Neurodynamic Movements

These movements, move nerves!

These movements are one form of self-applied DNM, as these movements have a focus on the nerves of the trunk, many of which are cutaneous, and terminate in the layers of skin. Nerves getting there involves going through extra layers of connective tissue. This is a common place for nerves to become restricted, and if nerves aren’t happy with movement, they won’t let it happen.

Moving nerves in the layers of skin is helpful, because your brain devotes about 75% of its sensory cortex to ‘listening’ to your skin, and it’s nice for all that neural architecture to be helping rather than hindering your life and your movement!

Move gently, be nice to your nerves, they tell your brain what’s ok and what’s not.

About DNM

I could write a blog on the subject, and it would easily be about as enthusiastic and engaging and science-y as any other out there, but you can read about DNM on many other sites already. In reality, all the propositional knowledge in the world isn’t much use by itself- what matters, is the how, and the doing.

Here are some of my thoughts and experiences, and thoughts on my experiences.

“Touch was beneficial for both healthy and clinical cohorts.
These data are critical as most previous meta-analytic research has focused on individuals diagnosed with clinical disorders.
For mental health outcomes, we found larger effects in clinical cohorts.
A possible reason could relate to increased touch wanting in patients. For example, loneliness often co-occurs with chronic illnesses, which are linked to depressed mood and feelings of anxiety. Touch can be used to counteract this negative development.
In adults and children, knowing the toucher did not influence health benefits. In contrast, familiarity affected overall health benefits in newborns, with parental touch being more beneficial than touch applied by medical staff.
Previous studies have suggested that early skin-to-skin contact and exposure to maternal odour is critical for a newborn’s ability to adapt to a new environment, supporting the notion that parental care is difficult to substitute in this time period.” -Nature Human Behaviour | Volume 8 | June 2024