Do you spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer, on a plane, in a car, in an office chair? If so your hips could be locked up which affects range of motion, but even worse, it may be causing you undue stress and fear.
The core stabilizing muscle located near the hip bone affects mobility, structural balance, joint function, flexibility, and much more. In addition to its function to help keep the body upright and moving, the psoas is believed to allow you to connect with the present moment especially when it is stretched out and tension is released from the body.
Some books such as Liz Koch’s The Psoas Book claim that there is a relationship between the psoas muscle and daily anxiety, which allows people to connect to the present moment. According to Koch, this muscle “literally embodies our deepest urge for survival, and more profoundly, our elemental desire to flourish.” The author also believes the location of the psoas in connection to the diaphragm explains how this muscle could be responsible for symptoms associated with anxiety and fear.
The psoas tends to get tense due to our increasingly sedentary lifestyles or by sometimes being very active but not stretching nearly enough. Relieving the psoas’s tension can alleviate your fear and anxiety. Here are some stretched to keep it limber and relaxed:
The problem lies in the way our lives are constructed, with not nearly as much thought given to our core survival needs and instincts as our desire to succeed, achieve and compete in society. Therefore, this places our psoas in constant ‘fight or flight’ state, making the muscle always stressed and constricted.
This state influences many parts of our lives, even your level of contentment with it. In people who have an over-constructed psoas due to things like bad posture and wearing shoes that distort the figure, fear can be manifest itself in very real emotional as well as physical ways.
Yoga poses and exercises represent some of the best ways to lengthen and strengthen the ‘muscle of the soul’ while acupressure and chiropractic care help release a psoas muscle which has become tight from excessive driving or sitting in front of a computer. By restoring the form of this muscle, it is believed one can control the physical and emotional tension.