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The hip is the area on each side of the pelvis and this joint is one of the largest and most unique joints in the human body responsible for bearing weight, stabilising the core, and moving the upper leg. The tighter your hips are, the less mobility your body has. This can result in pain and hinder daily activities like walking and climbing stairs. Tight hips can also cause an anterior tilt of the pelvis which results in poor posture and misalignment of the head and neck. This goes to show how important the hips are when it comes to how the entire body functions.
The big story within the hips revolves around the iliopsoas muscle — a deep muscle group located toward the front of the inner hip. The psoas is the deepest support of our core.
The pelvis is full of our creative, reproductive organs. It contains the centrally located psoas muscle that connects the upper and lower body (the breath and diaphragm to the legs) making the core of our body important both physically and emotionally.
When you’re stressed, your emotional and physical health can both suffer. People with trauma or other mental health conditions like anxiety and depression often experience physical symptoms as well.
Of course, each body type is different. How one person holds stress in his or her body may not be the same for another. However, neuroscience and somatics point to the hips as a potential storage vessel for emotions. They also offer a window into emotional healing.
The concept of the root chakra
The chakras are the seven centres of energy that move through your subtle body, starting at the crown of your head and travelling down to the base of your spine. When spinning properly, each chakra allows energy to flow through the body. However, if one of these wheels is blocked, your well-being can suffer. The first chakra, muladhara, or “root chakra,” acts as the root of the body. If your root chakra is out of alignment, you may feel depressed, anxious, or even constipated.
The first chakra, called muladhara, is located at the base of the spine deep in the pelvic floor. “Muladhara” means root, and is associated with the earth element, linked to your ability to dig in and feel firmly rooted in your life. Its associated colour is red, hence its links to the earth. This energy centre is associated with your sense of security and stability with your surroundings and with your own body or skin. It provides you with a base or foundation for life. When energy is flowing through the first chakra, you feel firmly grounded in yourself and the world around you. Your body is your subconscious mind and the physical body can change depending on what you’re feeling as emotions are electrochemical signals that carry emotional messages throughout the body. They are then expressed, experienced, and stored within the body and mind. This can influence activity in the brain and change the cells to either have a positive or negative effect on the body. Each cell carries a kind of consciousness that stores memories and emotional states.
Signs of blocked Muladhar energy
The root chakra is associated with the physical body and includes the adrenal glands, colon, kidneys, skeleton/bones, muscles, and arterial blood that flows through the left chamber of the heart, carrying oxygen and nutrients to our body tissue. Blocked energy in the root chakra may lead to lethargy and the body feeling physically drained, problems in the colon and with the bladder (unusual weight gain in the pelvic region), irregular menstrual activity, inability to eliminate or detox the body’s regular substitutes through the excretory system, either you eat too little or too much or have the tendency to eat a heavy meal at midnight which disturbs the sleep cycle.
Effect on mental health
When your root chakra is blocked, you might experience some of the following: feeling distracted, a lack of concentration, feeling exhausted or lethargic, increased anxiety, stress or depression, feeling stuck, an inability to take action, tiredness, lack of focus in your career, negativity and even a disconnect with the real world.
Ways to release old emotions
There are several ways to release fear, trauma, and stress associated with tight hips. These include somatic exercises, yoga, stretching, mind-body practices, massage, and somatic experiencing therapy.
Somatic exercises
Somatics offer a way to enhance the mind and body connection. These awareness practices involve focusing on your inner experience as you perform intentional exercises. This includes — rolfing, shaking, body-mind centring, the Alexander technique, the Feldenkrais method, and the Laban movement analysis.
Yoga & mind-body practices
Practising yoga is another way to release tension in the hips and get the full body moving. Some good options include sun salutations, pelvic stretches, and hip flexor stretches to increase the mind-body connection like qi gong (a meditation technique), tai chi (light martial art), dance and pilates.
Massage the arch of the foot
The arch of the foot correlates to the psoas muscle in reflexology. You can tell the state of your psoas by observing the arch alone. If you’re massaging your foot and this arch in the foot is collapsed, then you might have an overstretched psoas, or if it’s held tight, you might have a tight psoas. Working this lateral arch of the foot in reflexology means you’re going to be working with the lower back or down (in the hips). By applying pressure to the arch of the foot, which is where the psoas and adrenal glands spots are located, you can also release some of the tension in your hip area.
Takeaways
If you experience stress and anxiety regularly, get acquainted with how it feels and where it may be held in your body. While you might notice and talk about your experience with a mental health professional, it’s another thing to use movement to release stored tension. The hips are an important storage vessel for emotional stress because of the psoas’ link to the adrenal glands and the location of the muladhar or root chakra. Next time you’re in yoga class doing hip-opening postures, you might just notice that there’s a lot more going on than just a simple stretch.
(The author is an obstetrics & gynaecologist surgeon, and a counsellor at the Army Wives Welfare Association.)