Does stretching work? It depends upon how you go about it and what you are trying to achieve. What is less known is there are two outcomes from stretching: either we want to ‘lengthen’ the tissues or we love the sensation of stretching and find it calming. These are completely different outcomes.
Much research goes on into the science of stretching, and what has been found is that no matter how hard we stretch, after about 24 hours, the tissues return to their original length. So how come, if we do keep stretching our hamstrings, say, they do get longer? What they now know has happened is that we have increased our tolerance to the stretch – our tolerance, not the tissues themselves.
We go for a massage and the therapist proclaims to specialise in working on the fascia. The treatment is successful and the joint moves much more freely. Has the therapist released the tight fascia? Ask an orthopedic surgeon that question and he (or maybe she) will just laugh; fascia is so tight and strong that it can take 3 scalpel blades to cut through. Which means that something else happened in the brain to help free up the movement.
And, of course, here is the truth of the matter. Everything we do is brain derived. Pain is in the brain, restriction is in the brain – it is keeping areas tight and maybe painful to protect us, to slow us down, to weaken us so we can’t damage ourselves further. Which means that to improve a consistently tight area means working on much more than just that area which will result in a happier brain. And then anything we do to increase stretch tolerance in that area will work much more effectively.
How to go about increasing stretch tolerance? The most important thing is to reach for an external target and not focus on the sensation of stretch; conversely, in order to have a muscle contract hard, it is important to focus on the feeling of tension in the muscle, something the first body builders like Eugen Sandow really knew. ((http://mentalfloss.com/article/88665/15-fitness-tips-1800s-bodybuilder-eugen-sandow-are-still-good-today))
The problem with feeling the stretch is it can cause the muscle to tighten up reflexively to stop itself being torn. ((So if the hamstrings feel stiff the day after a yoga session, they’ve actually been slightly torn, and will mend a little tighter.))
Which leads nicely into what we gain when we feel the stretch? And the answer lies in our Insular lobe, the deep lobe of the brain that monitors everything going on inside us, from the state of our muscles (all of them), to our blood pressure and breathing rate, to the state of our digestion to what our thyroid needs to do and so on. And with this information, the insular lobe knows to either ramp us up for action or calm us down to rest and recuperate. All too often the insular lobe cannot return us to a state of calm relaxation – the messages it’s getting say, ‘Go, go go!’ And so, for some, having a good stretch helps calm this lobe and us down. But this does not work for all.
All of which means if we are bothered by a tight muscle, we need to investigate why that muscle is tight to reduce the drivers of that unwanted tension, and those answers invariably include balance and visual issues, maybe unresolved trauma and so on – old brain stuff! If, however, we just love stretching, then finding additional vagal nerve stimulations – as well as brain stuff – will help deep healing and lead to profound happiness. Lack of happiness is rather more complex than a lack of serotonin or money, after all.