Pandiculate your Way to Health

The bear has a secret for humans. While healthy animals continue to pandiculate themselves
to health, the human animal for many reasons has forgotten to follow this simple script of hygiene for the muscles, joints and brain.

While the term is little known. The definitions vary: An instinctive movement, consisting in the extension of the legs, the raising and stretching of the arms and the throwing back of the head and trunk, accompanied by yawning. Yow.. that’s enough to make you pandiculate your own jaw.

What I’m talking about is the entire act and process of the pandiculation itself. The pandicular response was identified by Thomas Hanna, the author of Somatics and the originator of Hanna Somatic Education®. He’s the one who came up with the term Somatics, the body experienced from within.

The act of pandiculation is simple yet the goods are in the entire process.

While animals know not to answer the emails and pour the cup of coffee the first thing in the morning… the ability to move comfortably is what is at stake… and this may explain the imperativeness of this simple act.

Healthy animals engage their bodies in this process through a series of maneuvers which look like stretching. IT ISN’T. They are resetting the length of their muscles through the process of contracting them self in a sequence and when they release them self, they relax and are ready to move.

Watch you’ll even see them yawn … and this process too is little understood, unless you yourself pandiculate. You can immediately feel how relaxation sets in by your aware participation in the entire event, not just the stretching aspect which is where most of the humans have put our attention on.

Now we have learned of the destructive elements of stretching in the ways we were taught. So rather than stretching, you’d pandiculate yourself. Animals have the know how to do a series of patterns in the morning and several times throughout the course of the day.

After all, how do they remain agile, supple, coordinated, strong and in balance?

Rather than traditional stretching which is waste of your valuable time and detrimental to your health according to the research, animals wake up their system of movement by the process of a series pandiculations.

Think about this… what is the world’s largest movement practice?

We all did it in our mother’s womb. That’s right, we pandiculated in our mother’s belly and we kept doing so until we got old enough to forget about our fountain of youth.

Let’s say we count the number of babies and add in all the animals with spines, then we’d find out that pandiculation rules… and it’s the most natural thing to do to take care of your self.

Pandiculations are all very natural and easy. They’re very quickly accomplished and you won’t ever have to hold yourself for any length of time… unless you like holding on for a minute or two or three or four. There’s a faster, smarter and more natural way to go about it… and your pet has been showing you how to be a happy animal every day.

I know, so easy and too simple to believe. So you’ll have to try it out for yourself and remind your brain, muscles and joints of their ability to move effortlessly and easily not by doing, rather by following along with the process of doing, undoing and pausing… not hold it for for 30 seconds, a minute or 5 as we all once did or were trained to do.

If animals can move so readily, flee from danger and swoop in quickly, then how ready are you to move – without hurting yourself over and over. You can’t think about it, you have to have the ability and this ability stems from reminding your self how to self-correct through the very nature of this process.

If you’ve been pandiculating, then you “get how” being aware of your body gives you solutions to your physical issues and how it can also offer insight into other areas of your life. This may sound strange or weird, yet as you up the level of your internal awareness, your brain readily adjusts and improves your abilities, decreases your stress, and since pandicualtion offers you an avenue into motor memory, your memory itself becomes clearer and your focus is much cleaner.

It’s just another aspect of hygiene. You can pandiculate to clean up your movement software, sort of like updating your computer. If you sit a certain way, or walk in just two of the 17 different ways to walk or whatever activity you keep doing the same way day in, day out, then you’re setting yourself for proprioceptive disaster and your movement software doesn’t get updated… it’s just keeps falling behind.

Pandiculating is a sign of health. So why not maintain your own well being with that which healthy animals have been showing us all along… feel, update and sense it… Who knows how well you’ll be able to move as you age? That’s entirely up to you and how well you utilize your nervous system for your benefit or you can remain forever in movement 1.0, tread water or remain bound and feel there’s no way out.

Isn’t time for an update? Pandiculate.

Really, this is kids stuff that old duffers can use to revitalize the brain and the body. Give it a try, the only thing you have to lose is your pain, stiffness, soreness, aches and ungainly and uncomfortable ways you keep moving about. Do you remember being free?

Yes, you can pandiculate your way to health and move as easy and as natural as a healthy vertebrate animal does. Is it a secret? No, it just is.