Hip-Opening Yoga for Tension Release

The hips are the hinge of our body, where every time we sit, bend, stand, run, or walk…

we depend on their strength and stability. In my memoir, Borrowed Wings, I describe

how I suffered an avulsion fracture and the perils that came afterward. It took my hip

injury for me to be aware of how important the hips are to the body. During recovery,

pain would flash through me if I moved my torso or legs without consideration. Hip-

opening poses were not in my athletic training, but they are a part of my regimen now.

Our spirits rely on us to take care of the human body we carry around to navigate the

human experience. With a focus on hip health, you focus on your abdominal and leg

regions, which are two important powerhouses in overall human strength. You can

incorporate hip mobility into exercise warm-ups, or you can incorporate it into exercises

like yoga.

Yoga goes hand in hand with hip mobility, expansion, and improvement of its health.

With the hips connected to the holistic body, one assumes the energetic benefit of hip-

opening poses strikes similar to the physical benefits. Most of us have tension,

especially in our hips, because of factors like our jobs, commuting, raising a family, and

unvisited trauma. Hip openers release tension felt at a deeper level. I love yoga's hip-

opening poses—lizard, cow face, pigeon, and crescent lunge. Yoga means in Sanskrit

to join or yoke, which makes sense of why hip-opening poses in yoga exist. The hip

joins other major pieces of the human skeleton. The skeleton, muscles, and connective

tissues work through breath and guided flow to perform the poses. Hip-opening poses

are rewarding and releasing. If you join me in my virtual yoga class, there is minimally

one hip opener in my sequence flow.

With love and light,

Mary Love