Founder of The Om Space and Co-Founder of Inner Guru Training, Serena Burgess, offers a re-cap of her LIVE Hips Practice as part of our #PRWellness Programme. If you missed it, watch the full video on our IGTV!
All I know, is my absolute favourite yoga posture is Pigeon, it has always been. It just feels so good and I love to lay down into it and stretch release my hips. I have always been conscious of my 'birthing' hips and post-child, have learned to be proud of what they've accomplished !
It wasn't until our PR Wellness Expert's session on hips that I learned about the emotions we can actually hold in these 'pockets', for want of a better word.
While I dream of a few 'Pigeons' this weekend, we remind you all of this amazing release by Serena Burgess @omspaceserena.
What is so emotional about the hips? How does tension in the hips translate as stress or tension in the emotions?
Well imagine how your body reacts when you feel threatened or hear bad news. Our primal and unconscious response is to bend forward and raise the knees into the foetal position to protect ourselves. This movement clenches or contracts the hips and therefore shortens the muscles. Often these muscles are never fully stretched out afterwards so we end up walking around and getting on with life with a lot of muscular tension stored in the hips and also lots of unreleased emotions sitting there too.
This unconscious tension can be held from one traumatic event, or lots of little events or even build up during prolonged periods of low-lying stress (that many of us live with on a day to day basis). We might be feeling sadness or fear or anxiety and the tension from these feelings often gets stored in the hips. Your yoga instructors may refer to these emotions as being “stuck”, “trapped” or “blocked” in the body.
It’s interesting because whether we are conscious of our stress and tension or even aware that our hips feel stiff and uncomfortable, stretching the hip muscles causes a release and allows the emotions and the muscular tension to escape. In this way the majority of people feel some sort of release when they do hip opening practices. Some may come away saying “Wow, I just really needed that stretch.” And yet others can come to tears when they are in the pose, as they release old emotions.
During this time of uncertainty about Covid 19 and for some of us this has been a trauma or a series of traumas, and also with so much struggle playing out on the world stage, I felt that a release (for the hips and for our emotions) might be just what we needed.
So I hope that you may make time to grab your mat and join me to release all those feelings and at the very least release your muscles by heading over to @pr_srilanka and following the IGTV video that contains the whole practice.
Let us know if you end up with Happier Hips!
– Serena Burgess, Founder of The Om Space and Co-Founder of Inner Guru Training.