It just takes a few simple, easy moves to immediately reduce stiffness instantly… it’s nature’s design for us to take care of it naturally and effectively so you can move well all the time.
Do you ever wake up feeling a little tighter in the morning? While you sleep, your muscles shorten and become a little stiffer.
To reduce stiffness instantly we’ve got to let go.
Our muscles get tighter when we accumulate stress.
Try letting it go… if it doesn’t or we are no longer able to do it easily, it’s time for us to change it.
When we’re sitting for a period of time and we feel stiff as we rise, it’s only natural since the muscles tighten and shorten. This is how they adapt to the demands or lack of demand on them while we’re sitting for longer periods of time.
It’s natural to have that feeling to stretch your muscles and reduce stiffness instantly when you rise, if you’ve been sitting at the computer too long or riding in the car for a certain period of time.
If we no longer have that feeling to stretch, we’re not alone. From studies of vertebrate animals, it’s been found to be missing when they’re not feeling well or are no longer feeling healthy.
To reduce stiffness instantly is to get the muscles reprogrammed.
Healthy vertebrate animals appear to stretch each morning… and that includes you if you’re healthy. What you’re actually doing is a little known word called a pandiculation.
Healthy animals do a series of these pandiculations when they wake up. You know, you’ve seen your cat and dog do it in the morning. They’ll do a stretch here and there… and maybe some shaking it out…now they’re good to go.
What follows is what we most often don’t pay attention to. The stretching aspect is just a part of the process. Go ahead and do a stretch… pay attention to the muscles you are contracting.
A pandiculation is actually a set of muscular contractions throughout your entire body, or in some cases you do a partial contraction in parts of your body like opening your jaw.
If you release yourself slowly, like an animal does, you’re paying attention to how you let go. Feel whatever groups of muscles let go as you release.
Afterwards, your brain sends a message to reset the muscles and they become more relaxed. Now go ahead and wag your tail.
You can actually target the part of your brain which resets the resting levels of your muscles. It’s like a brain exercise which directly talks with your muscles and reduces the level of stiffness instantly.
Why should we bother to reduce stiffness instantly?
Our brain can affect the rate our muscles are contracting at. So if we’re feeling tight, that’s just a higher level or higher amount of contraction that you can sense. The stress we feel in our stiff muscles can be relieved by engaging our brain so the muscles will be reset.
This is our antidote to the stiffness and the accumulating stress we feel. Our muscles can reduce stiffness instantly.
Our body is letting us know it’s time for a reset… The question is whether we listen to it and take care of it the way nature intends.
Healthy animals have the know-how to keep resetting themselves periodically throughout the day.
They have a few bigger stresses like almost being eaten or not getting their food for the day, so they have to have some way to deal with their muscles getting tight and a means to release and reduce stiffness instantly… otherwise they could be a goner.
When they reset, they’re ready for their next move. Our brain is just waiting for us to tap into this natural resource so we can reset ourself accordingly.
We can reset the resting levels of our stressed, tight muscles… instantly once we get the hang of it again.
The simple, easy movements that animals do, have been systematized for us human animals so we can reset in a manner of 3 simple steps.
Somatics Exercises are simple, easy movements which reset our entire body, not just the parts.
You can do these simple movements which help us move naturally, easily and effortlessly… just like our fellow animals who reduce stiffness instantly to move well
Ed Barrera is a Hanna Somatic Educator® with over 10 years of experience, helping people find natural pain relief through somatics exercises which are the reverse to most approaches since it is brain exercise and muscle lengthening that targets the brain’s motor cortex which leads to a healthy, fully-functional body. It’s not just “alternative medicines” or “an alternative to exercise”; it’s natural pain relief that actually works!
To understand the somatic definition, visit our What is Somatics? page, where we define somatic and explain more about somatics and how the proper somatics information will help you direct your “being” toward natural healing and pain relief.