Not many people know this…. but I like to make time each week to stretch my hips and practice my Yoga Lotus Pose.
Why? Because your Hips are one of the larger muscle groups that can become quite stiff unless you’re regularly stretching your hips. Also your Hips tends to store a lot of emotional stress, tensions and unresolved emotional pain. When you take the time to stretch your hips you release a lot of built up tension and this can help you feel better and sleep better.
Practicing Yoga helps you to feel a connection between your physical self and your mental and spiritual self. Our inner and outer experiences affect our physical body in the form of tension (or flexibility) and imbalance it is not till you roll your yoga mat out on the floor and lay down to start doing your hip stretches that you truly realise just how much tension you may be holding on to.
Hips store trauma. Any time you experience a traumatic event, your hips cling onto it and store it for hours, days or often times, years. How? When you’re stressed out, your body responds by tightening/clenching. This is most visible in tight, hunched-over shoulders or clenched fists. What isn’t visible is the tightening of your hips, but it’s happening. And trauma causes a huge compression or tightening in the hips. Just like people who are stressed a lot have extremely tight shoulders/neck, someone who has experienced trauma has extremely tight hips. (This is especially true of sexual trauma because of the proximity to your reproductive system.)
Hips store stress. The tightening of your hips is more severe in a traumatic event than an everyday stress. But stress builds up over time, and can really take a toll on your hips if you don’t work it out. This is very obvious if you take a yoga class that focuses on hips, because students often say they feel so much less stressed when they leave; it’s because they were able to relieve stress that was stored as tension in the hips.
Hips store anxiety. One reason you might have a lot of tension in your hips is that you suffer from anxiety. Repetitive stress will quickly accumulate in this instance.
It makes sense that all these feelings would be stored in our hips. Our hips are located in a central place in the body, and are a woman’s center of gravity. All those feelers are being suppressed in the nucleus of our body.
Releasing this tension is wonderful, but know that it can also stir up emotions (which is kinda why it’s wonderful).
Releasing that tension can open up unhealed wounds. When you begin to release stored tension, you can open up wounds — the wounds from the trauma or stress that is being stored in your hips and caused the tension. It’s not uncommon to feel a rush of emotions in hip-opening poses. It’s a good thing.
Emotions are healthy. Because we are taught to remain poised and collected to not to express our emotions to try and keep them locked away so no one else can see. However by giving yourself permission to roll out your yoga mat and stretch your hips you are making time to process whatever stress and emotional tension you are carrying on to.
It can be hard. It can make you cry. But it allows you to work through the emotions and move forward. It allows you to open up space for love, compassion and positive things in your life. It can help you work through the root causes of issues you might be facing with addiction, food or an eating disorder. It helps give you freedom to just be … happy.
Here is one of my favourite Hip Opening Sequence that I personally do and practice I try and make time at least once a week to do this sequence and as the months roll by you will get more and more flexible in your hips when you first try this sequence don’t be disappointed if you don’t have much flexibility it will come with time, patience and regular practice.
Let’s Open Our HIPS Shall we – Try this:
Yvette aka
Spa it girl xoxo
source: yoga inspo
pic: {tara stiles & self}