As it happens, it isn’t exactly rocket science to understand why the psoas muscles get tight. The answer is, "insults and injuries". When we get uptight, we get tight. To free psoas muscles, see the end of this piece.
Insults and injuries form memory patterns. We never completely forget. Insults and injuries leave their mark in memory.
The memory patterns aren't just psychological; they are psycho-physical. Muscular tensions are involved. The term, "uptight" is literal. The memory of painful experiences is not just "inner" and "emotional", different from the body, but present as the felt state of the body: patterns of tension and other stress-induced changes -- the physical sensations of the memory, carried all the way through to the core and experienced to a greater or lesser degree as physical changes that affect not just how we feel, but also how we move.
The psoas muscles are involved because they are constantly involved in movement and in balance. When they tighten, our movements and balance change -- and, as core muscles, they're involved with all other muscles and muscle groups to different degrees.
The memory patterns aren't just psychological; they are psycho-physical. Muscular tensions are involved. The term, "uptight" is literal. The memory of painful experiences is not just "inner" and "emotional", different from the body, but present as the felt state of the body: patterns of tension and other stress-induced changes -- the physical sensations of the memory, carried all the way through to the core and experienced to a greater or lesser degree as physical changes that affect not just how we feel, but also how we move.
The psoas muscles are involved because they are constantly involved in movement and in balance. When they tighten, our movements and balance change -- and, as core muscles, they're involved with all other muscles and muscle groups to different degrees.
For that reason, single-muscle releases of the psoas muscles miss a lot of the tension pattern of which tight psoas muscles are a part.
(For the clinicians out there, the tension is part of a larger pattern of psychomotor/ neuromuscular tension activated by stress and maintained as an activated memory pattern, and that kind of tension involves the body-core.)
There’s more.
In "An Essential Understanding of the Psoas Muscles", I use the term, “open core”. I refer to a person’s “full stature”. I talk about the nervous system’s centralized role in regulating muscular tension in arising from rest to sitting, standing, and walking; for each of those movements, a corresponding state of mind exists. I’ll go into that shortly; as you’ll see, it’s pretty obvious, when pointed out.
MEMORY
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First, we release; then, we must integrate the movements of our psoas muscles into better coordination into the entire muscular system. That requirement also gets missed in common therapies -- which is one reason they work only as well as they do.
RELEASE
"Release" doesn't necessarily mean catharsis. It means getting unstuck. Catharsis is the explosive uncorking of pent-up emotion when we release resistance to doing so suddenly. Better, to regulate the resistance and the emotion, together, and do the releasing gracefully and essentially comfortably.A person stuck in a habit pattern is enclosed in the habit and to that degree, closed to new experience. There’s no space. All there is, is the repetitive replay of memory. Noise. The closed (or hard-) core condition.
A deliberate, new action can modify a habit – but only if that new action first softens up the habit. Otherwise, the habit prevents change past a certain stage. That's another reason why common therapies work only as well as they do.
One way to recover the intention that created it is to do, deliberately, what the habit does automatically until you can feel yourself doing it, rather than it happening to you.
The saying is, "Whatever you are doing wrong, do it more, and then less. That action (done enough) melts the mold of a habit so that it can be remolded.
To hear his experience, click above.
In that state of “melt”, you no longer feel trapped in (and by) that habit. Now, there's the space for change.
Of course, you need to know what that tight psoas muscle pattern is.
Step-by-step instruction in a program such as Free Your Psoas, guides you into and through the tension/movement pattern, as it exists throughout the entire muscular system -- overcoming one of the shortcomings of common therapy.
HOW THE PSOAS MUSCLES ACT IN REST AND ACTIVITY
The different states of activity are common states of mind.* REST/REPOSE: no intention, unreadiness for action, no engagement with experience
Although sleep may seem the very definition of rest, sleep is no necessarily restful. Ask anyone with insomnia. Dream sleep involves emotional, mental, and subtle physical activity (e.g., REM -- Rapid Eye Movement sleep). Deep, dreamless sleep is as close as most of us come, and generally, tense people stay tense even during sleep. Waking repose is generally not full rest.* SITTING: coming to some higher degree of activity; mental and emotional engagement
* STANDING: coming to a still higher level of activity; active mental, emotional and physical engagement
* WALKING etc.: coming to a still higher level of activity and engagement
- If the psoas muscles are simply non-functional, they express a pattern of immaturity in which the person is either passive, relatively receptive like a child, without initiative, or without the capacity to formulate a deliberate intention and more concerned with outer appearances than with true intentions. It's an arrested (ar-"rested") state of development.
- If the psoas muscles are equally tight, left and right, but very tight, they express the stuck pattern of sitting and the mood of sitting -- limited action and actually a restraint upon standing up for action (taking a stand). It's an arrested state of starting things.
- If the psoas muscles are equally tight, but free enough to permit standing up without pain, they express a pattern of self-restriction (repressed action).
In this state, we see and feel an arched spine. The spinal muscles, which tighten as arousal level increases, arch the spine backward; the psoas muscles pull the top of the pelvis and lumbar spine forward, and contribute to the arching. The person exists in a state of co-contraction, which involves low grade low back pain from back muscle fatigue.
- If the psoas muscles are asymmetrically tight, they usually express a stuck pattern of action, as if stopped mid-step in a walking action. It's an arrested state of follow-through and often the state of a prior leg or foot injury that triggered a cringe response and changed the walking pattern.
Alternately, there may have been a hard fall or other pelvic injury that knocked the sacrum (central pelvic bone, in back) off center and triggered a psoas muscle response, in which the psoas is incorrectly identified as the center of the problem.
- All cases of chronically tight psoas muscles prevent the ability to come to complete rest.
Both physical and emotional trauma can create a memory impression sufficiently gripping to create chronic muscular tensions of this type.
These memory impressions function as if the situation is still happening in present time – with the attendant emotional flavor and arousal state.
As I said in the other article, as a generality, people never experience deep rest; they/we are stuck at some level of activity, some level of tension, stuck in some pattern of memory, of arousal, of reactivity, of resistance to outer things and to things inside ourselves.
As the psoas muscles are involved in every state of arousal from rest to full activity, a person stuck at some state of activity has psoas muscles (and actually, the entire musculature, to some degree) stuck at some level of activity. This statement is, of course, an oversimplification, but as a generalization, it holds good.
To the degree that we are stuck in a memory at the physical level (memory of repetitive action, memory of injury), at the emotional level (memory of experience, memory of insult), or at the mental level (memory of worldview, memory of limitation), we are stuck in a closed/hard-core condition, unavailable to new information, new experience, change.
In general, we are held in a pattern and prevented from coming to our full stature, our best balance, our self-assurance, our freedom.
That means that psoas muscles don’t lengthen freely when coming from sitting to standing. We never get completely out of the crouch; we never elongate fully unless we apply extra effort (generally as an automatic action). We never come to our full stature.
And we are always held in a pattern. It’s just that the pattern may be long-term dysfunctional or short-term functional.
If it’s long-term dysfunctional, we are responding out of habit, maintaining our pattern with a sense of friction against some outer experience or in a state of conflict with our inner experience or preference, in a kind of chronic state of emergency.
If it’s a short-term functional pattern, it's emerging and changing in the moment, playing out freely as a stream of experiences: sensations, emotions, ideas arising without an effort to prevent or force them, a creative stream of new emergence by which we may bring something new (not memory-based or conforming to an existing memory mold). Psoas muscle tension in this case is, generally, subconscious, but can be felt from manual pressure on the psoas muscles or tendons.
The mold of memory keeps us in patterns of tension, formed some time ago. To melt the mold of memory permits us to continue to dissolve, and evolve, to reshape all the way through to the core.
As “melt” progresses (as in somatic education techniques), we elongate and straighten into looser movement and a more comfortable balance. By melting, we surrender both to staying the same and changing. We let ourselves stay the same, and also let ourselves change -- the psychological dimension of physical changes.
Without that “melt”, attempts to free the psoas muscles and the core are limited.
Put yourself together, better. Know distinctly the difference between getting better and getting such small improvements that you have to take it on faith that improvements are happening.
The self-relief program linked below guides you through the process.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lawrence Gold is a certified Hanna somatic educator providing lasting relief for a range of pain conditions, including tight psoas muscles. He offers a money-back guarantee. Contact him at https://somatics.com/wordpress/contact.
These memory impressions function as if the situation is still happening in present time – with the attendant emotional flavor and arousal state.
As I said in the other article, as a generality, people never experience deep rest; they/we are stuck at some level of activity, some level of tension, stuck in some pattern of memory, of arousal, of reactivity, of resistance to outer things and to things inside ourselves.
As the psoas muscles are involved in every state of arousal from rest to full activity, a person stuck at some state of activity has psoas muscles (and actually, the entire musculature, to some degree) stuck at some level of activity. This statement is, of course, an oversimplification, but as a generalization, it holds good.
To the degree that we are stuck in a memory at the physical level (memory of repetitive action, memory of injury), at the emotional level (memory of experience, memory of insult), or at the mental level (memory of worldview, memory of limitation), we are stuck in a closed/hard-core condition, unavailable to new information, new experience, change.
In general, we are held in a pattern and prevented from coming to our full stature, our best balance, our self-assurance, our freedom.
That means that psoas muscles don’t lengthen freely when coming from sitting to standing. We never get completely out of the crouch; we never elongate fully unless we apply extra effort (generally as an automatic action). We never come to our full stature.
And we are always held in a pattern. It’s just that the pattern may be long-term dysfunctional or short-term functional.
If it’s long-term dysfunctional, we are responding out of habit, maintaining our pattern with a sense of friction against some outer experience or in a state of conflict with our inner experience or preference, in a kind of chronic state of emergency.
If it’s a short-term functional pattern, it's emerging and changing in the moment, playing out freely as a stream of experiences: sensations, emotions, ideas arising without an effort to prevent or force them, a creative stream of new emergence by which we may bring something new (not memory-based or conforming to an existing memory mold). Psoas muscle tension in this case is, generally, subconscious, but can be felt from manual pressure on the psoas muscles or tendons.
IN THE ABSTRACT
In the abstract, an awakening or filling out of somatic awareness involves recognizing when we are stuck in stress-patterns (memories) and then progressively melting the mold of memory.The mold of memory keeps us in patterns of tension, formed some time ago. To melt the mold of memory permits us to continue to dissolve, and evolve, to reshape all the way through to the core.
As “melt” progresses (as in somatic education techniques), we elongate and straighten into looser movement and a more comfortable balance. By melting, we surrender both to staying the same and changing. We let ourselves stay the same, and also let ourselves change -- the psychological dimension of physical changes.
Without that “melt”, attempts to free the psoas muscles and the core are limited.
AND CONCRETELY
Clinical Somatic education is a good place to start. Here's where I present practical means for freeing tight psoas musclesPut yourself together, better. Know distinctly the difference between getting better and getting such small improvements that you have to take it on faith that improvements are happening.
The self-relief program linked below guides you through the process.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lawrence Gold is a certified Hanna somatic educator providing lasting relief for a range of pain conditions, including tight psoas muscles. He offers a money-back guarantee. Contact him at https://somatics.com/wordpress/contact.
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