Ideomotion & Fascial Unwinding

Involuntary motion soft tissue techniques: Fascial Unwinding, Pandiculations and Muscle Repositioning

Fascial Unwinding

Minasny (2009) found fascial unwinding to involve two aspects:

• Passively moving the patient in response to sensations of movement.

• Inducing involuntary movement by using an initiation or induction technique.

Induction techniques initiates fascial unwinding that results in the patient responding with spontaneous expressions of movement in either a rhythmic or chaotic pattern.

The induction process is initiated by lifting and holding certain body parts to remove the influence of gravity as to overcome reactive proprioceptive postural tone. When the effects of gravity are removed, any strain patterns held in the tissues are more easily felt. The therapist follows any hint of movement without directing or forcing it. This involves the practitioner being largely passive but constantly aware of feedback from the patient's tissues (Minasny 2009).

Pandiculations

Schleip (2017) described another proprioceptive stimulating approach to produce involuntary movements called pandiculations. This was from the patient performing slow continuous resisted movement in a concentric and eccentric fashion whilst their soft tissues are being worked upon. This is usually repeated for sixty to ninety seconds followed by a brief isometric contraction of the antagonistic muscles.

Muscle Repositioning

Bertolucci (2010) described a technique called Muscle Repositioning that also worked on pandiculations. This author found involuntary movements to be produced as a result of internal shear forces among myofascial compartments. These shear forces are produced from the practitioner applying precise and sustained firm pressure at an oblique angle which produces a counter pressure generated from the inertia of the tissues.

The resultant involuntary movement happens in small increments (pandiculation), which become larger towards the end of the manoeuvre as body segments unite into a block. After the manoeuvre the patient often feels a burning sensation.

Somatic Experiencing 

Payne et al (2015) described the theory of Somatic Experiencing. The sympathetic nervous system may get “stuck” in a state of excess activation; this results in altered muscular activity disturbing the proprioceptive feedback that results in a failed reciprocal activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. This sympathetic-parasympathetic nervous system imbalance impacts on the neuroendocrine axis.

In Somatic Experiencing rebalancing the nervous system can be achieved by intense muscular effort and manual techniques producing involuntary spontaneous movements of the body such as gentle shaking and subtle postural changes. This is often accompanied by feelings of fear, sadness, or relief. It accounts for shaking and crying after an intense bout of sympathetic arousal and also, possibly, tonic immobility.

Therefore proprioceptive feedback is integral to allow the autonomic nervous system to reset to baseline. By drawing the patient's attention to the proprioceptive and kinesthetic (somatic) markers of this “release” process it enables a spontaneous rebalancing of the nervous system.

Viscoelastic changes in fascial unwinding (Blostein 2014)

In health the fascia network is straight, meaning that torsional forces in the fascia network are at a minimum. Thus the initial state is the configuration of lowest energy, in a liquid like state (‘sol’). Injury can introduce torsional forces that creates stiffness and introduces equal and opposite counter-torsion elsewhere in the fascia network.

However, adhesive forces can prevent a twist and counter-twist from meeting and cancelling out and hold the fascia network in a higher energy state. This ‘locked up’, high torsional stiffness, adhesive state moves the viscoelastic fascial system from a ‘sol’ like fluid state to a strong, solid like ‘gel’ state.

The aim of fascial unwinding is to overcome adhesions and bring together and cancel out twists and counter-twists. This cancelation of torsional forces aims to moves the fascia network from a locked up, higher energy, stiff ‘gel’ state back to a lower energy, fluid ‘sol’ state.

Proprioception 

Proprioception and involuntary motion

Ideomotion is the proposed mechanism for involuntary motion in fascial unwinding (Minasny 2009) and cranial osteopathy (Mason 2008); refer below 'Ideomotor theory' and 'Ideomotion and fascial unwninding'

Ideomotor actions are unconscious involuntary movements caused by prior expectations, suggestions, or preconceptions (Minasry 2008). Hence:

Ideation: thinking about or activating the mental representation of a perceived outcome and experiences --> motion: behaviour expressed through involuntary motor action. 

An example of an ideomotor activity is closing your eyes to go to sleep. An individual's representation (i.e. their ideation) of closing their eyes to go to sleep maybe the anticipation and mental representation of darkness, the closure of heavy eyes and unconsciousness. This leads to the non-deliberate, intuitive motor response (i.e. motion) of the individual closing their eyes (Wirth et al 2018).

Whilst all ideomotor responses look intuitive, some have to be learnt. For instance an ideomotor response would be an emotion e.g. positivity (ideation) triggering a motor response in the form of adopting a particular posture e.g. upright posture (motion). This would have been learnt when young through observation and role play. This ideomotor repsonse is bi-directional so when older and the association with posture and emotions are 'cemented in' to form a ideomotor reflex, activey changing a posture, in a particular situation can intern be therapeutic leading to a change of emotions.

The body's ability to preform these involuntary ideomotor actions are based, amongst other things, on proprioceptive feedback (Ondobaka & Bekkering 2012). Proprioception is not just centred around the awareness of the positioning of your body in space but the learning and emotions that accompany this (Liutsko et al 2016, Fuchs & Koch 2014 & Abraham et al 2020); refer below 'Proprioception and learning' and 'Proprioception and emotions'.

Therefore proprioceptive information, through learning and emotions, has a mental representation of the specific actions that had caused them. These learnt emotional mental representations form sensory anticipations that can trigger automatic ideomotor actions (Wirth et al 2016).

For example when performing a lumbar roll if a patient has a negative emotional representation of the technique causing tension and anticipation this can heighten proprioceptive feedback. This anxiety and proprioceptive feedback can trigger both voluntary tightness in the paraspinal muscles and a involuntary learnt ideomotor reflex response to such anxiety and vulnerability in the form of neck extension, facial muscle tension and hand and feet clenching. With the ideomotor reflex being bi-directional addressing these learnt ideomotor motor responses i.e. the neck extension, facial muscle tension and hand and feet clenching should reflexly both reduce anxiety and relax the paraspinal muscles for a more efficient technique. 

Much like with the emotional representation of sleep triggering the automatic motor response of closing the eyelids the learnt emotional and motor repsonses to proprioception are manifested through involuntary ideomotor movements (Ondobaka & Bekkering 2012). It is also why manual stimulation of proprioceptors has been associated with exciting the ideomotor reflex manifested with the involuntary motor movements in myofascial release (Minasny 2009) and cranial osteopathic techniques (Mason 2008).

What is proprioception

Proprioception means perception of ourselves, or more exactly, perception of the relative positions of the parts of our body (Liutsko et al 2016). 

Fascia is the richest sensory organ in the human body as a vast majority of sensory nerve endings in musculoskeletal tissues originate in it (e.g. perimysium and endomysium). Muscular-tendinous expansions insert into the fascia that transmit mechanical tensions to it. This in turn activates free nerve endings and other fascial receptors that contribute to accurate sensing of joint range of motion and positioning. Fascial stiffness has been linked with decreased proprioception and chronic sympathetic activation (Abraham et al 2020).

All this afferent information acts as “an anchor for self-awareness” (Liutsko et al 2016) as we perceive our self-awareness, feelings, mood, stress, energy and disposition from our physical bodies as a representative of all aspects of our physiological condition (Abraham 2020). 

Abraham (2020) identified sensory-proprioceptive information (or feedback) from fascia to include body contour and physical proportions; this information forms a mental representation of the body and its parts in space and in relation to each other (i.e. body schema). Disorders in body schema are reflected in connective tissue patterns.

Emotions and body states are closely interrelated, and modifications of one lead to changes in the other. Proprioception “encodes” these moods, feelings and attitudes so that have a bidirectional facilitation interference with movement. "happy movement <--> happy emotions".

This is why not only body sensations, but also body postures, gestures and expressions are inherent components of emotional experience that influence our evaluation of people, objects and situations, as well as memory recall (Fuchs & Koch 2014). 

This is exemplified by how the following movements and postures effect behaviour and emotions:

• Approach movements have a bidirectional facilitation interference with positive moods, feelings and attitudes such as being excited, alert and determined (Liutsko et al 2016).

During an approach movement (e.g. arm flexion or receptive movement of the hands) an individual has a more positive evaluation of imagery and target objects (Fuchs & Koch 2014). 

• Avoidance movements have a bidirectional facilitation interference with negative moods, feelings and attitudes such as being upset, guilty, and jittery (Liutsko et al 2016).

During an avoidance movement (e.g. arm extension or unreceptive movement of the hands) an individual has a more negative evaluation of imagery and target objects (Fuchs & Koch 2014).

• When people stand or sit for 7 min in a “power position” (different forms of extension of the body), they perform better in subsequent job interviews (Fuchs & Koch 2014).

• Shorter movements are associated with inhibited people while broader movements are associated with excited people (Liutsko et al 2016).

This association of emotion with proprioception and movement can also be compounded by other sensory inputs such as emotive language e.g. “love” and “hate” that are related with approach and avoidance gestures respectively (Liutsko et al 2016). Similar metaphors can also be used in visualisation or motor imagery (Abraham et al 2020).

So when individuals are able to adopt or produce emotion-specific postures, facial expressions or gestures they tend to experience the associated emotions, which effects their behaviour, preferences, judgement and attitudes toward objects or people.

Conversely, when an individual’s expressive movements are inhibited, this impairs their experience and processing of the associated emotions (Fuchs & Koch 2014). Mason (2008) found clinically this may manifest itself as isometric muscle contraction “holding yourself tight" or "holding tensions in”. 

There is also a bidirectional correlation with emotion and muscular tension and postural changes. Studies cited by Fuchs & Koch (2014) highlighted:

• When slumped, individuals recall more negative life events; conversely more positive events are recalled when sitting upright.

• Activation of the smiling muscles (by asking participants to hold a pen between their teeth) causes individuals to judge cartoons funnier than when smiling is inhibited by holding the pen between their lips.

The link between motion and movement is not only experienced by the individual but also by the observer. This can develop ‘kinaesthetic empathy’ where an observer perceives someone to move in a way that resonates with their own kinaesthetic representation of these movements. 

Therefore someones expressive behaviour affects the intensity of emotions experienced by not only the individual, but also the observer. This can be seen when experiencing emotions from someone's facial expressions or looking at professional dancers, musicians and sportsmen. This can also lead to congruent motor responses in the observer e.g. reciprocating to another’s facial expressions.

Developing kinaesthetic empathy from observation further reinforces our own personal value on proprioception for learning and developing emotional expression and emotional intelligence.

Proprioception and learning

When starting to learn a new skill, we rely more on abstract learning. This involves using concentrated attention and deliberate motor movements to observe and master the action we have been tasked with learning. We can only gain feedback on this deliberate movement, as to develop a perception or mental representation of it once we've completed and analysed the movement. An example of this would be when we first learn to write and we assess the size and smoothness of the lines once we've deliberately and consciously moved the pen.

With repeated practice we then learn on a proprioceptive level. This is where we start to look like we're operating on autopilot acquiring automatic or “embodied” knowledge (Liutsko et al 2016). Weimer et al (2001) attributed proprioceptive deficits as attributing to the "clumsiness" witnessed in Aspergers and is associated with these patients nonverbal learning.

Our perceptions or mental representations from proprioceptive feedback determine how we perform a task. An example of this would be observing how our writing unconsciously changes over the years once we can write fluently without conscious thought or how our emotions when for example writing an angry letter effect our proprioceptive feedback to determine non-conscious motor reponses in the muscles determining subtle changes in handwriting and pen pressure.

Embodied knowledge is the knowledge we obtain from all of our sensory, motor, and affective patterns. We process all this information to provide structure to our understanding so that we can engage with our world. This is different from an abstract intellectual grasping of concepts and their relations (Johnson 2015).

Proprioception is ideal for learning and processing this automatic or embodied knowledge (Liutsko et al 2016). This is because proprioception is key to bodily resonance, be it in the form of sensations, postures, expressive movements or movement tendencies (Fuchs & Koch 2014).

By using mimetic reproduction, from observing day-to-day movement, actions and expressions, proprioception is integral to learning cultural habits and the know-how associated with practical experience and professional skills (Liutsko et al 2016).

This process of learning forms and shapes development in a child when playing with toys. A child fuses movement and proprioception with emotion when they play with a favourite toy to create emboded imagery.

A child will identify with the toys qualities, movement and expression. They then emotionally and physically engage with the toy by moving it in an expressive manner transfering all this neural input to internally represent aspects of their own ego identity (Liutsko et al 2016).

It's not until five years old that a child can transfer behavior control from external to internal speech and inhibit their own responses (although they can inhibit their responses before this in response to external command). Therefore up until five a child has a blank cheque to fuse unhibited expression of movement with learning (Greenwald 1970).

This form of learning using all of our sensory, motor, and affective patterns is not only exclusively dependent upon proprioception. Many subconscious thoughts, emotions and perceptions play an influence in the process of observing and learning in this fashion. For example Fuchs & Koch (2014) identified studies showing how bodily felt warmth i.e. thermal heat from holding a hot drink, directly translates to impressions of emotional warmth. This can effect observations and perceptions during intuitive learning.

Proprioception and emotions

“The term “emotion” is derived from the Latin emovere, “to move out,” implying that inherent in emotions is a potential for movement, a directedness toward a certain goal (be it attractive or repulsive) and a tension between possible and actual movement” (Fuchs & Koch 2014). 

This is mirrored with the use of such language towards emotion where people describe being “moved” or “touched” or a “sinking feeling” or being “uplifted”.

Proprioception plays an important role in the construction of movements, formation of movement skills and in regulation of muscle tone. Proprioception also contributes to speech function or speech kinaesthesia and to general physical well-being and “sense of cheerfulness” (Liutsko et al 2016).

As the richest sensory organ in the body, fascial stiffness, from its contractile properties, fluid dynamics and myofascial relations has been associated with emotional stimuli. This could be as fascia’s efferent nerve endings account for more than 50% of its total nerve supply and are associated with a sympathetic response i.e. vasodilation. Sympathetic nerves are also located outside the vicinity of blood vessels questioning what their function maybe (Abraham et al 2020).

The correlation between proprioception and emotion can be reflected by its neurological links with:

• Facial feedback: skeletal muscle afferent signals from facial expressions regulate emotional experience and behaviour.

• Visceral feedback: visceral feedback from, for example, respiratory, heart function and the gut, are also correlated to emotional experience and behaviour.

This proprioceptive and interoceptive feedback from the body is integrated with more cognitive information in order to guide one's behaviour particularly with regards to every day decision-making (Fuchs & Koch 2014). 'Emodied cogntion' defines the bi-directional nature and how fundamentally potent the perception and representation of actions are to bodily and emotional experiences.

The relationship with emotions and bodily functions (including proprioception) where one can influence and manifest the other is illustrated in the quote: 

“We do not shiver because we are scared of the lion, but we shiver as this is what we feel as our fear” (James 1884, as cited in Fuchs & Koch 2014).

To extend this concept further other people can tickle you but you can't tickle yourself. Therefore how we process the perception of our emotions determines why what we feel as a tickle when someone else tickles us is different to what we feel as a tickle when we tickle ourselves. Consequently the tickle itself doesn't produce reflex bodily functions e.g. laugher and drawing away movements, but how we feel about, or process the tickle does.

How we feel about and neurologically process the information to determine how tickley something is is determined by how close the match is between the expected response and actual response. By tickling ourselves we remove the anticipation of the unknown causing the cerebellum to diminish activation in the somatosensory cortex (Simpson 2001). This reflexly determines the motor reaction to this processed afferent stimuli. Could this open the scope for mindfulness practice in addressing fear avoidance behaviour to alter the perception of proprioceptive and emotional feedback which will in turn modify their motor responses?

Therefore, feeling something and feeling oneself are inextricably bound together. This comes back to our the fundamental definition of proprioception by Liutsko et al (2016) of “the perception of ourselves”.

This emotion-somatic connection is bidirectional because just as an emotion (e.g. fear) will produce a somatic response (e.g. trembling) bodily (somatic) feelings produce an emotional response. For instance, being afraid is not possible without feeling oneself tremble, tense up, have palpitations, etc.

Other bodily systems are of course involved in this whole body systemic process e.g. smell, taste, auditory stimuli etc.

Any disturbances in life, stress, trauma and illnesses effects the proprioceptive state that both reflects in and is related to physical, emotional and cognitive functions (Liutsko et al 2016).

Liutsko et al (2016) identified examples of personality symptoms with disturbed proprioceptive function:

• Autism: 80% of subjects with Asperger Syndrome displayed motor dyspraxia. Proprioceptive deficits, rather than motor deficits, have been accounted for causing incoordination in Asperger’s Syndrome (Weimer et al 2001)

• Clinically avoidant personality traits showed significantly poorer motor performance.

• Down’s syndrome scores were significantly lower for both gross and fine motor skills, as well in running speed, balance, strength and visual motor control.

• Bipolar disorder: demonstrates altered postural control.

• Dysfunctions of both proprioceptive and sensory integration of proprioception and vision in personality disorders, aggressive behaviour and prison inmates.

Our bodies response to an emotional stimuli is its voice describing its “embodied appraisal” of a situation (Fuchs & Koch 2014); therefore proprioception has a critical role in listening to this appraisal and reorganising the subsequent recovery of these neuromotor systems (Liutsko et al 2016).

Involuntary motor reactions in response to involuntary motion soft tissue techniques

Examples of involuntary motor reactions are:

• Isometric contraction of the cervical erector spinae during a suboccipital inhibition technique. This results in the practitioner’s hands being pressed into the table by the involuntary extension of the subject’s head and upper cervical spine. The cervical region may show a greater responsiveness than other body parts due to its richer proprioceptive innervation (Bertolucci & Kozasa 2010).

• Eyelid flickering (Minasy 2009).

• Horizontal eye movements (Minasy 2009).

• Tremors (Minasy 2009).

• Clonic and tonic appendicular movements (Minasy 2009).

• Rising from a supine to a seated position (Minasy 2009).

Ideomotor theory

"The act comes first, the word proceeding from it as its concretized efflorescence" Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin's Theology of Discourse Alexandar Mihailovic (1997). 

In predictive based models it is the intention of achieving a certain sensory goal (e.g. grasping an object) that triggers the motor simulations, and then actions, needed to achieve this intended goal. The salience attached to any deviations from the predicted and actual sensations determines the level to which it is bought to our attention because it shows that either we chose the wrong motor plan to achieve our goal, or our perceptions of what it should feel like when we achieve our goal was wrong. For example, when our goal is to reach a proprioceptive blue print (predictions) on how your arm should feel when reaching fires up intrafusal fibers teeing up the muscle spindles to a sensitivity that matches the sensory template to the upcoming movement. This concurrently executes the automatic reaching movement where the actual proprioceptive feedback is compared against what was predicted. This comparison of what the actual movement does feel like against what the predicted movement was anticipated to feel like allows alpha motor neurones to appropriate make any extrafusal and intrafusal corrections, or, if objectively we are achieving our goal but subjectively it doesn’t feel as we thought it would we can update the prior models that formed the sensory template of the event. The salience given to any deviations from what we thought the sensory experience was going to be against is contextual, for instance minute proprioceptive deviations when reaching for a large piece of paper would probably go largely undetected and therefore minor motor corrections wouldn’t occur but proprioceptive deviations when reaching for a falling baby would be rapidly corrected. But before we can execute this process of ideomotor learning we have to first build the models that form the sensory templates of movements which we measure movement against and learn how to continuously update these models to refine the movements and expected sensations they produce. This starts in infancy using sensorimotor learning.

The early phase of sensorimotor learn is called ‘motor babbling’ and it enables a baby to fulfil its self-rewarding curiosity in understand themselves and the world (e.g. when babies explore their voice by saying “bababa”). It is not orientated towards a predetermined goal or anticipated outcome (a baby doesn’t say “bababa” because it’s goal oriented towards a future in public speaking) but it is a purely exploratory action, reaching out into an unknown world by random mimicry or haphazard actions producing unexpected sensations. That after the event retrospective ‘what was that? That was me doing that’ experience produces a momentary rudimental affective sense of body schema then motivates further curiosity towards other motor actions for their objective and subjective sensory effect autonomously motivating the baby to elaborate on this behaviour (Haar et al 2020). Sieving through a soup of sensory information in this ways allows me to extrapolate what information is ‘me’ as one entity, and what information is ‘not me’ as another entity. This allows a rudimentary sense of ‘me’ to emerge so I can progresses from an exploratory phase of learning marked by surprise and unpredictability to a latter sensorimotor stage of learning. By learning about me and my environment I can strive for predictability when I self-positioned myself in-relation to my environment for an objective pre-determined end and a characteristic subjective experience that is a higher-level conceptual sense of Self (Röder et al 2021).

From the first month of life sensory experiences is primarily derived from integrating primarily proprioceptive input, but also visual and other modalities (sound, vision, pain, and smell) (Röder et al 2021). This means motor skills help colour the lens through which infants initially develop basic lower-level perceptions (e.g. colour, depth, motion sound) and then more generalised higher-level perceptions (e.g. integrating this basic information to contextualise it into self-referential meaning such as what colours, depths, motions sounds are me, what ones aren’t me, how can one effect the other and what does that feel like). Learning and integrating these sensorimotor associations through repetition involves after each event retrospectively associating the probability of causation (action a causing sensation a), over correlation (action a and sensation a occurring by chance). Establishing retrospective beliefs around causation occur initially from strong prior temporal beliefs (i.e action causes sensation if they consistently befall within a close enough time frame), and later spatial beliefs (i.e. action causes sensation if they consistently befall within close enough proximity) (Tanaka & Imamizu 2025) and there are no other alternative explanations (Zhao et al 2025). Whilst these causation beliefs initially involve very broad “rule-of-thumb” pattern recognition (e.g. babies one generic cry to express distress) this sets the basic principles by which bottom-up information is valued, interpreted, and acted upon allowing for a longer-term strategic foresight when adapting these generic lessons to predict specific outcomes in new situations (e.g. babies modelling diverse approach behaviours specific to their needs) (Tanaka & Imamizu 2025).

Being born completely helpless babies are motivated from a self-rewarding intrinsic curiosity to learn how to attune themselves to the fundamental rules of the physical and sociocultural world they’ve found themselves in to gain controllability and strategise for net gain (positive states) (Nussenbaum & Hartley 2024), even if that involves offsetting against loss (negative states). As a central feature of human development learning their environment is controllable i.e. my actions produce an acceptable reliable continuity in physical sensations (e.g. relief of hunger by being fed) and emotional sensations (e.g. how I’m made to feel safe, understood and loved) is derived from the secure attachment styles from caregivers (Paulus 2025). Feeling safe by how their learnt reward-based strategies can control an inherently uncertain but stable environment by making the action-outcome predictions that elicit expected rewards empowers children with a self-confidence in developing models to predictably impact their environment (Nussenbaum & Hartley 2024) that persist later in life as a perceived ability to seek comfort by communicating emotional complexities in relationships (Paulus 2025). Feeling confidently in control by learning causality in essential ‘bread-and-butter’ events, e.g. “I can achieve a desired outcome of feeling loved, fed, etc through a specified action” is a pre-requisite for feeling safe enough to see the world as a playground. Feeling ‘safe enough for play’ means confidentially loosing any top-down filter making all multiple streams of bottom-up information in these one-off unprecedented events unpredicted and novel so it is of anticipated equipotential value in pursuit of a potential reward (from DA neuronal responses) so it becomes attention-grabbing in higher-levels of conscious processing and leads to a lack of spontaneous impulse control (Gao & Sloutsky 2025). This sheer agency experience that fuels this joy of learning action-outcome causality, even if inevitable mistakes are made (i.e. anticipated outcomes aren’t achieved) during this learning process, encourages exploratory behaviour. This allows the agent to take their time integrating action-outcome lessons over a longer period of time to foster cognitive flexibility (Nussenbaum & Hartley 2024) such as self-guided play where motor actions (dropping blocks on the floor) allows the infant to interact with their environment to experience a momentary objective and subjective sensory outcomes (Röder et al 2021) teaching the infant about about gravity and physical dimensions. It also teaches more generalised lessons that values flexibly adapting to an ever-changing world that necessitates surprises or prediction errors in order to experience the pleasure of novelty and learning (Spee et al 2022)

In contrast, trying to establish a sense of control by learning the action-outcome causality needed to produce a positive social-environmental, or pscho-emotional effect in an environment marked by insensitive/inappropriate (e.g. punishing behaviour or retracting from any interaction), or inconsistent/delayed caregiver response (Paulus 2025) is more unforgiving. Being ill-equipped to strategise in such environments characterised by negative rewards and where one has no control over how their anticipated actions can shape a predicted future outcome produces a reduced sense of agency and negative social self-efficacy beliefs. This is because prior to seven, in perceived volatile environments requiring action-outcome plans for safety, an underdeveloped PFC restricts the capability to rigidly exploit existing top-down models that can anticipate a rewarding state by grading what bottom-up stimuli is distracting and should be inhibited in lower levels of conscious processing and what is of value and should have attention directed to it in higher-levels of processing (through selective D1 signalling) (Gao & Sloutsky 2025). The perceived top-down inefficiency to effortlessly processing bottom-up data at different levels of consciousness results in ‘scanning for danger’ where hyper-vigilant threat-related top-down models are biased towards over-interpreting mild or ambiguous bottom-up information so that “potential danger signs” can be bough to higher levels of consciousness. The resultant hyper-reflexivity through motor responses attempts to re-establish a sense of control over how their anticipated actions can shape a predicted future outcome in this chaotic world by affirming learnt action-outcome causality through rigid repetitive behaviours (Tonna et al 2025) for instance directing attention towards objects (e.g. silent play) as to not alienate caregivers keeping them in close proximity. The short-term success of these latest tried and tested action-outcome measures in giving a much needed sense of agency (but not security) and social efficacy beliefs places a high value on narrowing learning, especially if the positive state experienced was ‘better than expected’ (DA), confirms to us how we can optimally adapt to an ever-changing world. But the value placed on using the latest tried and tested actions for immediate gratification inhibits cognitive flexibility by de-valuing any broader lessons learnt in safe environments where top-down threat filters over bottom-up information is non-existent so data can be accumulated over a longer period and given equipotential (DA) value in higher-levels of conscious processing (Nussenbaum & Hartley 2024). But when cognitive flexibility has not been allowed to develop and behavioural rigidity ensues it teaches more generalised lessons that is adverse to the surprises or prediction errors that accompany novelty and flexible learning (Spee et al 2022). This can manifest latterly in relationships through (i) an inability to seek comfort from traditional approach behaviours teaching the value of defensively avoiding emotional interactions relying instead on tried and tested object-derived behaviours to relieve hidden distress; (ii) ambiguity through an inconsistent/delayed caregiver response leaving infants feel they need no doubt as to what the effects of their motor behaviour is going to be persists with relationships marked by a lack of trust and neediness for security and insatiability closeness for fear of being left (Paulus 2025).

But proving how a sense of control can be re-established by executing causation through rigid repetitive predicted action-outcome cycles may not be effective when the environment is incomprehensible. With no overarching top-down plan that predicts how valuing streams of bottom-up information can be integrated within any model, either adaptive or maladaptive, to formulate an effective motor plan for positive affect cements a lack of agency and negative social efficacy beliefs. Feeling overwhelmed by conflict leads to a perpetual cycle between two antagonistic motor codes: motor code one (approach): values the security offered by emotional closeness, but then, by feeling fear from that closeness —> motor code two (avoidance) distances oneself from the potential abusive interaction but fails to quench the original need for proximity and safety (that may have increased with the heightened indecisiveness) (repeat) (Paulus 2025).

Therefore there is a gradual transition from a sensorimotor phase learning nonspecific, non-goal-directed behaviour, i.e. we can recollect ‘motor action a —> sensory state a’ to the formation of ideomotor representations when we decide to experience sensory state —> motor action (Sun et al 2020), this starts from two to seven months when a desire for a comforting familiar sensory affect directs motor attachment behaviours to a specified individual (Paulus 2025) becomes more prominent with maturation of the PFC from seven to the mid to late twenties. As the sensorimotor-ideomotor transition involves an accumulation of sensory experiences from periodic sensorimotor events (‘episodic motor action —> episodic sensory affect’) the sensory states to be experienced are less rudimentary and more evolved than those experienced in individual sensorimotor events. This accumulated lower-level ‘do this —> experience that’ episodic memories of individual sensorimotor events stored in a memory database as episodic memories allows higher-level cognitive processes to creatively extract the commonalities in seemingly disparate episodic memories and weave them together into an ideomotor story. This story tells ‘ how I define the attractiveness of a desired feeling and, as an intentional agent, successfully control how I experience that feeling, even in a new and novel environment, by instigating the appropriate motor actions’. It therefore starts with higher-level around “how” and “why” we want to feel that way, both regards to our perceptions of an event, and our predicted pre- and post-action transitional sensory state and then as these commands descend the cortical hierachey the story details “what” motor actions from specific sensorimotor events are going to achieve that sensory state. Therefore, with ideomotor responses the encoding of sensory goals are duelled with the motor commands that are predicted to achieve them meaning a lack of sensory-motor distinction so a predicted sensory experience (‘goal`) —> motor action.

To this end when a motor action is to be initiated corollary discharges are sent to the sensory areas that are going to receive these specific sensations from these upcoming actions. These corollary discharges from specific motor areas are self-identity ‘me’ signals that tee up the sensory areas prior to movement by telling these (primarily proprioceptive) sensory areas action-outcome timing and qualities. Labelling internal sensations matching those of the corollary discharges (and consequentially the actions that produced them sensations) as being self-initiated by ‘me’ are attenuated, but not completely cancelled out as to produce an anaesthesia (with exception to the oculomotor system). Successfully establishing action-outcome causality attenuates these ‘me’ sensations from my thoughts and actions in lower-levels of conscious processing by compressing the action-sensation subjective time interval so the action and its outcome is perceived as occurring more simultaneously than it actually did. This reduced conscious perception of this effortless action-outcome flow quietens the sensory noise of these self-generated actions (e.g. self-administered tactile stimulus is less tickly and daily movements like walking doesn’t put us in sensory overload) (Blakemore et al 1999) making them more irrelevant. This in turn allows greater attention in higher-levels of conscious processing to other less predictable more relevant stimuli, that, by virtue of not being attenuated is labelled ‘not me’, or external by default (Beño-Ruiz-de-la-Sierra et al 2024). This more surprising bottom-up stimuli (sensation b), that was unpredicted by the higher cortical top-down models of ourselves and the world, is seen as important evidence in how they question, and through abstraction provide meaningful associations, to these pre-existing models in higher-levels of conscious processing. In other words, if , then action a causing sensation b means this error message should be integrated with prior beliefs to update them, so in order to obtain the original goal (sensation a) the forward model refining the motor commands is updated. But not all error messages are perceived as equally valuable their salience depends on their accuracy and certainty as to their predicted rewards (DA) in providing the optimistic/pessimistic updates to the beliefs we models ourselves and our environment on. This means an error message deemed to be of low salience, or with beliefs resistant to updating, sensation b can either be explained away making it predictable and therefore suppressed in lower-levels of conscious processing (Fletcher & Firth 2009).

The sensorimotor cortex continually evolves this action-outcome cycle through an embodied decision-making process. This process being motivated by the anticipated rewards from an upcoming action, decides upon an action, executes it and then learns from what happens after the event (Gharesi et al 2026).  Pre-movement, so long as we have free-choice, we can activate the intentional chain to selectively experience a sensory outcome (goal). Prospective pre-movement phase (ideation): once a planned future-orientated sensory goal is identified the sensorimotor cortex accumulates and integrates multiple streams of sensory evidence, handles ambiguity and simulates all the sub-categories of motor movements to evaluate alternative actions. This establishes a confidence in the forward model’s finally chosen action in achieving what was intended (Gharesi et al 2026) —> selectively chooses to inhibit irrelevant/prime the relevant motor systems —> primed motor system: integrate into one seamless event by subjectively compressing the temporal interval (perceived timing) between the intention to act-performing the action-experiencing the relevant sensory features from the upcoming action (Bertoni et al 2025) —> Movement phase (motion): these forward models are played out through motor actions with the prospective aim of anticipating how to selectively manipulate the action-outcome effect ever closer to a pre-determined goal (i.e. minimal error signals) to gives a ‘in the moment’ implicit sense of agency —> Retrospective post-movement phase: the same cortical areas during and post-movement then monitor the sensory outcomes from the motor actions to see how the forward models they planned and executed pre-movement fared (Gharesi et al 2026). They do this by only placing relevance on the sensations they deemed relevant in the pre-movement phase. The relevance placed on these predicted sensory features in the pre-movement phase means they are enhanced post-movement for performance appraisal (Bertoni et al 2025) and if the sensations were highly predicted and temporally compressed in the pre-movement then they are subjectively experienced as occurring closer towards the action that caused them. This is even when the action didn’t produce the sensation so that the action is subjectively experienced as occurring closer towards what would’ve been its expected sensory outcome just to maintain an implicit sense of agency (Lafleur et al 2025). This temporal compression allows us to retrospectively look back after an event and construct a story that forms causation links between my thoughts and my actions, and my actions and a sensory state, which in turn makes that sensory feedback directly manipulable. Monitoring how an action fared relative to what was predicted by the pre-movement state (Gharesi et al 2026) and knowing I can manipulate this action-outcome cycle allows me to ‘see’ a step-by-step incremental transition towards a pre-determined sensory end-state (i.e. a future goal) which offers a sense of agency, even if I don’t always get it right and misjudge the sensory consequences of my actions in the process of achieving that future goal (Lafleur et al 2025).

In other words, if either from uncertain, weak or conflicting sensory information the sensorimotor cortex pre-movement predicts a low probability of success but surprisingly the outcome exceeds expectations (even if the outcome doesn’t achieve the intended goal) DA neurones will express this positive prediction error to reinforce the value of the modelling that advocated these actions. If a high probability of success is predicted and the outcome only slightly exceeds expectations DA neurones will weakly fire. However, if the sensorimotor cortex predicts a high probability of success from an action but registers an unfavourable outcome this RPE- will discourage future behaviour from these models through DA neurones firing below threshold (Gharesi et al 2026). So correctly applying salience to the right error signals, strengthens the synaptic (DA) learning (especially error signals from unexpected positive outcomes) to retrospectively update the forward-thinking insights from these models and then integrate them with other higher-levels of cognition (Ashby et al 2024). As these models minimise error signal an effortless sense of mastery over our internal or external environments is experienced making the world seem less confusing, less elemental and less disjointed (Lukitsch 2025).

In this early ideomotor learning phase if I’m internally motivated to experience a sensory phenomena, and correctly predict the motor actions I autonomously elicit enable me to experience that sensory phenomena a momentary fleeting sense of ‘me’ as having initiated that action is temporarily experienced. This is because by default it must have been ‘my’, as opposed to someone else’s, higher-level cognitive processes that integrated the constant streams of decision-making thoughts to manifest ‘my’ free will in what I want to experience and what actions I correctly predict are going to enable me to experience it so a momentary SoO and SoA develops. This early ideomotor learning phase produces a rudimental but temporary (non-stable) sense of ‘me’ as an individual entity achieving a goal of eliciting a pre-defined sensory experience, gives a momentary blip of what it’s like to be me as a distinct being from my environment (Synofzick et al 2008).

But early representations born from a ritualistic sensorimotor grounding are very rigid in how things ‘should be’ predicting highly specific sensory consequences of an action (Evans & Leckman 2006). These brittle representations are unable to integrate any real-world complexity in the form of contradiction and contextualisation and is why children need a rigid adherence to “just right” or sameness in their routines where a learnt predictability re-establishes the control and order needed to restore a sensory balance to the anxiety produced from a chaotic uncontrollable world. This is because the rapidly forming, plastic sensorimotor circuits that form these representations organise motor areas (e.g. basal ganglia) with cognitive and emotion processing that are sensitive to unpredictable environments and sensations. The resulting discomfort from feelings of incompleteness and “not just-right experiences”, as well as to childhood adversities. triggers the need to re-establish control from eliciting a pre-defined change through rigid repetitive behaviour (Tonna et al 2025) or a belief in wishing and magical thinking (Evans & Leckman 2006). By moderating fears, negative-emotional temperament and emotional dysregulation stereotypical restricted and repetitive behaviours are normal behaviour between two to six but should taper off by seven where maturation of the prefrontal cortex and more flexible representations drive more flexible context-relevant strategies that gives less salience and hyper-attention to strange minute imperfections or peculiarities (Tonna et al 2025).

This repeatedly burns in the joint encoding of the neural circuits in our representations that intimately merges, through complex causal links, the encoding of motor, environmental, objective/subjective elements so they become undifferentiated into a collective effervescent. This means any slight deviations from the highly specific sensory consequences these representations thought an action would produce (e.g. from a loss of contingency and contiguity in caregiver response) produces a highly distressing “something is wrong” feeling. That is because these representations are formed, and so represent to an otherwise highly vulnerable infant, the unambiguous self-awareness of how they managed to intertwine commonalities from the collective past experiences of their thoughts, intentions and behaviour to give a sense of self-produced security by how they can navigate their dangerous environment by eliciting reliable sensations through a set of actions. Therefore, calling into question this capability, and in turn their vulnerability, leads to a distressing loss of SoA around their physical and emotional well-being (Evans & Leckman 2006).

This loss of SoA occurs by how sensorimotor event are encoded in our representation with dual motor-sensory non-discriminate differentiation. This sensory-motor merges the neural circuits comprising: (i) encoding of objective sensations. Strange sensations, that come from either having to act with no intrinsic motivation, or from acting in a way that produces unexpected sensory consequences; (ii) encoding of subjective sensations. How these peculiar or unrelatable sensations resonate with the individual to give them an emotional salience; and (iii) motor encoding. Encoding the actions that accompanied these strange and unrelatable subjective and objective sensations along side of them also makes the actions feels strange and unrelatable. Therefore, this whole alien sensorimotor experience by how it clashes with all that I know about what it feels like to be me means that, by default, it must’ve been produced and experienced by someone else and not fully by me which in turn blur one’s self-other distinction to compromise self-awareness. Contextualising such alien sensations at a higher-level of processing with more flexible representations effortlessly updates them, but, with an infant’s unyielding representations they are uncomputable producing that “something is wrong” feeling resulting in frustration and a sense of vulnerability that makes them fearful, anxious and easily upset. Until they eventually release their grip on their ‘all-or'-nothing’ representations and use contradicting information to update them to absorb more complexity, non-adaptive behaviours persist, for example, tantrums (Paulus 2025) and continuing to look for objects that they witnessed being moved to a different location. However, even when updated if the representations that an infant has of themselves and of their environment is still so tightly bound they can only represent an isolated sphere of life they are unable to accumulatively integrate with each other to represent the flexibility and adaptability needed for an entire repertoire of behaviour leading to inevitable distress when presented with broader complexities (Evans & Leckman 2006).

This constant 24/7 performance analysis burns the nerve circuits for the later ideomotor phase of more permanent 24/7 (stable) ideomotor representations. These representations hallmarks how my higher-level cognitive process have learnt to form more stable, well engrained stories that logically and illogically, subjectively and objectively, represent what feelings are predicted to be experienced as a consequence of performing specific actions. Such stories narrate how my actions are going to lead to ‘a clearly defined me successfully navigating my environment’, or as a ‘generic failure with no defined individuality and distrust in my capabilities’.

The strength of ideomotor learning, either in the early or later phases depends on (i) clear sensory goal as to what is being willed or intended that resonates with the individual (Massen & Prinz 2008) as a compatible rewarding stimulus; (ii) how strong the link is between what is being perceived and what are the perceivable effects of that action are (Massen & Prinz 2009), e.g. grasping a falling baby will drive a stronger motor movement than grasping a falling piece of paper; (iii) the strength of the tasks ideomotor compatible (=high level of similarity between the stimulus and response) e.g. seeing an arrow point to the left and then pressing a left key (Maquestiaux et al 2020); (iv) blind positive association where all antagonistic impulses and thought are removed (Mason 2008 & Massen & Prinz 2008). Conversely involuntary ideomotor activities can be voluntarily overruled and inhibited. This may occur when an expression of movement is culturally or socially unacceptable in which case it may become inhibited or suppressed. Clinically this may manifest itself as isometric muscle contraction (Mason 2008) “holding yourself tight" or "holding tensions in”. One can speculate if this can be transferred from practitioner to patient during a treatment i.e. if the practitioner is in a state of tension could this cause the patient to inhibit the free expression of their ideomotion?

This mechanism of ideomotor action has been used to explain various instances in which the environment triggers behaviours in an automatic fashion. For instance:

• Mimicry (Sun et al 2020).

• Behaviour from affordances e.g. pressing a button that looks like it should be pressed (Sun et al 2020).

• Goal-directed behaviour and action priming (Sun et al 2020).

• Body language, facial expression or body posture (Mason 2008).

• Yawning (Mason 2008).

• Postural correction (Mason 2008).

• Closing your eyes to go to sleep (Wirth et al 2018).

• Visualisation (motor imagery). Reframing sensory input and its motor responses positively affects motor and cognitive performance and other behavioural outcomes e.g. anxiety, motivation, and confidence. Eliciting brain activation similar to that during physical execution (movement, proprioception, pain, and body schema) improves interoception and potentially even the physical structure of fascia as a sensory and motor organ (Abraham et al 2020).  

Ideomotion and fascial unwinding

Ideomotor actions are unconscious involuntary movements that are performed by a person. It may be caused by prior expectations, suggestions, or preconceptions (Minasry 2008).

Ideomotor action has two important characteristics (Minasry 2008):

• The patient is not aware of causing the movements, and therefore the movements are ascribed to an external force or power.

• The movement feels unnatural, and thus the external forces perceived are usually regarded as being mystical or paranormal in nature.

Minasy (2009) ascribed ideomotion as the motion experienced by patient and practitioner during fascial unwinding. Mason (2008) also attributed it to the palpatory phenomenon described when performing osteopathy in the cranial field. It is proposed to work through three mechanisms (Minasy 2008):

• Stimulation of fascial mechanorecpetors to produce reflex motor effects.

• Suggestion or guiding of movement in a particular direction from the practitioner’s technique.

• Promoting deep relaxation by ‘switching off’ tensions from the conscious mind. Stimulation of the fascial mechanoreceptors and suggestion of movement from the practitioner promotes ideomotion by working at a subconscious level. Whilst the motor movement from this subconscious processing is performed voluntarily by the patient (although it seems involuntary) and they are conscious of the movement the overriding tensions from the conscious mind that can inhibit this movement are ‘switched off’.

Cranial osteopathic techniques may possibly stimulate proprioceptors with direct intracranial effects. 

Schueler et al (2013 & 2014) found branches from the trigeminal nerve that innervate the dura mater and regulate blood flow intracranially also innervate extracranial soft tissues. These nerves, in the rat containing proprioceptive fibers (Schueler et al 2014), run a course originating intracranially to then traverse the cranium via the sutures and emissary canals to terminate extracranially. Extracranially these nerves innervate the connective tissue of the temperomandibular joint, periosteum and cervical muscles. Noseda et al (2019) proposed, not only can activation of extracranial muscle nociceptors cause headaches via their intracranial branches innervating the dura but also, in reverse, activation of intracranial dural nociceptors can give rise to extracranial muscle tenderness.

To initiate or facilitate fascia unwinding two conditions must be met (Minasy 2009):

• The practitioner must posses sensitivity and fine palpation skills.

• The patient must be able to relax and “let go” of their body.

Mason (2008) broadened the definition of ideomotion for the treatment of musculoskeletal disorders. This definition included the use of subconscious motor movements necessary to reach a state of comfort. This is achieved by removing the inhibition and suppression of instinctual motor patterns from pain or tension in order to facilitate and encourage ideomotor patterns to emerge (McCarthy et al 2007, Mason 2008). This can be achieved by regulating proprioceptive feedback.

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