Do you ever wonder why in the morning when you just woke up before you can even start to plot the day’s activities…suddenly your body overrides you and take over without permission and do a full stretch from your head to your toes. But geez it feels so good!
Involuntary or subconscious stretching actually has a name and is called pandiculation and it often goes together with yawning. When you sleep your muscle movement is minimal and tension builds up leaving your muscles tight when you wake up. Subconscious stretching releases tension in your muscles and fascia.
Fascia is a sheet of connective tissue that holds and surrounds your muscles, bone, organs, blood vessels, and nerve tissue. Fascia is made of fibrous connective tissue just like ligaments and tendons consisting of collagen fibers.
What’s the difference between fascia, tendons, and ligaments?
Ligaments connect one bone to another bone, whereas tendons connect muscle to bone. Fascia surrounds the muscle, bone, and other internal structures holding it together.
What happens with pandiculation?
As you stretch when you wake up tension gets released from your muscles and fascia making it more flexible and less stiff increasing your range of movement from the get-go. Pandiculation activates our alpha-gamma feedback loop. The alpha-gamma feedback loop in our nervous system regulates the degree of tension in our muscles and corrects it.
It also helps to increase blood circulation, transporting nutrients and oxygen where it is needed. By the way, oxygen is not a nutrient, this is because it gets absorbed through a different path. Oxygen gets absorbed through the lungs through the respiratory system and nutrients through the gastrointestinal system.
Pandiculation activates your parasympathetic nervous system and also releases endorphins in your bloodstream. Endorphins relieve muscle tension and pain leaving you feeling good. The parasympathetic nervous system is part of the autonomic nervous system and is responsible for regulating the body’s involuntary actions. It reduces stress, heart rate, and blood pressure.
Conclusion
Pandiculation is important and helps to maintain a good posture and health throughout your life, without it your body will tighten and limit your movement and mobility. Posture will be compromised and in time your body will start to break down. Growing older you start getting into bad habits regarding posture and muscle memory starts to build up through the years. Muscle memory starts to take over and the positive effect of pandiculation can not counter all the negative habits and your posture will start to slouch and tighten often leaving you in a bad state of mind.
