Week 1: The Body Speaks

Do you remember getting up this morning? Did you jump up to get started right away or did you yawn and stretch before starting your day? Going forward you will now have the choice each day to connect to your body properly and align yourself to your sense of self. Pandiculation is a fancy word for a stretch that naturally occurs when yawning. Every animal with a vertebra does this several times a day, especially when rising from sleep. There is a huge difference between stretching and pandiculation. Stretching mostly involves single muscle focus addressed rationally and generally doesn't involve the nervous system. You can have a conversation whilst stretching for example.

Pandiculation demands full attention and involves muscle groups, it resets the connection between the nervous system and the muscular system. In the video of this week you will be guided to the process of stepping away from controlling your body from the head into following your body naturally without imposing poses on your body enabling you to connect to the intrinsic urge of the body to restore through pandiculation. This present creation of movement initiated by the body involves strong new sensory information for the brain, connecting and resetting muscle memory and motor control deeply in our conscious and sub-conscious being.

Questions: Please answer these following questions to consolidate your practise. It will be easier to continue the practises in your own way once your experience is translated into your own words.

How do you feel after this exercise? After this experience, can you see how pandiculation can help you release deeply imbedded tension from the body?

Do you understand the difference between movement directed from the head versus movement initiated from the body? The end of the video stated to transition from pandiculation into a yoga or stretch practise that you are used to doing yourself whilst keeping the quality of the yawn-stretch, what did that bring you?

Exercises this week:

1: Transition into your own practise: Now try the following… Transition from week one's pandiculation practise directly into a yoga pose or sequence that you enjoy doing whilst maintaining the quality of stretching pandiculating brings. Explore the poses anew, meaning they don’t have to be exact and they can be timeless… Make it yoga pandiculation, or yawnyoga.

I personally love the sun salute sequence as shown here ( • Hatha Yoga: Surya Namaskar - Sun Salutation )

2: Practise the pandiculation at least 4 times a week for about 7 minutes.