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.
