The Power of Positive Hips
Did you know that the hips are one of the areas that can hold the most tension in the body? Because I sure didn’t…and I can’t say I was surprised to hear this. My hips are tighter than [insert image of something very tight...if you think of something good, write it in the comments]. My whole body is muscularly tight…I always attributed it to the 15 years of piecemeal weight lifting I used to do for various sports in high school. You know…you do the stuff that’s the easiest (like calves, quads, hamstrings) and skip the other stuff (upper body). What I’ve ended up with is a full set of seriously tight joints. I never really thought tension itself was to blame.
Given this hip “issue,” I’ll tell you my life can really suck sometimes. Sitting hunched at a computer for long stretches doesn’t help. So, this is all a long way of saying, tight hips in yoga means pain (and not just stupid pain but gut-wrenching, fiery, scorching, lightning bolts of pain up the front, back, and sides of my legs)…in nearly every pose possible. I can’t touch my toes, sit on my knees, or hang out in down-dog without trembling…why…you got it…hips.
So I’ve been really focusing on these things. And you wanna know what I’ve come to conclude is working…thinking about them. It’s Harold Hill’s “think method” from the music man. I swear it’s working. I’ve been thinking about my hips loosening up…and I think they are. And here’s why I think it works. Whenever I approached them as so tight, I think I would brace myself for the ensuing pain. And it was real…because the bracing was a tension. Today (and it helps that it’s about 90 degrees here), I felt like they were more open before I even bent anywhere and guess what…palms almost to ground. Magical.
But so what? Who cares about my hips? Even I don’t care about my hips. But I did think it’s an interesting lesson if applied elsewhere in life. Imagine what would happen if every time we approached something we dread, instead of bracing for it and expecting scorching pain, we just thought about things as “looser”? We might have a chance at being much happier and generally cooler than we have ever been in our entire lives.
I like the “think method.” I think it could work.