Is Your Stress Coming From Your Hips?
In Ayurvedic medicine as well and other age-old practices, the hips are thought to be a repository for stress and anxiety as well as other emotions.
This could be for a few reasons.
Illuminate me.
The first reason is our anatomy. The most powerful hip flexor muscle is the psoas. It connects the spine to the pelvis and the thigh bones. When it’s tight it can cause a lot of physical stress and discomfort, not only in the hips, but in the low back as well. The psoas is right next to the kidneys and the adrenal glands, in fact, the renal fascia that surrounds the kidneys and the adrenals fuses with the psoas fascia.
The adrenals are responsible for our fight or flight response and the kidneys are responsible for releasing toxins. So, there’s a lot of stress-related activity happening in that area.
Because these structures are so close, it’s thought that worry and anxiety can gather there and just stay, unless released.
Another theory is when our hips are tight, we don’t feel well because we can’t move well. (This is my theory :)) Our hips are at the center of our support whether we’re moving or still. If they’re not functioning correctly, we don’t have good support and that reverberates through the rest of the body. And that’s stressful.
Here’s one of my favorite ways to keep my hips open and keep stress at bay:
Try it…
Sit cross-legged (crisscross apple sauce). I like to sit against a wall to support my back
Rest your hands-on your thighs, close to the knee, palms down.
Give a gentle push of the hands into the thighs and let the thighs gently push back.
Breathe slowly in and out five times.
Repeat five times, then remove your hands and rock your pelvis from side to side, letting your hips bend.
Repeat.
If you find it hard to sit cross-legged, you can sit up on a book, block, pillow or really anything the provides a little height.
You can also support your knees by bringing any of those above-mentioned things underneath.
Try not to let your hips be another place where stress can hang around during the holidays.
Keep them moving and open.
Try it and let us know what you think. Contact us here. We’d love to hear from you
Wishing you happy hips!