{"id":1534,"date":"2010-01-25T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T00:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somatics.com\/wordpress\/freeing-tight-psoas-muscles-the-well-tempered-psoas-the-inner-psoas\/"},"modified":"2010-01-25T17:07:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T00:07:00","slug":"freeing-tight-psoas-muscles-the-well-tempered-psoas-the-inner-psoas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somatics.com\/wordpress\/freeing-tight-psoas-muscles-the-well-tempered-psoas-the-inner-psoas\/","title":{"rendered":"Freeing Tight Psoas Muscles | The Well-Tempered Psoas | The Inner Psoas"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>A<\/span>s it happens<\/span>, it isn\u2019t exactly rocket science to understand why the psoas muscles <\/a>get tight. The answer is, “insults and injuries”. When we get uptight, we get tight. <\/b><\/p>\n

(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.) When we get injured, we tighten up in Trauma Reflex (cringe response)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n            Insults and injuries form memory patterns.  We never completely forget.  Insults and injuries that occurred when we were not up to the demand of an experience leave their mark in memory. Immaturity may lead to painful experiences. And the memory of those 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 resident in memory and activated — <\/i>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.<\/div>\n

\n            For that reason, single-muscle releases miss a lot of the tension pattern of which tight psoas muscles are a part.<\/p>\n

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\n            There\u2019s more.<\/p>\n

            In “An Essential Understanding of the Psoas Muscle<\/span><\/span><\/a>s<\/span><\/a>“, I use the term, \u201copen core\u201d.  I refer to a person\u2019s \u201cfull stature\u201d.  I talk about the nervous system\u2019s 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\u2019ll go into that shortly; as you\u2019ll see, it\u2019s pretty obvious, when pointed out.<\/p>\n

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\nMEMORY<\/b><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n
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Click to get started, for free with
\nFree Your Psoas self-renovation program<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

       Chronically tight psoas muscles indicate the existence of stuck movement-memory patterns. To free tight psoas muscles, we must release the trigger of the tension — whether the memory of activity (movement), of a sensation (injury), or of emotional stress.  Then, we must integrate the movements of our psoas muscles into larger, healthy postural and movement patterns, such as those of sitting or walking.<\/p>\n

          “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<\/i> suddenly.  Better, to regulate the resistance and the emotion, together, and do the releasing gracefully and essentially comfortably.<\/p>\n

           Memories are congealed patterns of experience. The more we return to them, the more ingrained they get.  Then, they show up as habitual patterns of tension.<\/p>\n

           A person stuck in a habit pattern is enclosed in the habit and to that degree, closed to new experience. There\u2019s no space. All there is, is the repetitive replay of memory. Noise. The closed (or hard-) core condition.<\/p>\n