Tight Psoas Muscles?  Sit Too Much?
Channel: Lawrence Gold
Date: 04/06/2015

Free Your Psoas | all most people need 
http://somatics.com/psoas.htm
http://somatics.com/psoas_muscle_pain_treatment.htm
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Free Your Psoas | all most people need 

http://somatics.com/psoas_muscle_pain_treatment.htm
505 819-0858 | hereness@somatics.com

Your psoas muscles are also your "sitting muscles". Too much sitting, they get conditioned to the "sitting" tension pattern -- hip joints flexed, muscles partially tense. This video is about the condition and getting out of it.

In the '90s, I became aware of a fanciful seating alternative called 'The Nada-chair".

It consisted of two loops, about thigh length, attached at opposite sides of a back-pad.  The loops went about ones knees, the back-pad behind your sacrum/low back.  The pull on the loops by your knees pulled the back-pad against you, creating a secure support for your back.  All you needed to do was stay balanced.

The ilio-psoas muscles perform a similar function, although attached at your groins, not at your knees.  The part that pulls on your back like the back-pad (but on the inside), we call the psoas muscles; the part that pulls on your pelvis from the inside, we call the iliacus muscles.  Together, they share a tendon at your groin, and so we call them the iliopsoas muscles.  They span the distances between your groin on each side and your low back and between your groin and your inner pelvis on both sides.  Their pull on your low back is like the pull on the back-pad, only along more of your back as high as your diaphragm; their pull on your pelvis on both inside surfaces pulls the pelvis top-forward, adding to the support of your back. 

In that way, your iliopsoas muscles are like the Nada-chair.  When you are sitting in a chair, your iliopsoas muscles shorten to hold you up, especially if you are sit perched on the edge of your chair (as so many do), but those muscles shorten also in those who slouch back in their chairs and hunch forward.

somatic education program to free tight psoas muscles

SO, in closing

If you spend too much time in your chair, particularly at attention at a high level of stress, with minimal movement, in either position, you have successfully followed the formula for creating tight, short iliopsoas muscles.  Congratulations.

Not only that, but muscles under tension formed this way and maintained by habit are the first to tighten under stress and the last to let go when the stress is over.  That's one explanation for why people mysteriously tighten up into pain some time after an injury.

Sit for too many hours all the time, your Nada-chair muscles get set at a shortened length.  You can never really stand up all the way.  If tension accumulates, those muscles may become too tight even when lying down and you won't be able to sleep on your stomach.  The same thing happens with your hamstrings and your back, only it's your knees and back that get affected, until you develop groin pain, deep pelvic pain, a deep belly-ache, and possibly sacro-iliac pain.

PRACTICAL
*Full article:  Your Psoas Muscles -- Healthy and Unhealthy -- and How to Get Them Healthy
http://ezinearticles.com/?Your-Psoas-Muscles---Healthy-and-Unhealthy---And-How-to-Get-Them-Healthy&id=9191765

*  video of exercises and introductions to exercises to change postural set and movement

Tight Psoas Muscles?  Sit Too Much?
http://youtu.be/mtazxhtcKek
Clinical Somatic Education | a New Discipline in the Field of Health Care
https://www.youtube.com/user/Lawrence9Gold?feature=mhee

#psoas_muscle_pain
#how_to_free_your_psoas
#groin_pull_pain
#iliopsoas_bursitis