What could your hips tell you?

When you’re tense do you tighten your belly and clench your butt? Grind your teeth, hunch your shoulders? Furrow your brow, shorten your breath? Probably all of these, and probably you don’t know you’re doing it! It’s no wonder we get headaches, feel tireder than we should, and have muscles persistently flexed and inflexible. In this week’s theme I want to consider the area around the hips, stomach, and bum. We hold tension here for most of the day without being aware of it. Every annoying situation, each unsatisfactory interaction, every harsh word, leads us to tighten these areas. Chances are we forget to release them and so for most of the day this unconscious habit keeps us bound up in tension that no longer has any reason to be there.

That’s why I love cueing a couple of long-held poses in my Yin classes and sometimes at the end of a Flow class just before Savasana. You will need to have a bolster and a block. The two poses are supported Sphinx, and Mermaid.

In supported Sphinx, lie on your belly, legs long, tops of feet on the mat, with your torso and head supported by forearms and palms on the mat, elbows under shoulders. Place the bolster across the mat to support the chest, and put the block at the top of the mat to support the forehead. Now close your eyes, let the block and bolster do their jobs of supporting you. Take a full minute to intentionally release the muscle tension in your neck, head, shoulders. Begin to slow your breath, be conscious of the feeling of gravity gently pulling you toward the mat. Notice the relaxation starting to spread into you.

Now for step two: move your focus to your hips, glutes and thighs. This is where your attention is needed most. Release your belly toward the mat, soften your glutes, let the thighs melt. Have you done this now? Check again! It is likely you’re still holding on in those areas. Breathe in, and on your breath out, once more soften these areas. Keep at it, you’ll be surprised how long it takes for this to happen. As the minutes pass you may notice your lower back softening, and a palpable wave of relaxation sweeping through you.

In Mermaid, we use a bolster across the mat and drape our body sideways across it. The bolster sits in the concavity between the hip and the chest. The legs can be extended long on the mat, or with knees bent and stacked. The arms are stretched toward the top of the mat above the head, palms touching. The side of your head is resting on the lower bicep.

In this pose you are stretching the side body and what makes this special is the gentle action on the hip and iliac area. Start by intentionally relaxing your muscles - belly, legs, neck and shoulders. Then observe what you’re feeling. Is there a slow-building sense of ease that is physical - but also more than physical? A sense that starts as embodiment but that transforms into something not-quite physical, maybe even emotional? That’s the magic of this pose. I interpret it as a reversal of our physical reaction to stressful situations - emotional stress makes us tense up physically; so if we intentionally release the physical tension the process flows the other way, producing an emotional de-escalation we barely knew we needed.

Try it out, see how it feels for you.