Why Do We Rock?

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i love this site. a few clicks and posts and i feel almost normal.


i'm very new to even knowing what the spectrum is and it's always nice to see people talking about things that i think about.


i cannot understand how other people can get by without moving. i do little dances, tap my feet, pick at old scars, play with my hair, pick at my fingernails, i hate sitting at a computer without a spinny-chair, and i just generally wiggle a lot. i don't often rock but i do when i get really stressed.


seriously though, what's wrong with all those "normal" people who can't feel the beat? i don't mean a literal beat (although i can't help but move to the music) and i really can't explain what i do mean without talking in circles for an hour and i just don't have time for that.

then again, dancing in silence is really easy with vnvnation stuck in my head.

I too can dance in silence as I listen to songs in my head. On Saturday in the check-in queue at the airport in Mozambique, I had the Macarena playing over and over and I was dancing to it. Usually I would stop dancing if I was talking to someone, but I was feeling extremely odd (some kind of generalised anxiety disorder I have had lately), so I explained to the person I was chatting to (an AIDS doctor) that I have Asperger's Syndrome, and asked her to excuse me for not keeping still as we were talking.

One possiblity is that rocking might help stimulate and regulate the vagal system. It's also been found that vagal nerve stimulation can reduce certain autistic-like behaviours (Murphy et al. 2000).

[Murphy, Wheless, Schmoll 2000. pediatr Neurol 23:167-68.]

I rock when I'm stressed, but I actually rock more when I'm engaged in something. Like reading WP. Even reading stories to my kids I rock back and forth. Its impossible for me to sit still. If I can't rock, I find that I end up flapping or something else more "inappropriate."

I have no problem with sitting still (although I have a very hard time sitting with my feet on the floor, I have to sit with my legs under me) I generally only rock when I am upset. I can also do it absentmindedly sometimes when I am lost in thought. I really love the back and forth sensation. I love to swing on swings or rock in rocking chairs or what have you.

I think there's many reasons for rocking but I'll bring up one that hasn't been mentioned: Its not just autistics who rock, think about it mothers rock their babies to soothe them and lull them to sleep. So it seems that it is natural for humans to enjoy that sensation. I suppose most people are just too constrained by social norms to allow themselves to do something considered 'odd' or childish.

All throughout school and even now in college, i cant seem to sit completely still.I must either be bouncing my leg up and down, moving my feet, squirming, chewing on a pen, or "playing with and crackng my fingers" and moving my neck and head around until it cracks.I also tend to stretch alot due to uneasiness.

I do mildly "bob" my head and rock a bit if I have a bad toothache or something.

I sometimes rock when I'm stressed -- or when someone mentions rocking, thanks very much, Poke!

By the end of the last Iconography conference I worked, I was rocking almost constantly whenever I sat down, to the point that one of my fellow students commented on it at the party afterward, but nicely. He sort of grinned at me when he sat down at my table and said something along the lines of, "Oh, good! Someone else rocks, now I can, too!" One of my professors sat next to me during the presentations on the last day and about half-way through I realized I was rocking pretty obviously. I was really embarrassed and started to stop myself and try to sit still, but then figured the guy had already seen it and was very likely going to see it again before the next two and a half years are up, so it didn't really matter.

Since learning about AS, I have found myself very gently rocking when sitting at the computer. It does feel kinda nice...

interesting thread. i've never knowingly done any of the rocking or pacing about. growing up i used to just stay as still as possible so as not to draw attention to myself.

What I do though is a lot in my head, i very often play about with words or phrases that i hear, splitting them into syllables, sounds, their letters etc. sometimes writing them out with my finger without noticeably moving my finger.

And a lot of the time I've got a song or rythm playing constantly in my head, I've been listening to Neil Young a lot recently, and so during the day I can recreate in my mind the whole song and sound, a lot of the time i prefer that to actually listening with earphones. Is this just me?

I do tend to fidget about with my toes a bit, but of course noone can notice that.

Thank-you to those who have posted the medical info (about endorphins, and the vagal system -- never even heard about the vagal system!). Knowing the 'technical details' makes it more calming for me when I make vigorous movements, because I can say to myself, "This is not a sign of madness; what you're doing is good for you. Keep going, keep those endorphins flowing."

My neurochemistry is unusually disturbed at the moment (my psychiatrist thinks it was triggered by relationship problems, and the pressure of having tried to live a 'normal' life for so many years). I was flapping and shaking and wiggling in the car all the way to work as I was driving (e.g. at a traffic light with both hands, and then when driving just with one hand or otherwise rocking as I was driving). I realised that other drivers could see me and possibly may have thought, "This woman is crazy or on some drug, and could have an accident!" but in reality the fact that I was doing it was calming and therefore I was actually less likely to have an accident because I was doing it.

I also decided, drat this 'suppression of stimming to please society' -- if I go to meetings or social events, I will 'behave' so as not to embarass my friends, and so that I can do business deals smoothly; but when I am driving, I am not anyone's colleague, companion or family member, so I can do what I want in my own car, and if I want to stim because it does me good, I will jolly well do it.

These days I also start my day by wiggling about or stretching and curling in my bed. When I was a child I used to do this before falling asleep.

At work I am usually bouncing my leg.

I was thinking that I just rock and do not flap my hands. But it just occurred to me that I do in fact flap them; I flap them when I get really excited about something. Once in a while I will just become giddy with happiness at some little thing and just have to let it out and that is what happens. I never thought of it as "hand flapping" behavior probably because it seemed to me a sign merely of an inability to contain joy. And I never thought being joyful was a symptom of AS.

I don't really know why i rock. But i often do it when i'm clearly not stressed or anxious or whatever... sometimes i'm just relaxed and thinking. Lately, i pretty much rock whenever i'm in a hard chair that has me sitting up instead of laying back. The stimming thing is funny, though... Because, other than stimming, i really don't do much physical activity. In fact, i'm pretty lazy. Most of the time i just want to be sitting in my chair instead of being up walking or something... So... it's not like i'm hyperactive, AT ALL... But sitting in my chair often involves leg-bouncing or foot-flapping. So, yeah.. I prefer to be relxing, just not while being very still.

As for flapping... I've never noticed myself doing that in the usual way, but i do kind of shake my hands(if you've seen mozart and the whale, i noticed that donald does it a lot) from time to time when i'm stressed.