Yoga for the Hips
Updated: Apr 6
Emotions have an impact on our body. Very often, a discomfort or unusual feeling may have an emotional rather than a physical cause. Each type of emotion has its impact on several organs and body parts, including the hips.
We can say that our organs are storehouses of emotions and different organs hold different emotions. I write this with personal experience and I have realised that being aware of this emotional connection helps in the self-healing process. Here are some organs and the emotions that they are associated with.
Kidneys - fear and wisdom
Liver - frustration, anger and kindness
Lungs - grief, sadness, anxiety, courage and trust
Heart - joy, impatience and hate
Are Our Hips Trying to Tell us Something?
Our hips do an amazing job of carrying our body in perfect balance. It’s an important area with which we thrust forward in life and give birth to creative ideas and decisions. As we work the hips with yoga poses, we massage our organs, which helps release stored emotional energies. This may bring thoughts and feelings like frustration, annoyance and anger to the surface as they are released.
In my last post, I mentioned affirmations. Let’s choose a powerful affirmation for our hips. Here are some sample affirmations.
"Hip-Hip Hooray! There’s joy in every day; I am balanced and free."
If you are suffering from hip problems right now, you can choose this one: "I am in perfect balance. I will move forward in life with ease and joy at every age."
The Bhagavad Gita says, "Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self”. When we start our yoga practice, we are embarking on a journey with a goal to unite the body, breath, mind and spirit. The same goes with yoga for the hips. There are many yoga postures to open the hips and some of them, like the splits (Hanumanasana), are challenging. They are the type of postures that we have to progress towards. The splits vinyasa yoga video that I am showing here will help you do just that at your own pace.
As we gently move towards more challenging poses like the splits, we should always be conscious of our range of movement. We should never overdo anything and injure ourselves. Anything that moves us into an unfamiliar area should be done mindfully, with plenty of patience and with love towards ourselves.
If you have progressed beyond beginner levels and are familiar with body alignment, you can follow my Splits Vinyasa Yoga video and give it a try. I hope you enjoy it. Everyone is welcome to the session, but if you are new to yoga, it is preferable that you start with the Gentle Hip Yoga video on my YouTube channel. It's more suitable for beginners and a good place to start and practice until you become better with alignment. Enjoy :)
Yoga For the Hips – Video
Namaste and love from Katya!
Recommended Books
The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga - Bernie Clark
This is a wonderful book, especially for further exploring Yin Yoga as a teacher or student.
You Can Heal Your Life - Louise L. Hay
An amazing book available on Amazon. You will find useful information on body affirmations and using the mind to heal the body.
