How trauma and Emotions are stored in the hips
If you have ever attended a yoga class and sat in a humble pigeon pose for an extended period of time, what was only minutes but felt like hours, you will understand the connection of your hips and your emotions. The emotional release experienced in this position can be so intense and overbearing that you may cry, whether or not you are consciously aware of what is happening or why the emotion is arising. If you have felt this, I am sure you don’t need to see research to back it up, you know what you felt. However, I am here to tell you that what you are feeling is real. The reason stretching out your hips can cause such a cathartic release is all thanks to your Psoas Muscle. Given the name, Muscle of The Soul, in many traditions and spiritual spaces, it is truly a force of nature to understanding the mind body connection. Let’s explore this deeper.
What is the Psoas Muscle
The group of muscles called the Ilopsoas consist of the psoas major, the iliacus, and the psoas minor (this minor muscle only exists on some people, it serves little individual purpose and has evolved out in a lot of people!). Together, the iliopsoas muscle group is the strongest hip flexor in the body. The psoas major is 16 inches long and holds significant importance as it is the only muscle that connects our lumbar spine (at the L5-L5 vertebrae) to our legs (at the lesser trochanter of the femur). As a result, it carries a lot of weight, both physically and metaphorically speaking.
The functions of the psoas muscle are many:
Flexes the hip
Stabilizes the spine, is a major postural muscle
Allows the leg to swing freely when walking
Flexes your trunk forwards when you bend over
Bends your hips and legs towards your chest, such as when climbing stairs
Now that we have a technical understanding of where the psoas muscle is located and how it functions physically in the body, we can read between the lines and make a connection to how and why the psoas impacts our emotional and spiritual state so deeply.
Breath and Nervous System Regulation
When we look deeper into the fact that the psoas connects our spine to our legs, that it is a postural and stabilizing muscle, and that it flexes our hips, we can start to understand why and how it is essentially a storage drawer for our trauma and repressed emotions.
B R E A T H
The psoas muscle attaches to the diaphragm by way of 2 tendons called the crura and the medial arcuate ligament, which wraps around the top. The significance of this is that if your psoas muscle is too tight, you will experience compromised, shallow chest breathing. This is because your rib cage will be thrusted forwards and your back will be arched. As a result, you are taking in less oxygen, overcompensating with your neck muscles when you breathe, and signaling to your nervous system that your spine is out of balance.
A lack of deep breaths that fully reach your diaphragm and long, deep exhales can cause anxiety, depression, and overall mess with your ability to regulate your nervous system. Breath is our lifeline. Not only is our survival dependent on it down to our cells, but it is how we tell our brains that we are safe and it is okay to let our guard down. When you are taking full breaths, your psoas muscle will actually initiate a movement of the diaphragm that massages your vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is imperative to down-regulating the fight or flight response.
This is a vicious cycle, because the reason your psoas is tight in the first place is most likely due to an already dysregulated nervous system.
N E R V O U S S Y S T E M R E G U L A T I O N
Here is the real juice of the blog. Through attachment to the diaphragm, your psoas muscle junctions at the solar plexus. The solar plexus is referred to as the 3rd chakra in Ayurveda and signifies inner wisdom, confidence, boundaries, and decision making. In anatomical terms, the solar plexus is a complex of nerves and ganglia found in the very center of your abdomen and is an integral part of the sympathetic nervous system, which creates our “fight, flight, or freeze” response.
When we experience a trauma, our bodies basic instinct is to contract inwards to a fetal position to protect our vital organs. The very derivation of the word stress is a latin root for “to be drawn tight”. This exact contraction utilizes the iliopsoas muscles to bring this position to life and hunch forwards and pull our knees to our chest. Unlike animals in the wild who visibly shake their bodies after a fight or intense encounter to release chemicals and energy, we do not do this. Instead, our psoas contracts and tightens and we get stuck this way, reliving the trauma in our muscular language day in and day out. The result of this is chronic pain, depression, anxiety, shallow breathing, and a multitude of emotional issues. Linking it back to the Ayurvedic belief of the solar plexus, a chronically tightened psoas will compress our solar plexus and express itself as a feeling of being victimized, a lack of confidence, and an overall withdrawal from life.
Aside from the solar plexus, the psoas muscle is also interwoven with the lumbar plexus. The lumbar plexus is a collection of nerves that innervates the pelvis and legs and contains a multitude of sensory nerve endings within the psoas. As mentioned with the solar plexus, a tightening and tension within the muscle will compress the plexus of nerves, impairing their functioning and our interoception, or ability to sense our inner sensations. If our actual physical muscles and nerves are being impacted and trauma is discerning our ability to understanding what these sensations are even telling us, it is no wonder that a simple pigeon pose releases so much without us understanding why.
Signs of a Tight Psoas and How to Heal
Liz Koch, author of Core Awareness and The Psoas Book, is a proclaimed expert on the link between this muscle and emotional storage. She describes the psoas as more than a functional muscle, but as a perception organ consisting of bio-intelligent tissue that embodies our deepest urges for survival and flourishing. She quotes in her book, The Psoas Book, “The psoas is so intimately involved in such basic physical and emotional reactions, that a chronically tightened psoas continually signals your body that you’re in danger, eventually exhausting the adrenal glands and depleting the immune system.”
Let’s review some physical manifestations of a chronically tight psoas that may be overlooked by you or your doctor, but are important to take note of:
As states by Liz Koch, “Whether or not the organs can rest and function comfortably is due to length and tone of psoas”
Other surrounding muscles will take over if your psoas is not toned or is too tight, which can cause:
Low back pain
Pelvic pain
Radiating pain towards the knee
Difficulty walking and sustaining erect posture
A tight psoas muscle can impair functioning of blood flow and nerve impulses to pelvic organs and legs, in addition to a torso that is shortened in length.
Anterior tilt in the pelvis and disproportionate lengths of legs
Constipation from a lack of blood flow and nerve impulse to pelvic organs and legs
Sexual dysfunction and severe menstrual cramps
Shallow chest breathing
Overall exhaustion
H e a l i n g
Unpacking, witnessing, befriending, and relating the emotional storage vessel in your hips is a commitment. It cannot be done in one yoga class, talk therapy session, or self-help book. Remember, your body has held onto this tension for so long because the memories etched into your muscles truly believe it is still not safe to release. They are protecting you, and they need to be approached with that same level of care and softness to reverse the damage done. I strongly advise working with a health care professional who has expertise on your specific trauma informed care and individual body, but here are some general guidelines to release the psoas:
Begin by tuning into what your hips have to say in your daily life, during yoga, when you stretch and exercise, during sex, etc. All healing begins by conversing with your body
Acupuncture is an incredible way to signal to your nervous system that it is okay to relax and release. Whether or not you consciously know what is going on, your acupuncturist can work with your body to release tension and signal safety
Thai massage can be an amazing way to lengthen muscles and work with your sacred energy to relate spiritually and physically
Emotional release. Resistance only feeds into tension and tightening. Your body is already engaged in a fight, don’t feed that energy. Breathe deeply into your pain, surrender to it until you find its’ core
Self release stretches. Adapted from The Body Heals Itself by Emily A. Francis. Start by lying on the edge of your bed with the edge of your glutes at the very edge of the bed. Hug one leg at a time into your chest with a bent knee and note whether or not your other leg is able to hang below the plane of your hip bones.
Affirmations. Add in deep breathing and affirmations while you do this stretch for a maximized, mind-body release. I am safe. I am secure. I go with the flow and not against it. I trust I am being lead to the highest possible outcome.
Your psoas is more than a muscle. It is a bridge between your body and mind and soul. It is a storage vessel for unprocessed emotions and fears. It is your energetic core and a gentle shelf for your organs. You need to communicate with this muscle and become familiar with it, it holds so much of you. Although humans have a reptilian brain at our core controlling our autonomic nervous system, we are not animalistic in the sense that we just do not know how to shake off negative energy once the danger is gone. Whether or not you think about it every day, your body does. Your muscles have etched in them all the negative energy and fears and sadness you have held on to. There is so much to learn from this part of our bodies, and I hope this blog invites you to explore it further with a gentle, curious, and compassionate nature.
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