The Perky Psoas

The Perky Psoas

Okay I admit to it, I’m fascinated, even just shy of obsessed, with the Psoas muscle. It’s a widely used muscle that is about the size of your forearm. The Psoas performs a multitude of duties – cooperating with other muscles to support your upright posture. It’s fair to say, when the Psoas is happy, everyone is happy – but when the Psoas isn’t happy (read: stressed), you know it through varying levels of discomfort in the lower back. Your Psoas muscles are twins that are located in the lower back on either side of your spine. The muscle travels around the pelvic area and is attached at the hip with several strong tendons.

You engage your Psoas muscle every time you go up the stairs, or get out of a car, or stand up from sitting. When the Psoas is cooperating, it allows the spine to flex and hips to rotate.

When you’re in your Pilates session your instructor is addressing your Psoas many times throughout your class. When he/she places you on the reformer and aligns you correctly, they are putting you into a position that is going to correctly use the Psoas muscle and give your instructor some feed back as well. Your instructor’s job is to asses what is going on in your body.

Most of us, simply due to our day-to-day activities have some tightening of the Psoas. Usually a tight Psoas upsets the balance in your lower spine, therefore resulting in some lower back pain or tightness.

Pilates gives us some wonderful stretches to undo this tightness. I think one of the best stretches was taught by Pilates elder Eve Gentry – called “Eve’s Lunge.” Place one foot against the shoulder rest and your other foot on the ground next to the reformer. Rest your forearms on the foot bar and push the shoulder rest back, lowering your pelvis into place and elongating the front of your hip. Make sure you’re not feeling this in the lower back. I like to have my clients lower their pelvis into position to make the spring elongate instead of pushing the foot back. This keeps their hips square and properly targets the area.

Here is an exercise you can try at home in your newly created Pilates retreat room.
Hold the back of a chair and lunge your right foot forward – make sure your foot is place correctly (the three foot pads as mentioned in “12 inches” on the ground) and try to hold your spine upright without feeling pressure in your lower back. Hold this position for 20 seconds – breathing in and out. Then repeat on the other side.

Keeping a healthy happy Psoas can only lead you to a beautiful posture. Actually, let’s restate that. Keeping a healthy, happy Psoas can only lead you to beautiful posture, and a pain free low back.

 There is a great web site that deals more with the psoas muscle — here is the link squidoo.com/psoas also there is a wonderful video on youtube from my favorite pilates teacher in Tacoma http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQnmMrCXwV8