Sitting With Discomfort
The health benefits to opening your hips
Learning how to sit with uncomfortable emotions is one of the gifts your yoga practice offers you. This might not sound great when you first hear it, but the benefits far outweigh any resistance.
The exceptional benefits of a consistent yoga practice open you up physically, mentally, and emotionally. When you are in tune with your mind-body connection powerful changes begin to take place.
Take hip openers for instance. It’s not uncommon to hear a yoga teacher talk of negative emotions. Saying things like anger and frustration being stored in the hips.
But what does that mean?
How is it possible for your body to store negative emotions?
If you’ve ever found yourself struggling with anger while stretching out in Dragon Pose you might begin to understand.
If you were to look at an Xray of your hips right now you wouldn’t be able to find evidence of trauma. You wouldn’t be able to see anger or frustration.
So how come this is such a popular saying in the yoga world?
Hips and Emotions
The Struggle is Real
Because the sensation of a traumatic experience is so real that you can feel it years, even decades after the traumatic event.
If you’ve been through a traumatic experience, or are currently going through a negative experience, the tendency is to replay the trauma or memory over and over, again and again. And every time you replay that memory your body reacts to it as if it’s happening.
You see, the body doesn’t’ know the difference from an actual experience or a recycled one.
You might be so connected to a trauma that it has been playing as part of your subconscious for decades. So overtime you have trained your body to connect that fear, anger, or stress into your body physically.
There are two major systems we need to identify
- The Nervous System
- Our Connective Tissues
The Nervous System
This is the system largely controlled by the brain. And our brain is moldable. Meaning that the neural pathways are constantly changing according to our thoughts.
In other words, if you think the same thought day after day it begins to hardwire those thoughts into your brain.
Connective Tissues
Your connective Tissues are designed to conform to the way we think.
For example, when you are living in fear or are experiencing a negative emotion you’ll curl up.
Sad or Depressed feelings tend to have us hunched over, eyes down. Whereas when we feel good and receptive our body is open and confident.
So Trauma replayed over and over does begin to get stored in our connective tissue.
Yoga helps us stretch through that discomfort and build new pathways.
Because a trauma response tends to create a spinal flexion you will end up feeling sore, tight, and pain in the hip region. it is a natural reaction to our “fight or flight” stress response.
As you settle into a deep hip opener the emotional scar of your past situation will begin to rise up. If you don’t learn to process these emotions as they come up you will be left feeling stagnant.
The beauty of sitting with your discomfort is that you will begin to work through the feelings. Maybe not in one class or one year of classes, but you are working through those layers.
Difficult emotions are not something we want to deal with. We tend to push them down. However, if you find yourself looking to have a solid yoga practice they must be dealt with.
Very often we don’t know why we began to cry during a yoga class. Some emotions are so deep-rooted that we are completely disconnected from the release. But no doubt, a release just occurred.
Releasing Tight Hips
When you start to make friends with your body and mind difficult emotions will surface. When you open parts of your body that hold on to these emotions you are being shown a map. Your own personal map. And every release will lead you to the next layer.
For most of us, our hips are tight. They are filled with so much tension and need release. This is why we love and hate a good hip opener.
The next time you’re setting up for pigeon pose think of the deep cleanse you are giving your hips. When your mind starts to gravitate towards anger and your muscles begin to tighten, return to your breath. Ask yourself why am I feeling this strong emotion.
In order to release these traumas from our bodies, we must first deal with them.
You can start to release these stagnant emotions trapped within you in as little as two minutes. The hard connective tissue in the hip area will begin to open up as you explore what’s happening in these tight areas and breathe.
If you are a student of yin yoga then you are already familiar with the power of a deep fascial stretch. Yin yoga helps your body to stay calm in discomfort. Once you are feeling calm and protected your nervous system will work to connect new sensations within each posture.
One traumatic experience or multiple small ones all lead to stored tension in your hip area. Now that you know it, you can better identify how to work through some of your discomforts. The deeper the suppressed emotion the tighter it will hold on and fight for its existence. This is sometimes referred to as stuck or trapped emotions.
Breathe Through the Discomfort
Begin to make friends with your discomfort. Like anything, it just wants to be acknowledged. Stretching through your hip muscles will allow these stuck emotions to release. Slowly, over time.
Now that you are prepared to confront your unresolved emotions remember to be cautious and go slow.
It took years of that trauma being replayed to hardwire into your thoughts. As you begin to let it go understand that it will need some coaxing and understanding. Continually come back to your breath.
As you breathe through the surfacing emotion you may feel as though a weight has been lifted. Often bringing a tear to your eye. Be present with whatever comes up. Trust that this is leading you to a better, more open future.
A future of your highest potential.
