Stretching Does NOT Increase Flexibility: My Story & Discovery
Like many people, I spent years stretching – mostly, in my case, doing it very gently after thinking that I just wasn’t ‘flexible’ enough to do strong stretches, as they didn’t seem to benefit me, but just made me tighter. I’d been to lots of aerobics classes & enjoyed swimming & walking, but was frustrated at how while I often felt a real ‘buzz’ after these activities, my muscles still felt tight, & I often felt uncomfortable when sitting & standing, & unhappy with my posture, which I felt just wasn’t right, however straight & tall I stood.
Through yoga practice over a number of years, & with a range of teachers as I travelled the world, I learnt to breathe more fully, & also learnt to stretch more gently. I also learnt, over time, to modify my own practice so that I moved more gently into asanas that felt like they made me tighten up, & I felt I was really listening to my body. I kept my stretches slow & gentle, not pushing myself, & believing as so many of us do that this – gentle, careful stretching over time – would ease my body & make me more flexible.
Sometimes I was confused, as I was not especially inflexible, nor did I feel a lot of stiffness in my joints. I could not understand why I was just not getting more supple. I also didn’t understand why it had made me feel good for the first few years of gentle stretching, but that it increasingly seemed to make me feel tighter rather than looser, & made me feel emotionally as well as physically tense. I felt that there was something wrong with me – that either I wasn’t doing it ‘right’, or that I just couldn’t ‘let go’ enough with my mind, to let myself stretch in a sufficiently relaxed way, to get the benefits we’re told come from stretching, to make us more supple, less tense, & more mobile.
I’d been told I had one leg shorter than the other, a birth defect in my pelvis, & also that while I didn’t have arthritis in my neck, it wasn’t clear what the problem there was because the X-rays couldn’t get a clear view due to my muscles spasm-ing constantly. I was prescribed six months of gentle stretching exercises to help with this last problem.
In short, again the stretching did not help. In fact, it seemed to make my neck worse. (I was told I hadn’t been doing the stretches – which I had – so needed to go do them for another three months, or take painkillers, before they could send me for an MRI.) I also felt the rest of my body was seizing up, as my neck pain was making it harder & harder for me to comfortably do yoga or any exercise classes, & I was getting RSI-type pains in my arms. For the RSI-type pains, I was told to stop working for a few months(!), & to do… gentle stretching.
None of this worked. (I did stop work for 2 weeks, but as I was self-employed it wasn’t really feasible. Also my excellent chiropractor said it didn’t really make sense, as it wouldn’t address the problem.)
As soon as I discovered Somatics – through one short workshop in ‘somatic yoga’ & then through looking up the name of the Somatics teacher mentioned (Martha Peterson, now my mentor) – I knew there was something different, something that might actually address my pain… How did I know? Because I felt ease & a lack of tension in my neck, hip & wrists after that one short workshop that I’d not felt for, quite literally, years… I’d discovered pandiculation!
Probably the one most life-changing thing Hanna Somatics has taught me is that stretching simply does not work. It does not release muscle tension, & it does not make muscles less tight – nor does it make them any longer or more flexible, except perhaps in the short term (for some people). In fact, stretching does quite the opposite: I was not going crazy, or ‘doing it wrong’, & nor am I weirdly, genetically or ‘structurally’ tense, tight and/or unable to release, lengthen & relax my muscles. However, in trying to use stretching to obtain these results – less tight, less tense, longer muscles – I was evoking the stretch reflex, which is what made me gradually tighter over time.
On discovering Somatics – pandiculation, in particular – I learned about the stretch reflex, & the patterns of stress we hold in our bodies, & never looked back: I dealt with my own pain – that horrific neck pain, painfully tight hip muscles, my supposed ‘birth defect’ of one short leg – & chose very quickly to change my life to teach this amazing, life-changing practice to others. I hope you will join me & learn it for yourself!
Want to address tight shoulders & neck pain? And back pain too? Check out my free resources (on this website & on youtube etc) & those from others (e.g. essentialsomatics.com; hannasomatics.com) & also sign up for my FREE video series, “The Truth About Pain - and how to get rid of it”. My full online programme, the SoMA Program, is next open for registration in March 2022: in you get not just full-length movement classes but much more, to make this practice work around your needs, & the time you have!