Why You Can’t Just Stretch It Out – The Truth About Muscle Memory and SMA

What If Your Muscles Weren’t Tight... Just Asleep?

Most people think tight muscles need to be stretched.

But here’s the truth I learned the hard way: many of the aches, pains, and patterns we carry aren’t just physical tension—they’re learned. They’re built into our nervous system through repetition, habits, injury, trauma, and stress. And they’ve been hiding beneath our awareness for years.

When I first began this work, I thought I just needed to loosen up. But as I slowed down, I realized… I couldn’t actually feel certain areas of my body. I wasn’t just stiff—I was disconnected.

And that’s where I first met Sensory Motor Amnesia.

What is Sensory Motor Amnesia?

Coined by Thomas Hanna, Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA) refers to the loss of voluntary control and awareness of certain muscle groups due to chronic stress, trauma, or unconscious repetition.

Think of it like this: your brain creates shortcuts. When you move a certain way for years—hunched over, guarding an injury, holding in your stomach—your nervous system adapts. It stops “wasting energy” on awareness. The muscle keeps firing, but your brain no longer knows how to turn it off.

SMA isn’t just about posture—it’s a breakdown in the body-brain communication loop.

Stretching Doesn’t Fix SMA

Stretching a chronically contracted muscle might feel good for a moment, but it won’t create long-term change. Why?

Because you’re not retraining the brain.

You’re just tugging at tissue that’s stuck in a feedback loop.

To truly shift these patterns, you need somatic education—intentional, slow movements combined with awareness, which teach the brain how to sense and release the muscles from within.

This is why somatic practices, like those in the Pneuma Yoga Method, are so powerful. They wake up what’s been forgotten.

Personal Truth: I Didn’t Know How Much Pain I Was In

I used to think I was just “tight.” But the more I practiced, the more I realized: I was numb.

I had learned to ignore pain. To push through it. To pretend I was okay.

But deep inside, I was hurting—physically, mentally, emotionally. My body had become a storage unit for everything I didn’t want to feel.

Somatic awareness changed that. It taught me how to listen again. How to stop overriding the quiet whispers of pain, fatigue, and stress. How to be honest with myself about what I was carrying.

The process wasn’t easy. It got harder before it got better.

But in that challenge, I found something profound: healing comes through awareness—not avoidance.

Awareness Is a Skill

Learning to sense the body is like learning a new language. At first, it’s awkward. You don’t always know what you’re feeling. You second-guess everything.

But over time, awareness deepens.

In Pneuma Yoga, we use slow somatic movements and subtle breathwork to restore this connection. We guide students to:

• Sense specific muscles

• Move with intention

• Observe effort vs. ease

• Notice their breath and internal cues

And this awareness? It’s not just physical.

It seeps into your decisions, your emotions, your ability to regulate and process life as it comes. It becomes a new baseline for how you relate to yourself.

SMA Affects More Than Movement

Chronic muscular tension from SMA can compress organs, restrict breath, and create pressure around the digestive tract. It affects:

• Breathing: A tight diaphragm or abdominal wall leads to shallow, restricted breath.

• Digestion: Tension around the solar plexus impacts vagal tone and gut motility.

• Mental health: Chronic body tension signals “danger” to the brain, keeping the stress response loop active.

When you restore sensory-motor connection, you don’t just improve posture—you change your internal environment.

This is why healing the body can unlock emotional processing, mental clarity, and even spiritual insight.

We Rewrite the Script With Movement

In Pneuma Yoga, we don’t fight the body—we educate it.

Each practice is an opportunity to gently undo the knots, listen to the whispers, and repattern the nervous system with breath and movement.

As I moved through this journey myself, I realized: the body holds every story we haven’t finished telling.

And when we move with awareness, we don’t just stretch—we process, we integrate, we transform.

Final Thoughts

The truth is, nothing meaningful in life comes easy. The body doesn’t change overnight. And the deeper healing? It takes courage. Patience. Curiosity.

But it does happen. Slowly. Organically. From the inside out.

If you’re holding pain, if you’ve stopped listening, or if you’re just feeling stuck—start small. Start now.

And if you’re ready to begin?

Join me inside the Pneuma Yoga Method, where you’ll find:

• Short practices for sensory-motor reconnection

• Breath-led movement and meditations

• Guidance to help you feel again, heal again, and move forward with clarity

Because healing isn’t about fixing. It’s about remembering.

And your body remembers.

Explore the Pneuma Yoga Method now. Free guided meditations, somatic tools, and breath education available at pneuma-yoga.com.

You don’t need to force it. You just need to feel it.

The Breath That Brought Me Back

by Rick Fulton

I’ve been diving into the breath for over a decade.
Not floating through it.
Diving. Deep.

And it hasn’t been all light and ease. There was confusion. Missteps. Plateaus that felt like dead ends.
But something in me knew — the solution wasn’t out there.
It was inside.

The First Door: Wim Hof

Like many, I entered the breath through the front door of fire — Wim Hof. His method blew me wide open. It taught me how powerful breath could be. I learned to go deep, to override pain, to access a stillness I didn’t know was there. And I’m grateful for that.

But here’s the thing:
I had no idea what I was doing.
Neither, it seemed, did he — at least in terms of respiratory science.

I became a hyperventilator.
I trained myself to breathe through my mouth.
I felt high… but not well.

It worked, in a way. It cracked me open. But it also made me worse — more tense, more wired, more disembodied. I didn’t realize it then. But the seed had been planted.

The Second Door: Subtlety & Science

Years later, I discovered somatics. Subtle breath. Nervous system repair.

This wasn’t about force — it was about feeling.
I learned the value of nose breathing, of carbon dioxide tolerance, of breathing less to feel more.

This was profound. Life-changing.
It brought my nervous system down from the edge and helped me rebuild my health.

But eventually, I noticed something strange.
I was breathing less… but I was also feeling less.
The tension in my chest, my ribs, my pelvic floor — it wasn’t going away. It was hiding. I was using “subtle” to veil what needed to be seen.

I wasn’t wrong. I just wasn’t done.

The Third Door: Integration

The next evolution came through the ancient paths — pranayama, kriya, traditional yogic breathing.
Breath as prana. Not just air.

I revisited Wim Hof — but this time, with awareness.
I didn’t hyperventilate blindly.
I used strong breathwork to shake things loose, to break through stuck patterns, to wake up pranic channels and stir vitality.

And then I let it go.
I returned to the subtle.
But now, it was real.

What I’ve Learned

There’s no single right way to breathe.
There’s no final technique.

What matters is relationship — with breath, body, nervous system, and awareness.

I use strong breath to access energy.
I use soft breath to restore peace.
I teach both — because you need both.

But the goal is always the same:
To train the body to breathe lightly, effortlessly, and through the nose.
That’s the breath of healing. That’s the breath of life.

Next time, I’ll share the exact sequence I now teach — the one that weaves all these paths into one method. Until then, I’ll leave you with this:

The breath will take you where your mind can’t go.
And if you let it… it will bring you back to yourself.

Breathing Changed Everything (And It Can for You Too)

I never thought that breathing would change my life.

Not like this. Not in the quiet, subtle, inside-out kind of way. Not in a way that would make me feel more alive, more clear, more at peace. But it did. And it keeps doing it, every time I return to the practice.

You see, it didn’t start with some huge breakthrough or instant transformation. It started with curiosity. With discomfort. With not knowing.

And honestly? That’s where the real work begins.

The Courage to Not Know

When I first started retraining my breath, I thought I understood it. We all think we do—breathing is the first thing we do when we’re born. It’s automatic, right?

But as I went deeper, I realized something that might sound strange: the more I refined my breath, the less I felt like I understood it.

At first, this was frustrating. It felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me. I’d think, “I’m doing it right!”—and then I’d learn something new and suddenly feel like I knew nothing again.

But this... this is where the transformation begins.

When we say “I don’t know,” we create space.

Space for learning. Space for experience. Space for the breath to actually teach us something.

This is the attitude I now carry into every breath practice: not to master it, but to meet it.

Breath and Movement as a Mirror

Over time, I began pairing subtle breath awareness with slow, intentional movements. Somatics taught me that awareness—not intensity—is the key. That healing isn’t about doing more. It’s about listening more deeply.

Breath and movement became a mirror. They reflected how I was living, where I was holding, and what I was avoiding.

They also showed me that breakthroughs don’t happen every day.

But they do come.

They arrive like small openings, like a little more space in your chest, or a deeper exhale, or a thought that doesn’t get stuck in your head. And one day, without realizing it, you look around and think:

“I feel different. I feel better.”

That’s not a coincidence. That’s the byproduct of showing up, of breathing with awareness, of being curious even when it’s messy.

Health Is a Side Effect

When I talk about breath now, I’m not just talking about oxygen. I’m talking about the bridge between body and mind. Between anxiety and presence. Between autopilot and awareness.

Good breathing changes your physiology, yes. It improves digestion, immune function, heart rate variability. But it also changes how you feel.

And how you live.

Mental clarity. Emotional resilience. A sense of connection to something deeper—something you can’t always name but you know is there when your breath is steady and quiet.

This is the essence of the Pneuma Yoga Method. Not breath as a performance, but breath as a relationship.

You Can Do This

You don’t need to be flexible. You don’t need to know yoga poses. You don’t need to know where to start.

You just need a willingness to pause, to feel, and to not know. To meet yourself in the breath, in the space between inhale and exhale.

This practice is simple. Not always easy. But profoundly human.

If you stay consistent, if you stay curious, the practice will meet you where you are.

And one day—without warning—you’ll feel yourself shift.

You’ll feel lighter. More grounded. More awake.

And maybe, like me, you’ll realize the breath didn’t just change how you feel. It changed everything.

“To breathe consciously is to live consciously. Everything begins with awareness.”

Explore the Pneuma Yoga Method and begin your breath journey today. Weekly practices, guided meditations, and somatic breath education at pneuma-yoga.com.

The Red Light Reflex – How Stress Locks the Body and Breath (and How to Undo It)

Have you ever noticed how your body responds when something startles or overwhelms you?

Your shoulders rise. Your chest caves. Your breath becomes shallow. Your head juts forward as your spine curves inward.

This isn’t just “bad posture”—it’s your nervous system doing its job. It’s a primal reflex. A protective response. And it’s deeply wired into our biology.

In Somatics, Thomas Hanna called this the Red Light Reflex—a full-body contraction triggered by fear, anxiety, or trauma. Over time, if it’s never released, it becomes a chronic postural pattern that compresses our breath, digestion, and emotional state.

In this blog, we’ll explore:

• What the Red Light Reflex is

• How it affects your health

• Why it leads to chronic pain and dysfunction

• And most importantly, how to unwind it through the Pneuma Yoga Method

What Is the Red Light Reflex?

The Red Light Reflex is a neuromuscular defense pattern triggered when we feel startled, ashamed, anxious, or under threat. It’s the body’s way of curling inward to protect the vital organs and minimize exposure.

This reflex is unconscious and automatic. But when activated repeatedly—through chronic stress, trauma, screen time, or shame—it becomes habituated in the sensory-motor system.

Signs of chronic Red Light Reflex include:

• Rounded shoulders

• Forward head posture

• Collapsed chest

• Tension in the jaw, throat, or abdomen

• Shallow breathing

• Digestive issues or fatigue

Left unaddressed, it affects everything from your spine to your mood.

How the Red Light Reflex Impacts Your Health

1. Breathing Becomes Restricted

When the chest collapses and the abdomen tightens, the diaphragm can’t descend properly. The lungs can’t expand. You begin to overuse neck and shoulder muscles for breathing, which leads to tension and poor oxygen exchange.

This contributes to:

• Anxiety and over-breathing

• Poor sleep

• Chronic fatigue

• Poor CO₂ tolerance and vagal tone

2. The Nervous System Stays in Survival Mode

Red Light posture is a somatic signal of threat. Your body feeds the brain information saying “we’re not safe.” Even when the original stress is gone, the shape keeps the system on high alert.

This leads to:

• Hypervigilance

• Emotional reactivity

• Digestive shutdown

• Weakened immune function

3. Pain and Degeneration

A forward-curled spine strains the muscles of the back, neck, and shoulders. The head feels heavier. The ribcage becomes rigid. Over time, this leads to:

• Chronic neck and back pain

• Shoulder impingement

• Shallow rib mobility

• Reduced balance and proprioception

How the Pneuma Yoga Method Unwinds the Reflex

The good news? This pattern can be reversed.

The Pneuma Yoga Method is a somatic-breath integration practice that specifically addresses the Red Light Reflex through:

🌀 Breath Re-Education

• Subtle awareness practices to restore diaphragmatic movement

• Gentle breath holds and light nasal breathing to build CO₂ tolerance

• Techniques drawn from yogic pranayama, Buteyko Method, and Patrick McKeown’s clinical insights

🧠 Somatic Pandiculation

• Awareness-based contractions and releases of the front body

• Targeted sequences for the abdominals, sternum, jaw, and neck

• Movement patterns that rebuild communication between brain and body

🌬️ Nervous System Regulation

• Guided meditations to downshift the stress response

• Visualization and pratyahara to help turn inward

• Body scans that soften inner holding and create parasympathetic dominance

You don’t have to force your body open. You simply need to remind your brain that it’s safe to release.

Want to Try It?

This week, we’re offering multiple ways to experience this for yourself:

🎥 Free YouTube Class: Try our full-length Red Light Reflex class available now on YouTube

🧘‍♂️ Guided Meditation Library: Explore our new meditation page with practices designed to help you soften the red light response, reconnect your breath, and come home to your body.

📘 Pneuma Yoga Method: Join the 10-class therapeutic series launching soon. Week One is entirely focused on Red Light awareness, including daily practices, breath resets, and soma maps.

Final Thoughts

You’re not stuck this way. The way you breathe, sit, walk, and hold yourself—these can change. Your nervous system is plastic. Your posture is a story, not a sentence.

The Red Light Reflex was meant to protect you. But now, you’re safe. And it’s time to move forward with awareness, strength, and freedom.

“Freedom means choice. And choice only exists when we are aware of what we are doing.” – Thomas Hanna

Learn more at pneuma-yoga.com. Your body already knows how to heal. Let’s give it the chance.

What Are Somatics? Understanding the Mind-Body Connection

In our fast-paced world, it's easy to treat the body as a machine—something to stretch, strengthen, or "fix." But deeper healing, mobility, and resilience come not through force, but through awareness.

This is the foundation of Somatics: the practice of reclaiming the mind’s control over the body’s movements, patterns, and posture.

The Birth of Somatics

The term "Somatics" was coined by Thomas Hanna, a philosopher and movement educator, who recognized that chronic pain and tension were not merely physical phenomena. They were patterns held within the sensory-motor system—the link between the brain and the muscles.

In his view, many musculoskeletal issues were not caused by structural problems, but by a loss of voluntary control over muscles. Hanna called this phenomenon Sensory-Motor Amnesia (SMA).

When we experience injuries, stress, or repetitive movements, our nervous system adapts—locking muscles into involuntary patterns of tension. Over time, we "forget" how to fully relax or move naturally. This leads to postural distortion, chronic pain, reduced breathing capacity, and emotional stress.

Somatics, then, is the art of remembering. It is the conscious re-education of the nervous system, teaching the body to release habitual tension and restore natural ease.

Pneuma Yoga Method: Reconnecting Breath, Body, and Mind

The Pneuma Yoga Method is a therapeutic program designed to reconnect the mind and body through somatic principles based on Rick Fulton's education at Yoga North International SomaYoga Institute.

By gaining skillful awareness of the sensations within, we can access and transform more subtle patterns—specifically our breathing.

At its core, the Pneuma Yoga Method is based on the fundamental principle that by becoming a better breather, we reshape our entire internal landscape. Through subtle somatic movements, breath awareness, and nervous system regulation practices, students learn to foster an organic, innate breath that more closely resembles our true natural breathing—light, effortless, and sustaining.

Rather than imposing breath techniques from the outside, Pneuma Yoga retrains breath from the inside out—awakening the soma's capacity to breathe itself back into balance.

Why Somatics Matters for Modern Pain, Breathing, and Stress

• Pain Relief: Chronic muscle contraction, when left unchecked, can compress joints, nerves, and connective tissues. By teaching the muscles to release, many chronic pain conditions resolve naturally.

• Improved Breathing: Locked ribcages, compressed diaphragms, and shallow breathing are often linked to sensory-motor amnesia. Breathwork integrated with somatic movement retrains the respiratory system to operate with greater efficiency and calm.

• Stress Regulation: The nervous system cannot distinguish between physical and emotional tension. Somatic awareness, when combined with breath retraining, shifts the system from "fight or flight" to "rest and digest."

• Mobility and Posture: True mobility isn't about forcing flexibility; it's about freeing the brain's ability to move the body. Somatics restores natural movement pathways.

Somatic Movement vs Traditional Exercise

Unlike traditional exercise or even stretching, somatic movement focuses on internal sensation rather than external achievement. It's slow, mindful, and deeply nourishing.

Where exercise may strengthen muscles already caught in compensation patterns, somatic movement seeks to reset the baseline—allowing true strength and freedom to emerge naturally.

A Return to Wholeness

Somatics invites us to live from the inside out. It reminds us that health isn't achieved by "fixing" the body from the outside—it’s reclaimed by waking up the innate intelligence within.

In the Pneuma Yoga Method, every movement, every breath, and every moment of awareness is a step toward reconnecting with that wholeness.

It is a remembering.

It is a homecoming.

"Soma is not a thing, but a process — the living body as experienced from within." — Thomas Hanna

Want to experience somatic yoga? Try a class here: Somatic yoga for mobility and pain

Stay tuned for our next post: A deeper dive into the incredible senses of proprioception, interoception, and nociception — and how they shape our experience of pain, posture, and breath.

To learn more, explore our upcoming classes in the Pneuma Yoga Method at pneuma-yoga.com.

The Power of Somatics: Reclaiming Your Health with Pneuma Yoga

In a world where chronic pain, stress, and tension have become the norm, it's easy to feel disconnected from your body. Many of us have been taught to push through discomfort, ignore fatigue, or rely on external solutions for relief. But what if the key to healing wasn’t outside of you? What if you had the power to retrain your body and mind, restoring ease and vitality from within?

This is where somatics comes in.

What is Somatics?

Somatics is a practice that focuses on retraining the nervous system and restoring natural movement patterns through awareness and gentle, intentional movement. Unlike traditional exercise that often emphasizes strength and flexibility alone, somatics works directly with your brain and muscles to release habitual tension, improve mobility, and enhance overall well-being.

At its core, somatics is about relearning how to move with ease—not by forcing change, but by inviting the body to let go of unconscious patterns that no longer serve us. These patterns can be the result of past injuries, stress, or simply years of repetitive movement and poor posture. Over time, they become deeply ingrained, leading to discomfort, stiffness, and even chronic pain.

Through slow, mindful movements, somatic practices allow you to feel and understand how your body holds tension, providing an opportunity to release it. This process not only improves physical function but also creates a deep sense of relaxation and self-awareness.

The Sovereignty of Somatics

One of the most profound gifts of somatics is sovereignty—the ability to take control of your own healing and well-being.

Instead of depending on outside interventions to “fix” your body, somatic practices put the power back in your hands. You learn to listen to your body’s signals, respond with mindful movement, and develop an intuitive understanding of what you need to feel balanced and whole. This practice cultivates autonomy, confidence, and long-term resilience.

How Somatics Integrates into the Pneuma Yoga Method

At Pneuma Yoga, I integrate somatic principles with breathwork, meditation, and self-reflection to create a holistic approach to healing. This method is designed to not only relieve pain and tension but also to regulate the nervous system, restore optimal breathing, and develop a deeper connection to your own inner intelligence.

Each step of the Pneuma Yoga Method incorporates:

• Somatic Movement: Targeting specific patterns of tension (such as the Red Light stress response) and re-educating the nervous system.

• Breathwork (Kriya Practices): Techniques that enhance nervous system regulation and promote deep relaxation.

• Meditation & Reflection: Cultivating mental clarity, emotional balance, and self-awareness.

• Yogic Principles (Yamas & Niyamas): Applying ancient wisdom to modern life for a well-rounded path to well-being.

By practicing Pneuma Yoga, you develop a sense of mastery over your health, rather than feeling like a passive participant in your wellness journey.

Why Somatics Matters for Your Well-Being

If you’re experiencing chronic pain, stress, or physical discomfort, somatics can be a life-changing practice. It offers a way to: ✅ Reduce muscle tension and pain ✅ Improve posture and mobility ✅ Increase body awareness and coordination ✅ Regulate the nervous system for better stress resilience ✅ Cultivate a sense of ease and relaxation in daily life

The beauty of somatics is that anyone can do it—regardless of age, fitness level, or experience. The movements are gentle yet powerful, and their effects extend far beyond the mat. This practice teaches you how to move smarter, not harder, leading to profound shifts in both body and mind.

Taking the First Step

Your journey to reclaiming your body and well-being begins with awareness. The first step is simply noticing how you move, breathe, and hold tension throughout your day. As you begin to explore somatics, you’ll uncover a new level of freedom—one that allows you to move, breathe, and live with greater ease.

If you’re ready to make a change, to step into a practice that empowers you, Pneuma Yoga is here to guide you. Through somatic movement, breathwork, and self-awareness, you’ll unlock the potential within you to heal, grow, and thrive.

You don’t have to accept pain and discomfort as your reality. The power to transform is already within you—let’s uncover it together.

Breathwork and Somatic Yoga: A Path to Healing and Resilience

Welcome to the Pneuma Yoga blog! This space is where we’ll dive into the transformative practices of somatic yoga, breathwork, and nervous system healing. Whether you're new to these practices or a seasoned practitioner, this blog is here to inspire, guide, and deepen your understanding of healing and growth.

The Healing Power of Breathwork
Breathwork is a powerful tool to regulate the nervous system and create resilience. Many of us unknowingly hold our breath or breathe shallowly, leading to tension, fatigue, and even anxiety. By practicing light, slow, and deep nasal breathing, we allow the body to relax, detoxify, and optimize oxygen exchange.

• What You Can Expect: In future posts, I’ll guide you through specific techniques like nadi shodhana, humming, and power breathing to help you balance energy, calm the mind, and enhance vitality.

• We will explore the importance of breath, and how this simple act can make a tremendous change to your life experience.

• Here is a link to a Pneuma Yoga breath practice:

What Is Somatic Yoga?
Somatic yoga focuses on mindful, slow movements to release tension, improve mobility, and re-educate the nervous system. Unlike traditional yoga, this practice emphasizes interoception (awareness of internal sensations) to help you reconnect with your body on a deep level.

• Somatic movements are key to undoing patterns and habits that cause pain, tension, poor mobility, inflammation, and a dysregulated nervous system.

• Want to feel the difference of a Pneuma Yoga class! Here is link to a somatic yoga practice.

Why Healing in Community Matters
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation. Joining a supportive community amplifies your ability to thrive. At Pneuma Yoga, we’ve seen people not only heal physically but also experience a renewed sense of belonging and purpose through shared practice. Humas are social creatures, join others who are curious about how to feel more connected to themselves and others!

Yoga Philosophy: Living with Purpose and Clarity

• The Koshas: Learn how the five layers of being—body, breath, mind, wisdom, and bliss—work together to create balance and harmony.

• The Kleshas: Learn the five causes of suffering and how we can observe them influencing our life without us even noticing.

• The Yamas & Niyamas: Explore these ethical principles and how they offer guidance for living with integrity, mindfulness, and compassion.

Ayurveda: A Blueprint for Holistic Health

• Understanding the Doshas: Discover how your unique constitution (Vata, Pitta, or Kapha) influences your health, emotions, and energy.

• Understand Ancient Nutritional Wisdom: How to nourish all your tissues and grow a healthy and thriving body & mind by nourishing all your senses and tastes.

• Daily Practices (Dinacharya): Learn simple cleansing and self-care rituals like tongue scraping, oil pulling, and seasonal eating to restore balance.

Personal Story
As someone who has faced significant challenges, including my journey through two devastating battles with cancer and a horrific motorcycle accident. These experiences had a profound effect on my health and my life took a turn for the worst, I suffered my body and my mind for twenty years, struggling to find ways to cope. My days were filled with severe pain, extreme digestive issues, depression, addiction and I had a constant feeling of being lost in life.

I found soma yoga and breathwork at the age of 39 and my life has been in a state of renewal ever since, these practices were truly life-changing. Breathwork and somatic yoga gave me tools to not only heal but thrive. My goal is to share these tools with you, so you can live with greater ease and resilience.

Continueing from here
I am excited to share with you all the practical tips that I have learned throughout my training and in my hunger for continued education and practice. Yoga is my passion and I will continue to practice and grow so that I can share deeper insights to enhance your journey. I look forward to growing together.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts where we’ll break down techniques, share stories of transformation, and provide practical tools to support your journey. Want more? Subscribe to the blog for updates and exclusive content, or join me in person for one-on-one therapy, classes and workshops.

How to Reset your Nervous System

5 Minute Nervous System Reset.

🌿 How to create a calm and relaxed body, breath and mind.

1. Standing Shake (Spondana):
Begin by standing tall and gently shaking out your limbs. This simple movement helps release stagnant energy, awakening your body's innate rhythm.​

2. Somatic Shoulder Release:
Seated comfortably, elevate and release your shoulders with mindful awareness. This movement dissolves built-up tension, especially from prolonged sitting or stress.​

3. Halo Breathing:
Drawing a small circle with your nose, synchronize this motion with your breath. This technique slows respiration, calming the mind and soothing the nervous system.​

4. Somatic Arch and Flatten (Supine):
Lying on your back, gently arch and flatten your lower spine. This movement nurtures spinal flexibility and fosters a sense of grounding.​

5. Somatic Twist:
With knees bent, allow them to drift to one side until the pelvis begins to rotate, turning your head in the opposite direction. This gentle twist massages the spine and encourages detoxification.​

Visual Tip: Include high-quality images or short GIFs demonstrating each movement. Tools like Canva offer customizable yoga templates to create visually appealing graphics.

🌿 The Practice: A Journey Inward

Each movement in this sequence invites the body to soften and the mind to come home. Spondana, or shaking, isn't just a release—it resets the nervous system by loosening muscle holding patterns and inviting lymphatic flow. The shoulder release invites awareness to the places we carry stress without even noticing. Halo breathing is a subtle but powerful doorway to inner stillness, training the breath to flow evenly and lightly. Arch and flatten reconnects the brain with the spine, establishing a safe rhythm through the centerline. Finally, the twist gently wrings out tension while encouraging the spine and breath to harmonize.

🧠 Why It Works: The Science Behind the Serenity

When we engage the body in slow, mindful movement, we activate sensory pathways that speak directly to the brainstem and limbic system—where our emotional and physiological states are regulated. Practices like these gently interrupt the stress loop and bring us into the parasympathetic “rest and digest” state. This reset is especially important for people living with chronic tension or emotional overwhelm. Repetitive, conscious motion paired with breath builds new neurological pathways—meaning, with practice, your body begins to remember calm more easily.

🌌 Turning Inward: The Path to Sovereignty

In somatic yoga, we often say that "awareness is the movement." As we turn our attention away from the noise of the world and toward the quiet rhythm of our breath or the subtle sensation of a shoulder softening, we reclaim space. This is the foundation of pratyahara—the yogic sense of withdrawal—not as avoidance, but as agency. When we practice tuning into our inner world, we learn to pause before reacting, to breathe before bracing, to choose curiosity over contraction. Sovereignty comes from this space: the moment where presence replaces programming.

🌟 Embrace the Practice

This five-minute sequence isn’t just a technique—it’s a declaration. A declaration that your peace is worth cultivating, even in small doses. The more often you return to these movements, the more fluent your body becomes in the language of calm. And each repetition becomes a seed planted—toward resilience, toward presence, toward a life less driven by stress and more guided by awareness. Let this be your moment to pause, breathe, and begin again.

Try the 5 Minute Nervous System Reset:

Pandiculation – Nature’s Reset for Tension, Stress, and Mobility

Have you ever seen a cat stretch after a nap—arching its back, yawning wide, and slowly releasing? That’s not just a stretch. It’s a built-in neurological function called pandiculation—a spontaneous, brain-driven reset for muscle tone, tension, and sensory awareness.

Humans do it too. That luxurious morning yawn-and-reach? That’s your nervous system checking in with your body. But over time, through stress, repetition, and disconnection, many of us forget how to access this simple tool.

In somatic therapy, pandiculation becomes a conscious practice to restore lost movement, relieve chronic tension, and rewire the brain-body connection. It’s the heart of the Pneuma Yoga Method—and it may be the missing piece in your healing journey.

What Is Pandiculation?

Pandiculation is the process of:

1. Slowly contracting a muscle or movement pathway (often exaggerated or resisted)

2. Holding briefly at peak contraction with awareness

3. Slowly and consciously releasing back to rest

This active reset involves both the sensory (feeling) and motor (movement) systems in tandem. Unlike passive stretching or massage, pandiculation teaches the brain to let go of chronic tension through voluntary movement and awareness.

Thomas Hanna, founder of Clinical Somatics, referred to this as the primary tool for overcoming Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA)—the root cause of most chronic muscular pain.

"Pandiculation contracts the muscles so the brain can feel them more vividly, and then lets go of the contraction to show the brain how to relax them."

Why Stretching Doesn’t Work (and May Even Reinforce Patterns)

Traditional stretching tries to lengthen muscles from the outside. It assumes the problem is tight tissue. But in somatics, we understand that chronic tension is often a result of the brain involuntarily keeping muscles contracted.

Stretching doesn’t address this.

• It can create rebound tension

• It may bypass the brain’s control system

• It often activates reflexive guarding

Pandiculation, on the other hand, speaks directly to the nervous system. It resets baseline muscle tone by re-educating the brain—and the results are more immediate and lasting.

How Pandiculation Affects the Nervous System

When done with awareness, pandiculation regulates the autonomic nervous system by activating the parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) state.

It improves:

• Vagal tone

• Heart rate variability (HRV)

• Respiratory sinus arrhythmia

• Neuromuscular coordination

It also increases interoception—our sense of internal awareness—which helps us notice and respond to tension before it becomes pain.

In a very real sense, pandiculation teaches us to feel ourselves again.

Pandiculation in the Pneuma Yoga Method

In the Pneuma Yoga Method, pandiculation is the foundation of movement. Each practice begins with breath awareness and slow, subtle motion designed to:

• Activate specific muscle chains

• Bring attention to unconscious holding patterns

• Reset tension through deliberate contraction and release

Combined with breath retraining, this helps release:

• Red Light Reflex patterns (chest collapse, forward head)

• Green Light Reflex patterns (over-extension, over-efforting)

• Cringe Reflex patterns (rotational asymmetries from trauma or injury)

We don’t stretch to lengthen. We move to awaken.

How to Try It

Here’s a simple exercise to feel the power of pandiculation:

Arch & Curl

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent, soles of feet on floor.

2. Gently arch your lumbar spine and tilt the pelvis forward, tapping tailbone to the floor. Hold gently without force and notice the shape.

3. Slowly relax and watch the spine return to its natural shape. Take 10-15 seconds to release.

4. Go the other direction. Draw the naval stright down and tilt the pelvis back, flattening out the spine and scooping tailbone up, hold and notice, release and follow slowly.

5. Rest. Notice your breath, spine, and sense of internal balance.

Repeat 3-5 times each side then back and forth.

Notice: you’re not just "exercising" — you’re retraining the brain to feel and move with precision and ease.

Why This Matters for Pain, Stress, and Mobility

Pandiculation is especially effective for:

• Chronic lower back pain

• Neck and shoulder tension

• TMJ and jaw tension

• Breathing dysfunction

• Stress-related postural issues

By addressing the root neurological pattern, we don’t just treat symptoms—we retrain the entire system.

And it’s accessible. Anyone can do it. No equipment, no forcing, no memorization. Just your body, your breath, and your awareness.

The Somatic Way Forward

In modern health and fitness, we're told to push, force, or stretch harder. But the somatic path offers something gentler—and ultimately more powerful:

A way to listen to the body, reset the nervous system, and allow healing to emerge organically.

At Pneuma Yoga, we teach this through classes, meditations, and embodied practices that start with awareness and return us to wholeness.

"The body is not a dumb animal to be trained. It is a field of intelligence waiting to be awakened." — adapted from Thomas Hanna

Explore the Pneuma Yoga Method to learn more. Next week, we dive into the Red Light Reflex: How chest collapse, forward head, and shallow breath are symptoms of a nervous system caught in survival—and how to gently unwind it.

[Join me at pneuma-yoga.com for classes, guidance, and breath-led healing.]