A 20-Minute Yoga Sequence for a Tight Psoas Muscle

No matter if you're glued to your desk for hours on end or you're always on the move, even activities you love, like running or cycling, can trigger a chronic clenching in your psoas muscle.

And here's the kicker: You might not even feel the tension there. Instead, it sneaks up as slouching posture, nagging back pain and even gastric distress.

"Release your psoas and you release all the 'issues of your tissues,' including endorphins and everything that you're holding emotionally, mentally and physically," says Jeri Reeder, a yoga therapist and instructor at Wellspring 88, a wellness collective studio and non-profit foundation in Redondo Beach, California.

Nestled deep within your body is a hidden hero, the psoas major muscle. This unassuming yet incredibly versatile muscle is the unsung champion behind everyday actions like pulling your knees to your chest, walking up a steep hill or gracefully ascending stairs.

But here's the twist: This muscle isn't just a behind-the-scenes performer. It's a movement rock star, ensuring your posture is on point, your joints move with ease and your body enjoys a full range of motion.

"The word 'psoas' generally refers to the combination of both the iliacus and the psoas major muscles," says yoga teacher trainer and author David Keil.

These two muscles cross the hip joint together and attach at the same point on the femur. The iliac and psoas major are the largest, strongest and most important of several muscles that control hip flexion, which makes the psoas the most important postural and structural muscle group in the body.

Your psoas is like the only bridge in town that connects your lumbar spine and your hip joint. It starts around your lower back's last thoracic vertebra (where your bottom-most ribs attach to your spine), wiggles through the pelvis's wing-like bone (the ilium), teams up with the iliacus and finally, hitchhikes its way to the femur's lesser trochanter (aka your hip bone).

"When in balance, this group of muscles supports standing with stability and ease, allows full and safe range of motion in the lumbar spine, supports the internal organs without compressing them and allows your breath to flow strongly and freely," says yoga teacher and author Mark Stephens.

On the other hand, with a weak psoas, your spine would round, your torso would hunch forward and your knees would be permanently bent, according to Stephens.

The psoas has deep origins in our most primal instincts. Back in the earliest days, it helped our ancestors outrun predators.

It makes perfect sense from an anatomy standpoint: The psoas begins at the spine, which also happens to house a hub of nerves at the core of your central nervous system. When you experience fear or tension, the nerves activate. When a sense of danger kicks the nervous system into gear, it in turn activates the psoas muscles, telling your body to get ready to run.

Today, the psoas is still our go-to muscle group for responding to modern stressors, though these days our stress more likely comes from overflowing schedules and financial worries than a saber-toothed tiger.

And unlike those ancient threats that are immediate and brief, the stressors, and therefore the tension in our psoas, often sticks around way too long. And the longer muscles are tensed, shortened and stressed without release, the more you'll feel it and the longer it will take to move past it.

The great news is that by consciously embracing yoga poses designed to relax, stretch and strengthen your psoas, you can set this secret superhero free from its habitual tension patterns. This means not only improving your posture but also boosting your ability to face and overcome stress.