How To Loosen Hip Flexors
How To Loosen Your Hip Flexors
If you’ve been sitting a lot lately, most likely you have tight hip flexors. These are the muscles that allow you to lift your legs. They attach to the top of your thighs and the back of the spine. This a a very simplistic explanation but I don’t think you are looking for an anatomy lesson here.
My guess is you simply want to feel free in your body and if your hip flexors are tight, it can really restrict your movements and cause pain in different areas of your body including giving you back pain, hip pain, knee pain…
Your pelvis separates your upper body from your lower body. Because your hip flexors are in the pelvic area of the body, when they are tight and constricted the body compensates with other parts of your body and that’s why you can have pain in different places of the body not realizing the cause of the pain is actually coming from your tight hip flexors.
Stretching isn’t the best way to get long term results. The body has a brilliant way of protecting you from over-stretching your muscles. It’s called the stretch reflex. When you reach into the stretch, the body pulls you back so you don’t get hurt. Think of it like putting on the gas and the brake at the same time. This is why athletes are no longer told to stretch to warm up. They’ve found it has actually reduced performance.
The somatic release I share in this video is the best hip flexor release I’ve found. Somatic releases work at root cause which is…the BRAIN! The brain controls your muscles. When you repeat poor movement habits, the brain can “lose” control over those muscles and it won’t allow them to go back to a relaxed state. This is called Sensory Motor Amnesia.
Somatic releases work to give control back to the brain. We use a technique called pandiculation. Pandiculation is a 3 part technique. You first contract the muscle which informs the brain on the muscle(s) you want to release. Then you slowly release the contraction. And the third part is a complete relaxation of the muscles.
Do this release daily if you are sitting a lot. While this move will give you a noticeable release, when you go back to sitting, the muscles will contract again. The more you do the release, the more the brain will allow those muscles to lengthen over time.
En-Joy this release and let me know how it works for you!
If you en-joyed this release and found it helpful, check out my Gentle Somatic Yoga class package. You’ll find doing multiple releases in a class so helpful because you will be releasing the cause of your discomfort and pain very gently while also relaxing your whole nervous system. It’s like a moving meditation that leaves you feeling incredible in your body.