YIN YOGA FOR THE THIRD EYE

Every person on the planet has intuition, but not every person chooses to listen to it, and for many of us it is clouded by negative emotions and experiences that we are holding on to and not processing. This third-eye chakra yin flow targets the hips; which offer a window into emotional healing. With a clear mind and a calm heart, we can then not only tap into our intuition for greater clarity, but also be able to trust it as well.

When we’re stressed, our emotional and physical health can both suffer. People with trauma or other mental health conditions like anxiety and depression often experience physical symptoms as well. Through it all, there may just be a common link: the hips. Of course, each body is different. Where one person holds stress in their body may not be exactly the same for another. However, neuroscience and somatics point to the hips as a potential storage vessel of emotions, and here’s how.

The hip is the area on each side of the pelvis. The joint itself is one of the largest and most unique joints in the human body, responsible for bearing weight, stabilising the core, and moving the upper leg. The tighter your hips are, the less mobility your body has. This can result in pain and hinder daily activities like walking and climbing stairs. Tight hips can also cause an anterior tilt of the pelvis which results in poor posture and misalignment of the head and neck. The big story within the hips revolves around the iliopsoas muscle — a deep muscle group located toward the front of the inner hip.

The psoas is the deepest support of our core. The pelvis is full of our creative, reproductive organs and contains the centrally located psoas muscle that connects the upper and lower body (the breath and diaphragm to the legs) making the core of our body important both physically and emotionally. Many types of pain can be linked to a dormant or tight psoas muscle, especially because it stabilises the spine and affects posture. In this case, your lumbar spine may lose its natural arch by becoming overly flattened or overly curved.

Here’s the interesting part: Nestled into the psoas are the kidneys, responsible for filtering toxins in the body, as well as the adrenal glands, which control the fight, flight, or freeze response. This is how we begin to understand where emotions come into the picture.

This response is your body’s natural reaction to perceived danger. When you’re under any kind of mental or emotional stress, your psoas muscle responds by tightening.

Even after the stress is gone, the tension may still linger in the body and hip area, contributing to things like headaches and lower back pain. When someone is really traumatised, certainly the hips are an area that’s holding it, that gut pain and fear make you curl up and hide, so you’re going to be contracted.

Neuroscience also offers a look at how emotions become stored in the body.

In 1985, neuroscientist Candace Pert found that small proteins known as neuropeptides activate the circuits linked to emotions. Pert’s research suggests that emotions are electrochemical signals that carry emotional messages throughout the body. They are then expressed, experienced, and stored within the body and mind.

This can influence activity in the brain and change the cell to either have a positive or negative effect on the body. Pert’s work proposes that each cell carries a kind of consciousness that stores memories and emotional states, and current research supports this as well.

So as you work through these hip-opening postures, really sit with it, and notice there’s a lot more going on than just a simple stretch.