You can listen to Sarah’s podcast on this topic here:

¿Por qué no funciona el estiramiento?

De los doce a los veintiún años fui bailarina de ballet. Era todo lo que hice y todo lo que quería hacer. Siendo extremadamente disciplinado, me estiré durante media hora todas las noches antes de acostarme para poder ser más flexible. Y funcionó, me volví bastante flexible. Incluso en vacaciones, me estiraba todas las noches sin excepción.

Dejé de bailar a los veintiún años después de sufrir la segunda de dos terribles lesiones en la espalda. Incluso después de dejar de fumar, seguí haciendo mi rutina de estiramiento de treinta minutos todas las noches antes de acostarme. No solo amaba el ritual, sino que sentía que lo necesitaba físicamente, como si fuera adicto al sentimiento. Mi cuerpo simplemente no se sentía bien hasta que me estiré.

Fast-forward seven years, and I happened to come across a movement technique called Somatics while I was googling physical therapy and yoga. I ordered Thomas Hanna’s book Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health, and after reading the first five pages I felt as though I had found something that I had been looking for my whole life. And yes, after all this time I was still doing my stretching routine every single night!

Menos de un año después, me había inscrito en el programa de formación profesional para convertirme en Educador clínico somático. Recuerdo estar sentado en la parte trasera del estudio durante el primer semestre de mi entrenamiento mientras aprendíamos por qué el estiramiento era ineficaz e incluso podía ser perjudicial. Empecé a echar humo. Me había estado estirando durante lo que sentí como toda mi vida y sabía de primera mano que era efectivo. Me molesté hasta el punto que sentí ganas de llorar. Sentí como si mi religión estuviera siendo atacada. Me mordí la lengua y no hablé, pero me negué a creer lo que decía el entrenador.

Regresé a casa al final del primer semestre completamente enamorado de la somática, entendiendo y creyendo todo lo que había aprendido hasta ahora, excepto lo que había aprendido sobre elongación. Lo repasé una y otra vez en mi mente y finalmente decidí intentarlo: sustituiría todos mis ejercicios de estiramiento nocturnos por movimientos somáticos. Pero lo intentaba durante una semana o dos, y luego veía cómo me sentía. Después de todo, no quería perder nada de mi flexibilidad ganada con tanto esfuerzo.

While there are many standard Somatic exercises that Thomas Hanna created, once you learn the basic principle of how to contract and release your muscles in a certain way, you can turn pretty much any movement into what is called a pandiculation. So, on the first night I got down on the floor and set about turning all of my ritual stretches into pandiculations. While I was in pretty much the same positions as when I did my stretches, I was doing a completely different type of movement, and going through an entirely different neurophysiological process as I moved.

Después de unos cuarenta y cinco minutos me levanté del suelo y ... guau. Mi cuerpo se sentía como gelatina. ¡Nunca me había sentido tan suelto y relajado! Fue una sensación completamente diferente a la que sentí después de estirarme. Continué con esta rutina de Somáticos noche tras noche y pronto me di cuenta de una nueva y maravillosa sensación de estar completamente cómodo en mi cuerpo. No sentí esa sensación constante de tensión y necesidad de estirar que solía sentir. Y aunque había dejado de estirarme, no había perdido nada de mi flexibilidad o rango de movimiento.

No hace falta decir que ahora era un completo converso a la somática. Este cambio me llevó a mi próximo desafío: lograr que otras personas comprendan que el estiramiento estático tradicional no es todo lo que parece.

¿Qué es el Stretch Reflex?

All of us, including all vertebrate animals, have a reflex in our nervous system called the stretch reflex, or myotatic reflex. Never heard of it? Think again. Your stretch reflex has actually been tested by a doctor, though maybe not since you were a bit younger. When your doctor used that little hammer to hit just below your knee, making your foot kick up, he was testing your stretch reflex.

The stretch reflex is an automatic nervous system response to stretching within a muscle. The reflex provides automatic regulation of skeletal muscle length. When a muscle is lengthened beyond a point where it can comfortably stretch, muscle spindles (sensory receptors in the muscle) are stretched and their nerve activity increases. Neurons then immediately send a message to the muscle fibers to contract in order to protect the muscle from being torn.

¿Por qué es tan importante que tengamos este reflejo? Bueno, los reflejos en general existen para ayudarnos a mantenernos vivos y evitar lesiones.

One critical function of the stretch reflex is that it prevents us from tearing our muscles. The knee-jerk reflex is a great example. The doctor hits your patellar tendon just below your knee, suddenly stretching the tendon and the quadriceps tendon, which attaches above the patella. The muscle spindles in your quadriceps muscles sense the sudden increase in length, and the message is automatically sent to contract your quadriceps in order to prevent injury and over-stretching of the muscles. When your quadriceps contract, your foot kicks up. If your foot doesn’t kick up, it could be a potential sign of a neurological disorder, such as receptor damage or peripheral nerve disease.

The stretch reflex also helps us stand up straight in our gravitational field. For example, when a person standing upright begins to lean to the right side, the postural muscles on the left side of the vertebral column will be stretched. When the muscle spindles in those muscles sense that they are being lengthened, the message to contract them is automatically sent in order to correct the person’s posture. We are rarely consciously aware of how the stretch reflex automatically maintains our balance and keeps us from falling over—but we sure would notice if it wasn’t working properly.

¿Por qué no funciona el estiramiento?

When you practice static stretching, the conscious and subconscious parts of your nervous system are battling against each other, trying to achieve opposite results. The conscious part of your brain is sending the message to manually stretch your muscles by pulling on them. But despite all your efforts, your stretch reflex is automatically kicking in, contracting your muscles to prevent you from overstretching and tearing your muscles.

Pero, ¿por qué parece que el estiramiento funciona?

Entonces, si nuestro reflejo de estiramiento nos impide alargar manualmente nuestros músculos, ¿por qué el estiramiento a veces nos hace más flexibles? Hay unas pocas razones.

One reason is that when you engage in prolonged static stretching, pulling your muscles and tendons past the point that they are able to voluntarily lengthen, you begin to stretch your ligaments. With prolonged stretching, ligaments can be stretched, resulting in more flexible and often less stable joints. Once stretched, ligaments may never regain their original length and strength.

Second, prolonged static stretching can cause the stretch reflex to become much less active, leaving the muscles lengthened for a period of time. This is why you may feel looser after you stretch. However, the effects wear off fairly quickly. Often you will feel your muscles begin to tighten up again within just a few hours as your stretch reflex regains normal function.

For this reason, prolonged static stretching decreases muscle performance by temporarily reducing the muscle’s ability to contract. This is no good if you’re about to engage in athletic activities. A great deal of research has shown that static stretching before a workout decreases joint stability and reduces muscle performance, strength, and power. Many coaches and trainers have come to realize that the best way to warm up is to do a slow, gentle version of the movement you’ll be doing in your workout. By consciously practicing the movement sequences and increasing blood flow to your muscles and connective tissues, this type of warm up prepares both your brain and your body for optimal performance.

A third reason that stretching can make us feel more flexible is that when we stretch repeatedly, we are building up a tolerance to the sensation of pulling in our muscles. Even though it is by nature an uncomfortable sensation, with repetition it can become tolerable and even enjoyable. I used to love that feeling of pulling in my muscles, and I craved it every day. It provided me with a temporary lengthening and release of my muscles, and as I became more comfortable with the feeling, I was able to pull my muscles even farther. But of course the reason that I craved that feeling every day is that the fix was only temporary. Less than twenty-four hours after stretching, my muscles had tightened right back up again.

Estirarse para aliviar el dolor crónico: por qué no funciona

Prácticamente todas las personas que conozco que han intentado estirarse para aliviar su dolor crónico informan que no les ha ayudado en absoluto, y hay dos razones simples por las cuales.

First, stretching does not reeducate the nervous system. No amount of pulling on the muscles will change the resting level of muscle tension that is being set by the gamma feedback loop. The resting level of muscle tension must be reset through an active process of relearning involving slow, conscious, voluntary movement and the integration of sensory feedback from the muscle.

Second, when you pull on an already tight muscle the stretch reflex is activated, making the muscle contract even more. It is possible that you might get some pain relief from gentle prolonged stretching, but as we’ve already discussed, the increased muscle length is temporary and the muscle will rebound within a short period of time. Most likely, stretching will not only do little for your pain, but will increase and prolong your pain by making your muscles tighter.

Aprendizaje de ejercicios de somática clínica: la alternativa más eficaz al estiramiento

Thomas Hanna, el fundador de Clinical Somatic Education, estudió neurofisiología y exploró técnicas de movimiento que abordarían directamente la tensión muscular habitual que era la causa subyacente del dolor crónico y los problemas de postura y movimiento de sus clientes. Hanna desarrolló movimientos prácticos y ejercicios de cuidado personal que utilizaban la respuesta pandicular.

Pandiculation sends biofeedback to the brain regarding the level of contraction in our muscles, thereby helping to prevent the buildup of chronic muscular tension. This is an extremely important function of the pandicular response. A pandiculation contracts and releases muscles in such a way that the alpha-gamma feedback loop is naturally reset. This resetting reduces muscular tension and restores the muscles’ ability to lengthen.

You can learn Clinical Somatics pandiculation exercises at home with our easy-to-follow online courses.

Las pandiculaciones clínicas somáticas no solo son la mejor alternativa al estiramiento, sino que también le permiten prevenir, aliviar y recuperarse de muchas afecciones comunes, como dolor crónico de músculos y articulaciones, problemas de disco, ciática, escoliosis, postura redondeada, fascitis plantar, temporomandibular. trastornos de las articulaciones y más.

Click here to start learning Clinical Somatics exercises today!