Issue 8: How the Pandicular Response May Help Your True Self, or "Atman" Move Towards Moksha

Issue 8: Somatic Muscle Science Unveiled

Hello my dear,

How the Pandicular Response May Help Your True Self, or "Atman" Move Towards Moksha

The Pandicular Response Is The Action Of Contracting Muscles That Have Been Inactive

The Pandicular Response is (usually) an automatic reaction to being sedentary before initiating movement. Pandiculation is an instinctual response to the sensation of accumulation of tension and lack of movement in your muscles. Although the Pandicular Response may look like a simple stretch you're contracting muscles that have been inactive. Think of a glorified yawn and a glamorous stretch. Upon awakening from a nap, cats and dogs will round and arch their backs dynamically, yawning, stretching, and taking time before resuming movement, and babies will stretch out their arms and legs. Lack of movement causes tension and tension causes lack of movement.

What Is The Definition Of Pandiculation?

Pandiculation is the act of stretching oneself, particularly upon waking or after periods of inactivity. Pandiculation is a natural, involuntary response involving a whole body stretch often accompanied by a yawn. We recognize this act of stretching in cats, dogs, and babies when they wake up from a nap. We think it's cute! But what we, as socially conditioned adults, are missing is that pandiculation plays a critical role in restoring base level muscle tension and maintaining neuromuscular function after periods of inactivity. This reflexive response occurs during transitions between states of activity and rest– BUT this autonomic Contract & Release Response plays much more of a significant role than reminding you to yawn and stretch. When your body stops pandiculating, muscles become tight and limit ease of movement and range of motion, leading to poor posture, pain, and injury. Pandiculation is fundamental in preventing the accumulation of muscle tension aka chronic pain. A balanced resting level of muscle tension is key to optimal musculoskeletal functioning which is critical to maintaining good posture and movement patterns.

What Is The Purpose Of Pandiculation?

Pandiculation Plays A Key Role In Neuromuscular Functioning

Through pandiculation, the nervous system wakes up the sensorimotor system to prepare the body for movement. Sadly, as habitual movement patterns become more deeply ingrained with age, the natural pandicular response is less efficient at overriding all of the muscle memory and learning that has developed throughout the course of your life. Desk-jockey, iphone, and car dependent lives mean that we build up muscle tension much faster than our hunter and gatherer ancestors. Our lifestyle has diminished our natural pandiculation response and so our nervous systems are not as adaptable as our predecessors. These factors contribute greatly to inhibiting proprioception and increasing sensory motor amnesia– to be clear we want sensory motor awareness. Next time you’re in a public space, take a moment to people-watch. You’ll see that common chronic muscular tension patterns of rounded shoulders, forward head posture, and fight-flight-freeze postural responses have become an epidemic. So then, how do we remember how to pandiculate? Read on.

Gamma Loop Reboot Quick Somatic Release Exercise

Put Your Mind Into Your Muscle

I invite you to do this Quick Somatic Check-In Exercise followed by a Pandiculation. This is the first step to Retrain Your Brain out of tension and into a relaxed, released, and regulated state.

Step 1

Somatic Check-In – Inhale softly, pause. Exhale, and slowly and gently lengthen the exhale. Pause at the end of your exhale and just breathe normally. Sit or stand normally. Let your arms hang by your sides. Scan your whole body from your feet, to lower legs and knees, thighs, hips, pelvis, low back and low abdominals, middle back and core, upper back and chest, shoulders, neck, jaw, and head. In a non-judgemental way, observe physical tension or relaxation, the sensation of comfort or discomfort, awareness of certain body parts and less awareness of others (sensory-motor amnesia). Simply be a witness to your observations. #ObserveToServe your Somatic Senses. Bring your awareness to your shoulders. Notice any differences or similarities between right and left sides. Is one shoulder higher, tighter, more released, shifted forward or backward. Notice what you feel from the inside.

Step 2

Dynamic Exercise Round 1 – Place your arms alongside your torso. Make big, deliberate circles with your shoulders in one one direction 8X, then switch directions for another 8X. Let your arms hang by your sides once again.

Step 3

Somatic Release Exercise Part 1 – Lift both of your shoulders up towards your ears as high as you can and squeeze. Notice the muscles being recruited in order to maintain the contraction. Keep your shoulders lifted.

Step 4

Somatic Release Exercise Part 2 – Now, slowly count backwards from 10 to 1 as you release both shoulders back to a neutral position with arms hanging by your sides. Try to release the muscle contraction as smoothly and gently as possible.

Step 5

Somatic Check-Out – Sit or stand normally. Inhale softly, pause. Exhale, and slowly and gently lengthen the exhale. Pause at the end of your exhale and just breathe normally. Let your arms hang by your sides. Scan your whole body from your feet, to lower legs and knees, thighs, hips, pelvis, low back and low abdominals, middle back and core, upper back and chest, shoulders, neck, jaw, and head. In a non-judgemental way, observe physical tension or relaxation, the sensation of comfort or discomfort, awareness of certain body parts and less awareness of others (sensory-motor amnesia). Simply be a witness to your observations. #ObserveToServe your Somatic Senses. Bring your awareness to your shoulders. Observe the right and left sides. Is one shoulder higher, tighter, more released, shifted forward or backward. Notice what you feel from the inside.

Step 7

Dynamic Exercise Round 2 – Place your arms alongside your torso. Make big, deliberate circles with your shoulders in one one direction 8X, then switch directions for another 8X. Notice if there is more range of motion as you circle the shoulders than you had during the first round. Now, once again Let your arms hang by your sides.

Congrats!

You’ve just experienced the Pandicular Response.​

Pandiculation Sends Biofeedback to the Brain for a Muscle Reboot

Pandiculation and the Somatic Nervous System

As you’ve learned in the Somatic Muscle Science Unveiled Series so far, the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is responsible for involuntary movement and the Somatic Nervous System (SMS) is responsible for voluntary movement. Pandiculation exercises are designed to voluntarily and consciously Contract and Release muscles in such a way that the Alpha-Gamma Feedback Loop is naturally reset. The resetting decreases involuntary, unconscious muscular tension, restoring a muscles ability to release the build-up of chronic tension and lengthen into a relaxed state.

The Somatic Nervous System & Body Agency

As you’ve learned by now, the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is responsible for involuntary movement and the Somatic Nervous System (SMS) is responsible for voluntary movement. ​Pandiculation exercises​ are designed to voluntarily and consciously Contract and Release muscles in such a way that the Alpha-Gamma Feedback Loop is naturally reset. The resetting decreases involuntary, unconscious muscular tension, restoring a muscles ability to release the build-up of chronic tension and lengthen into a relaxed state. The more that you practice mindful moving the more agency you have over your own body during exercise and while you move through life. Then a ripple effect occurs. When movement is more conscious, actions are more clear and concise, and the results of that action are more clear and concise. Clarity of body also provides clarity of mind allowing you to think more clearly. Clarity of mind tends to offer you more possibilities and more choices.

The Somatic Nervous System Puts You In Control

As your body releases layers upon layers of unconscious muscle tension accumulated from the story of your life and the stories that are woven into your cellular makeup– tension melts away, and the stories melt away too. As the grip of those stories loosen because your nervous system feels safe enough to release muscle tension a few things happen. Firstly, pain is mitigated or completely dissolved. As the degrees of pain melt away, along with it comes a whole new array of options. Where pain, stiffness, poor posture once dictated you’re unconscious, habituated movement patterns– such as the way you need to bend down to put on shoes, how you need to reach up to get that cup off the top shelf, or how you have to organize your body to try and get a good night's sleep… Now, new options open up for you. As muscle tension releases new movement pathways are available to you and as new movement pathways arise, so do new pathways in your brain. Dendrites communicate, synapses fire, and all of a sudden you’ve finally broken free from the trap of unconscious muscle memory into more conscious living.

The Somatic Nervous System, Neurobiology and the Idea That The Self Is Not Fixed

Let's have a more scientific explanation. Dendrites and synapses are parts of your brain cells. You can think of dendrites as the little branches on a tree—they’re the parts of a neuron that receive messages from other neurons. Those messages arrive at tiny meeting points called synapses.

When “synapses fire,” that is the moment when one neuron sends out chemical messengers that cross the synapse and activate the next neuron. It’s like one spark lighting another.

Over time, the brain builds and reshapes these connections. This is how we learn, remember things, and form habits (some good and others, not so good). Every experience you have leaves a trace—strengthening some pathways, weakening others. In a sense, your mind is constantly rewriting itself-- and so are your muscles and fascia.

On a philosophical level, this means that who you are isn’t fixed; it’s a living process. Your thoughts, memories, and ways of reacting to the world are built through these tiny connections that shift and evolve every day. The brain isn’t just storing your life—it’s sculpting it, moment by moment.

This is Neuroplasticity. The movement modalities that I offer here at Yoga Somatics Online, help to retrain, re-sculpt, and restore your mind to muscle connection for greater autonomy.

The Atman "True Self" and Neuroplasticity

In Hinduism, the Atman is defined as the deepest and the Truest Self.

The Atman is the part of you that exists underneath all the layers of body, mind, spirit, personality, and story.

It’s the quiet inner presence, the witness-consciousness that doesn’t change even as your life and cells constantly do. In Hindu philosophy, the Atman moves through many lifetimes, carrying the thread of your souls' essence until it finally recognizes itself as one with the greater whole. When that realization dawns, the cycle of rebirth releases. Atman is that steady “I” beneath all the shifts of being—the essence that has always been there.

So possibly the steady "I" of Atman, described as the essence of our being, our Soma, steadily transforms through conscious action as it transmutes cellular composition and genetic make up, unravels knots of unconscious muscle tension, unwraps reality to dissolve dark shadow selves, and releases the twisted grip of deep seated samskaras left on body-mind by past thoughts, actions, and experiences within the nervous system. In this way, I believe that the Pandicular Response may help us all move towards Moksha, personal liberation.

With every individual soul that is freed, humanity can move towards a collective, universal freedom.

Stay tuned for Issue 9: Somatic Muscle Science Unveiled – You'll learn Why Active Movement Retrains Your Brain more than Passive Movement

Feel in your own body how Pandicualtion works to mitigate pain, improve mobility, and give you your life back.​

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