25 October 2025
I’m kneeling with my arms stretched out to my laptop sitting on a stool by the front door. This position is difficult for me. I’m propped up on two stacked yoga blocks, one on the lowest height, the other on medium.
Yesterday morning, I posted a social. “I’m shifting my mindset from stretching to lengthening.”
It was top of mind for many reasons. I’d spent two of three days on an Amtrak between Raleigh and DC. The third day was at a neurotechnology conference. It was a lot of sitting, and my lower back was more achy than I prefer.
At the conference, I saw case studies of what some might call medical miracles and others refer to as cutting-edge science. I call it both. One case, in particular, detailed a nerve lengthening process that the body did on its own, for about a year following a direct nerve repair.
Imagine taking a wire that has been accidentally ripped apart, say, by a vacuum cleaner. Then, after splicing the wires back together and wrapping them in electrical tape, the wire is shorter than it was before the mishap. To make that wire longer, we might need to splice in another piece of wire. But in the human body, that nerve can lengthen on its own over time. It can grow.
I thought, “Of course, my back hurts.” I’m in this folded-up ‘sitting’ position much too much of my life. So much so that my nerves, my wires, are optimized in length for this position. They need to be longer. Stretching is good. It’s great when done daily. The routine can indeed result in the body growing our nerves longer.
But I want more lengthening. More than I thought stretching alone could achieve. I want the kind of lengthening witnessed in those science miracles in DC.
So I wrote the social post and then headed out on a bicycle ride. I had two hours alone in the saddle to ponder this mindset shift.
Saying the words to myself, I repeated, “I’m shifting my mindset from stretching to lengthening.” I thought about my day and how much time is spent doing things like working at a computer, eating at a table, writing, riding a bike, and sitting in a car.
Standing is better. I can stand and work, and go for walks. It’s good. But, to grow my nerves longer, I need to be in a back bend. “How can I be in a back bend long enough to actually give my nerves the time they need to grow?” I thought.
The mindset shift put me in the position to ask that question.
Writing. Writing is something I do a lot of. Most of the time, I’m in my favorite yellow, brown, and light blue flowered armchair. But what if I could do it differently? What if I could learn to write in the sphinx pose?
When I got home, I asked Abby to take a photo of me in the yoga-inspired back bend with my Freewrite. “I just want to see what it feels like,” I said.
This is what I wrote while she snapped the photo:
Learning to write in the sphinx pose. This feels better than I thought. I might need to get a different pair of glasses because I’m looking through the top (distance) part of the lens.
I haven’t been here that long, and I take back what I said about the glasses. My pose is getting taller. The words are becoming clearer.
At dinner last night, Abby and I discussed the day and this story, not yet written. She said, “What other positions can you sit in? What about kneeling?”
“Yes, indeed. I was thinking the same thing.”
She knew that the kneeling position was hard for me. The way the shins fold under the thighs creates a similar tension along my nerves.
So here I am now, sitting on two blocks, writing this essay, giving my body the time to grow. It’s not been in one long session. I’ve had some breaks. We went to the farmers’ market and had lunch together. It’s remarkable how my back pain has already melted away.
The shift in mindset has had immediate results in both creativity and pain reduction. How much and how fast my nerves grow to accommodate writing in spinx and while kneeling? Time will tell that story.
Thank you for reading.
Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.
— Andrew
Originally published in Namaste Now! on Medium