“Pandiculation is like kryptonite to a muscle cramp.”
-Sarah Young, my skilled colleague, paractioner of a movement modality called ‘Original Strength’.
Sarah asked me:
“Care to share some about the power of pandiculation [and how it relates to cramps]?”
My reply:
Hi Sarah !!!
Muscles that cramp are giving the brain certain perceptions that they are not tightening. Then, the brain tightens them more. That’s the cycle that quickly spirals into a cramp. It’s a mis-perception.
Muscles that cramp are overworked muscles. Muscles become habitually overworked because the tension perception feedback system between muscle and brain is adjustable. The brain adjusts to, normalizes, high levels of persitent tension. Soon, (mostly due to habitiation of stress reaction tension, injury reaction tensions, and habits of repetitive motion) we have muscles working 24/7.
Pandiculation, a cycle of gentle, pleasurable muscle contraction followed by a slow smooth release to rest. A yawn is a pandiculation. Done in an optimized way, Pandiculation (with adequate load) is the ideal technique to restore the full control of the skeletal muscle system. It restores the full range in both the perception and activation of muscle tension. Pandiculation fills in gaps in the spatial map of the body, and also teaches the brain to reset it’s perception of tension (reclaibration of the alph-gamma motor-neuron co-activation loop).
Sarah Young with Tim Anderson, originator of the Original Strength system.
This is a good video of mine, to start with: https://youtu.be/jana_n1zFUY It will let you see you have much more baseline tension than you think you do.
