voluntary and involuntary( including yawning), while Yawning is involuntary.
Why doesn’t my body automatically stretch when I wake up anymore. I’ve had 26 back surgeries and noticed that my body doesn’t do this or when I yawn my body doesn’t feel the need to do this. All of the muscles in my body are tight. Very tight that its painful.
Should I be making my body do this when I get out of bed? Thanks.
I don’t know about that my husband and son who are very active with work and sports automatically do this when they yawn and when they wake up. Me in the other hand, don’t. Not sure if it’s because I’ve had so many back surgeries and I’m so sedentary for many years. My body doesn’t give me any feeling to want to stretch at either time. Maybe 1x a year my body will want to automatically do it. But I yawn daily like going pee. I never feel the need to stretch. And I know for a fact that my muscles are super tight. I wake up in pain from muscles being so tight. So why isn’t in an unconscious decision by the brain or body to do this? Google only tells me what pandiculating is. Not why my body stopped doing this. Thank you for any scientific proof.
normally when we wake up, the muscles feel a sense of pleasureable need to stretch i.e. pandiculate, I would suggest trying to reengage this natural brain/body connection/impulse by deliberately, but gently pandiculating the whole body. You may want to find a certified practitoner in your area to help get started.
this is just one of the practitioners out there: