Release Your Psoas

These 10 poses can help you create the internal awareness needed to access the muscle that is the key to your structural ability.

By Liz Koch

The Ultimate Stretch

All variations of the lunge (sometimes called "runner's stretch") and Pigeon Pose are excellent for stretching the psoas, but for many students the best is a modified Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana). When you stretch one leg out in front of you and one behind you while keeping your pelvis stable, you isolate the stretch in the psoas and iliacus muscles attached to the back leg.

To come into this pose, start by kneeling on all fours. Swing your right knee forward onto the floor between your hands, releasing and rotating the right femur within the right hip socket, and bring your right buttock toward the floor. At the same time, extend your left leg straight back behind you. Make sure you keep your hips level and squared to the front. If necessary, place a firm bolster or pile of blankets under your right sitting bone to keep your pelvis level and supported. Don't bring your right buttock to the floor by torquing your right hip farther forward or farther toward the floor than your left.

This posture stretches your left psoas. As you continue to extend back through your left leg, check again that you are keeping your pelvis facing squarely forward. If the pelvis torques, you'll lose the psoas stretch, and you may also compress or overtwist the lower back. If you're stretching properly, you shouldn't feel tension in your lower back. The release and stretch should begin where your psoas crosses your hip at the front of the joint, and you should feel an upward extension through both the front and back of your trunk. The line of your body should form a continuous arc, with no abrupt angles.

Seated Poses

Now that you've discovered how it feels to release and lengthen your psoas, we'll use a simple cross-legged posture to illuminate the proper use of the psoas in seated asanas.

Sit on a firm, folded blanket, with your feet and lower legs off the blanket. Bend your right leg and draw the heel toward your left inner groin. Similarly, bend your left leg and draw the heel toward your right shin. If either of your knees feels strained or if one knee is higher than the other, support that knee by placing a rolled towel or blanket or bolster under the knee or thigh.

Begin to notice where the weight of your torso grounds through your pelvis into the floor. Does most of your weight fall behind your sitting bones, or in front of them? If you sense your weight grounding directly through the bones, refine your questioning. Is your weight more on the front of the bones or the back? Lift your sitting bones off the blanket and pull back on the muscles of the buttocks, so that when you lower down again you shift more firmly onto the front of your sitting bones. See if this action provides a more effortless base of support for your spine, rib cage, and head.

To align your pelvis properly, you may have to raise your sitting bones by placing flat, firmly folded towels or blankets under your buttocks. When you get all your props placed correctly, you'll be on the front of your sitting bones, with your knees lower than your hip socket. This relationship between knees and hips is critical in all seated postures because it allows your psoas to open at the front of the hip; in turn, this opening allows a release of tension throughout your legs and lower back. As the weight of the body releases down through the bones, it grounds into the earth, and a subtle sensation of support rebounds upward.

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