Pandiculating compared to stretching
A pandicular response is the involuntary movement that humans and vertebrate animals do when they arch their back or yawn after a long restful or inactive period. It’s a re-set in response to being sedentary to adjust tension and restore conscious voluntary control over muscles.
During intentional pandiculation, you are actively using the muscle and the brain is involved - a process from the inside out whereas static stretching is a passive action, a pulling on the muscle, attempting to affect change from the outside.
Static stretching sends sensory information only as far as the spinal cord and ironically the response is to send a motor impulse to the muscle being stretched triggering a contraction while also sending a message to the opposing muscle inhibiting a contraction. This is counter to what you are trying to achieve by stretching in the first place. Stretching can be uncomfortable while pandiculation feels pleasurable and relaxing. Stretching does not eliminate SensoriMotor Amnesia (SMA) - a concept by Tomas Hannah who developed Clinical Somatic Education, SMA is linked to muscle memory, describing the loss of sensation and motor control whereby our proprioception and vestibular systems become so familiar to a learned movement or posture like leaning forward to read a computer screen so much so that the unnatural slouching starts to feel normal, good even, we are unaware of the subconscious adaption until it starts to cause pain.
Passive stretching may result in an immediate temporary change in muscle length then the muscles reflexively recontract in response to the stretch. Pandiculations promote permanent changes in muscle tonus and length as your brain learns new resting muscle length not a result of tissue remodelling.
To understand pandiculations lets learn more about proprioception - our ability to know our bodies position without looking. Muscle spindles are a special sensory receptor within our skeletal muscles that provide feedback to our brain about the length of our muscles. The gamma loop is a nifty feedback system in the nervous system that regulates the level of tension in our muscles.
When everything is running smoothly, we contract our muscles during use and automatically relax when we finish moving like a pulsation of sorts. Part of muscle memory and learned motor patterns are through habitual ways of moving, sitting or standing. Things go off tilt because we tend to contract certain muscle groups over and over and the gamma loop goes loopy which can lead to muscle tightness, rigidity and spasms. Muscles don’t actually have a memory of their own but when we repeat a movement or posture our muscles and synapses take notes and it becomes more automatic and with our increased sedentary lives and repeated postures, we are being shaped by this feedback loop in response to our lifestyles. You can utilise this same concept to unravel into a dynamic and softened self through the deliciousness of pandiculations remembering that the rest in between contractions/activations is just as important as the movements themselves.
Without the ability to fully control and release our muscles they become sore, tight and compress our joints increasing risk of injury and effect our daily life. As we mature and keep contracting our muscles in the same repetitive ways as our gamma loop adapts by allowing the resting length of our muscles to gradually get shorter. So, as we age the shortening of the muscles leads to tightness, stiffness and restricted movement. If our brains are scanning our posture constantly through proprioception and collecting data, we can interact with this preface to our advantage by providing alternate ways of moving – one way is with intentional pandiculations. When a muscle is contracted deliberately during pandiculation the sense receptors send the information all the way to the sensory motor cortex in the brain and then the muscle can be felt and is now under your conscious and voluntary control.
Any kind of movement that is counter to some of your more familiar repetitive gestures will be nutritional. Learn some pandiculations or simply move in a unique or unfamiliar way, dance, roll, tumble, rock, bounce, reach, twist, climb, skip, squat, crawl, arch, reach, spin. Modern life has removed some of the mobility that once would have been very naturally incorporated into our daily living.
References:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21665102/https://somaticmovementcenter.com/gamma-loop/