Do you know what I love at the end of a long, busy day?
A nice, cold, single arm raised in the air while I lay on the couch. Nothing beats it. I’ve earned it.
If you do the same and thought you were a bit weird for it, let me just assure you that you’ve never had a unique experience in your life and these arm raises are no exception to that rule.
In fact, according to Dr Karan Raj, a surgeon and TikTok creator, there’s actually a biological reason behind it.
Why do we like to randomly put our arms in the air?
According to the doctor, doing this may be a form of comfort or actually something that breaks physiological tension in the neck or shoulder muscles, improving blood flow and minimising nerve compression.
However, it may also be a form of self-simulating behaviour or ‘stimming’ which Dr Raj says are “often seen in various types of neurodiversity”.
This stimming helps to regulate sensory input or decrease sensory overload in something that Dr Raj describes as a “biological circuit-breaker” which ultimately helps a person relax.
Dr Raj also states that this behaviour can also be seen in neurotypical individuals, so doing a lil’ arm raise at the end of a busy day is, “not an automatic diagnosis of a certain type of neurodiversity.”
If you’re prone doing this while lying in bed, Dr Raj says that this could be because your body might automatically adopt this comfort position to help you zone out or sleep.
He said that if you tend to do this often, it becomes a learned behaviour that you immediately associate with comfort, taking it form just being a ‘reset’ button to something meditative.
He ends quite plainly with: “whatever your reason for doing this, it’s just the body, bodying.”
Well, quite.