Psoas Release - Unlock your body in times of lockdown

In my initial online Yin Yoga class, quite at the beginning of the global lockdown, I chose a sequence the release the Psoas area on our body - the hips.
As it’s such a prominent area in our body the store stress and tension, I like to focus on this area in my Yin classes, so in this new episode in our lives due to Coronavirus and the uncertainty it brought with it, I thought it’s most logic to bring some attention to your hips and to release tension, physically and mentally.

The Psoas muscle is also know as the muscle of the soul, but why focussing on a muscle in Yin as we want the relax the muscles to sink beyond the muscle tissue to address the tendons, ligaments AND the fascia?! The Psoas is the bridge from the lower body to the upper body as the lower body is seen as YIN while the upper body is seen as YANG. Already this fact makes it perfect for Yin. But correct we don’t aim the stretch muscle in our Yin practice, but the tissues around it so we using the border term to get an idea to locate where we focus on.
Yin and Yang are the needed two polar opposites in our life, we need both, in balance, for a healthy existence and also to able to handle times when one of the two is over represented, which is basically the situation of our everyday life with the demand for multi-tasking.
As Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. points out the need for yin and yang in our lives, thinking about love and fear, „love fuels growth, in contrast fear stunts growth“. These are probably the most two extreme polarities in the human existence. 

From its location in the human body, the Psoas runs from the mid back actually the second lowest rib, close the kidneys, through the trunk to connect with the femur bone, which allows us to move, to have an upright position. So it runs pretty much through the area of our hip flexors. Unfortunately our modern culture is strongly dominated by sitting. So instead of moving that part of our body, keeping it active we cause it too shorted simply be the lack of movement. 

When we recap our daily structure it becomes obvious, we sit to much, in car, planes. And not just in our ways of transportation, it starts in the mornings when we have breakfast we sit, we commute we sit, we sit down in the office, for lunch, in meetings, after work for dinner, the movies or the telly and than back to sleep, the same the next day. That’s no criticism, it’s just how we structured our days and tighten up our hips. In return it makes us less lose from the hips on the dance floor. Moving less smoothly, but even worse the tighter our fascia in this area becomes the lower becomes our resilience to deal with stress and fear or to put it into other words, the likely it is that we can relax, let go.
In fact, the Psoas muscle is a place where we store stress and trauma that happens to us our whole life through, and this can and will effect our mood and outlook on life.
When we find us in a state of fear we are easily to manipulate, that’s something advertising, marketing, politics use against us as daily business.
There is actually a term referring to that, the „lizard brain“. While our fast-pace lifestyle (mentally and literally thinking of our social media attachment) versus our sitting culture, there is a great conflict in releasing all the stress we experience from all those outer influences. Which results in fearful thoughts and enhances anxiety. So the lizard brain refers back to the oldest part in our brain, the brain stem, which triggers our survival instincts auch as aggression and fear, which also commonly referred to as „fight & flight“ response.

The physical effects of fear and anxiety are horrendous - fatigue, pale complexion, narrowing of the arteries, decreased nutrient absorption and alternations in gut motility, decreased immunity, while increased cortisol and muscle protein breakdown - just to name a few!

So where does the body store all the unneeded stress? In one of our biggest muscles, the Psoas. As mentioned before this muscles stretches from the lower trunk through our hips to the top of our thighs. That structure gives us core stability and the fight-flight reflex. Our sensors are always on alert, just to protect us in life from falling when missing a step of stairs, experiencing an argument, a violent movie scene - on matter if a actual physical responds is needed or we are living a stressful episode mentally, our body releases adrenaline. Which under „normal“ circumstances would makes us run for our lives, a very primeval instinct that still rules our actions. So we would run to release the adrenaline. But nowadays we would hardly say, already boss well received, just let me go for a run and speak later, instead we were told from a very young age to keep us together. To be still. Perfect to make sure we store all that negativity in our body, in our muscles making them sore and leading to all kinds of health issues like insomnia. lowered immune system, anxiety, eating disorders, depression and living constantly in a state of fear/alert.
That pretty much fits to our new situation in lockdown. All trusted routine, structure is screwed, we are left in a state of massive uncertainty.

With the intimate connection of the Psoas to our physical and mental wellbeing, our physical and emotional reactions we experience a state of constant danger, exhausting the adrenal glands of our body. As we learn to approach the world without this chronic pain, as we apply the Yin to our workout, as re-learn to read our body signals on safety and danger. As we learn to let go, we can find our way back to greater sense of peace. There’s a billion ways to let go, to relax, but the greatest teacher is within you! Trust your intuition to find the pose that suits you the best to relax, from the inside out! 
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