Skip to main content

Pandiculation

In this episode - Pandiculation . . .

Have you ever noticed when your cat wakes up from a nap how they arch their back and enjoy an entire body stretch, yawning with legs extended, paws, claws, and toes spread wide? Now fully awake, they're ready to take on the day.

What about you? When you wake up in the morning, do you sit halfway up, contract your arms to your body, then raise them high above your head while yawning? Then, relax your arms, pause for a second, and jump out of bed refreshed? That’s pandiculation.

Little did I realize this is natural to our body functioning - simply put, pandiculation is the act of yawning and stretching. Wait, there’s more.

Pandiculation is the involuntary stretching of the soft tissues, which occurs in most animal species and is associated with transitions between cyclic biological behaviors, especially the sleep-wake rhythm (Walusinski, 2006).

Pandiculation comes from the Latin root pandiculari, 'to stretch oneself,' which is the act of contracting and stretching all body muscles.

According to an article on https://www.yogauonline.com, Pandiculation is as essential to our health and wellbeing as nutrition and exercise! It is necessary for the optimal functioning of our neuromuscular system. Without this yawning-and-stretching activity, our muscles and fascia become increasingly tight, leading to physical imbalances such as poor posture, limited range of motion, pain in our joints, and other core imbalances.

How does pandiculation work?

Pandiculation is the nervous system’s natural way of waking up the sensory-motor system and preparing for movement. Humans and all vertebrate animals tend to stretch automatically when we wake up or have been inactive for a while. Pandiculation sends biofeedback to our nervous system regarding the level of contraction in our muscles, thereby helping to prevent the buildup of chronic muscular tension.

Pandiculation contracts and releases muscles, so the alpha-gamma feedback loop is naturally reset. This resetting reduces muscular tension and restores conscious, voluntary control over the muscles. Preventing the buildup of tension in our muscles is critical to maintaining healthy posture and movement throughout our lives.

In a pandicular response, the body contracts even more and then relax the whole body from head to toe. “This ensures a reset of the alpha-gamma feedback loop – a biofeedback loop in our nervous system between the spinal cord and the muscles – that regulates the level of tension in our muscles."

Unfortunately, our alpha-gamma loops can be compromised due to structural imbalances caused by habitual patterns and trauma. Typically, our muscle strength is determined by the central nervous system and the information sent to the brain from our proprioceptors (sensory receptors on nerve endings). When our alpha-gamma loop is working correctly (alpha neurons to muscles and gamma neurons to muscle fibers in muscle spindles), we can contract muscles when we need to, and they will automatically relax when they are not receiving "contraction" messages.

However, due to the previously mentioned structural imbalances caused by habitual patterns and trauma, muscles and fascia that are 'stuck' cannot send or receive the proper proprioceptive messages, causing them to remain contracted and unable to relax.

Benefits of voluntarily pandiculating our muscles.

Even though pandiculation is considered an involuntary response of our nervous system, we can beneficially affect our overall health and wellbeing with Yoga by stretching.

Voluntary pandiculation forms part of the clinical somatic education developed by Thomas Hanna. Slowly, consciously, and in sync with our breath, we can begin to restore our alpha-gamma loop function with the consistent practice of muscular contraction and release - stretching, and yawning.

In conclusion, if someone asks, “Are you tired?”

Nope, just yawning and stretching to relieve muscle tension, practicing Yoga to improve overall body function.

I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Popular of All Time

Beyond Facts

✨ In this episode, Beyond Facts: Reimagining School–in the Age of AI . . .   This week's podcast is a bit different; it's another example of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can offer tools to creatively enhance your analytical presentation of information. We took this week's blog and copied it into Gemini with the question, “If a story is to work, it must, on some level, create an illusion of escape and also achieve a goal simultaneously. Does this apply to my blog post that follows?” What's created is not just an analysis of the writing, but an AI-generated discussion produced “On the Fly” - Enjoy! Did you know that the word "school" comes from the ancient Greek word scholē , which originally meant "leisure"? Not a rigid schedule or droning lectures filled with "facts," but free time for thinking and conversation. To the Greeks, learning happened best when life slowed down—when you had room to reflect, to ask questions, and to wrestle ...
2 comments
Read more

Chasing the Magic

In this episode, Chasing the Magic: How the Summer of ’98 Inspired the 'Ball Boys' . . .  Do you remember that feeling? The late-summer air was thick with humidity, radios crackling on porches, the smell of fresh-cut grass and barbecue smoke in the backyard. Every evening carried a new kind of suspense—the country holding its collective breath after every pitch. “Did he hit one today?” became more than a question; it sparked a nationwide conversation.   For me, and millions of others, the summer of 1998 wasn’t just another baseball season. It was theater, a movement, a time when the game recaptured something sacred. As sportswriter Mike Lupica said so perfectly,   “No matter how old you are or how much you’ve seen, sports is still about memory and imagination. Never more than during the summer of ’98, when baseball made everyone feel like a kid again, when it felt important again.”    Just four years earlier, the 1994 players’ strike had left the sport bruised...
Post a Comment
Read more

Retirement Talk

In this episode, Patrick & Huck: Retirement Talk . . .   We all get caught daydreaming sometimes, don’t we? Just like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn might’ve done, lazyin’ by the river with a fishing pole in hand and the BIG wide world spinn’ in their heads. This morning, with coffee steaming and plans bubbling, I found myself driftin’ into a chat with none other than my imaginary friend–Huck Finn himself. Patrick: “Mornin’, Huck. Say, I’m mighty curious what you’d make of this retirement business.” Huck: “Well now, sit tight, ‘cause I’ve been thinkin’ on that too. Only thirty-one days 'til you're sixty-nine — whew! You're talkin’ ‘bout quittin’, hangin’ up your spurs, Givin’ the workin’ life its final good slurs. Ain’t got no debts, no mortgage, no fuss, Just clean livin’ and freedom waitin’ on the bus. Most folks’d throw hats in the air, cheerin’ loud and proud, But you? You’re starin’ out yonder, lost in some cloud. You're dreamin’ of cyclin' and books and guitar...
2 comments
Read more

Drifting with Purpose

In this episode,  Drifting with Purpose: What Huck Finn Teaches Us About Finding Your ‘Why’ . . .  Have you ever re-read a book and felt like it had changed while you weren’t looking? That’s exactly how it feels diving back into Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . I’ll admit, I didn’t expect to be swept away again . It had been decades since I first met Huck and Jim. But here I am – older, hopefully wiser – and finding their journey down the Mississippi more powerful and more relevant than ever. This isn’t just another dusty classic. Twain's masterpiece is a living, breathing story – one that speaks through laughter, danger, awkward truth, and uncomfortable beauty. It’s a book that dares you to ask: “What kind of person am I willing to be?” Right now, I’m deep into Huck and Jim’s incredible journey, and what’s striking me the most isn’t just the plot or the river—it’s the voice. Twain’s masterful use of local dialect pulls you straight into the 19th-century Amer...
2 comments
Read more