Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:12] Hello and welcome to Deep in your yoga practice. I'm Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. Today we will be deepening our yoga practices by talking about a common phrase I've heard from yoga teachers and look at it from a few different angles. So this phrase that I've heard from many teachers and in many classes is we store trauma in the hips. Or they might say, we store emotion in the hips. I've heard that said going into pigeon pose or any deep, what we would call hip openers, which are typically stretches of the external rotators of the hip. For some people, this resonates deeply. They absolutely can feel emotional. Sometimes tears come up and sensations arise that feel bigger than just a stretch. But as thoughtful yoga practitioners, or maybe if you're a yoga teacher listening to this, we also have this responsibility to ask, is this a metaphor? Is this literal? What does science actually say? And how does yoga philosophy understand the relationship between body emotion and memory? So you can consider this episode an exploration of this topic, not a definitive answer. This is something I'm still learning about myself and I want to approach it with intellectual honesty and humility and care. So where does this idea actually come from that we store emotions in the hips? The first is through lived experience.
[00:01:41] So many people genuinely feel emotional sensations during long held hip postures. I've personally experienced it myself where I'm noticing sensations, I'm staying in a posture, and suddenly some kind of emotions arise. And this hasn't been always local to the hips either. It can be in many different parts of the body. So people have experienced it and maybe they pass this wisdom on. There's also a lot of buzz and talk about trauma because it's become something that we understand more of. In the last few years. It's been a topic of conversation in the general public and on social media especially. So someone might be bringing in a little bit more awareness that the body is part of emotional processing when they're teaching. And someone might also be pulling this from energetic yoga frameworks. The hips are associated with the root chakra and the sacral chakras, or these energy centers in the body. And these areas are typically symbolically linked to safety and emotion and connection. So. So some yoga teachers might be making that connection between the chakras and the sensations and emotions that can arise in different postures. Before I get into what science actually says, I'll add my opinion about saying this in a yoga class. On one hand, I think it's really good to Normalize a variety of experience for yoga students to let them know that things can come up while you're practicing and that they are completely normal for that. But I don't also like to plant that seed that there is trauma there. I don't even like to bring that word up when I'm teaching yoga. If somebody is holding trauma in their body, just bringing that up might be something that is quite triggering. And I also don't want to state that as fact of, oh, you hold this in your hips. Because everyone has a different body and experience, and it feels like something that's just been repeated without much modern science, science to back it up. So it's something I would personally avoid saying. I wouldn't say while someone's holding pigeon pose, you're storing trauma in your hips. But as a teacher, I might say, as you're moving into deeper postures, letting your body soften, know that it's normal for emotions to arise. And I typically am just pointing to noticing the whole self, the body, the breath, the emotions, mental fluctuations, with a sense of curiosity and compassion. And to me, that's the yogic way to go about it. So let's talk about like, yes, these sensations arise. Does that mean that we're actually storing these memories or this trauma or these emotions in that space? So what does science actually say? One is that emotions live in the nervous system, not in the muscles. So from a neuroscience perspective, emotions are processed in the brain and, and memories are stored in neural networks in the brain. And muscles don't store emotions the way that, like a hard drive would store files. But stress can change muscle tone. So when we experience stress or fear or trauma, the sympathetic nervous system activates and the muscles involved in protection and posture can contract. And over time, these contractions can become chronic holding patterns in the body. When we're talking about the hips, especially in deep muscles like the psoas, these are heavily involved in stabilizing the body in locomotion, so in walking and running, as well as in the fight or flight response.
[00:05:26] So while emotions are not necessarily stored in the hips, stress can absolutely be reflected in hip tension. It's also important to know that body memory does not necessarily equal muscle memory. So research supports the idea of implicit or somatic memory. The body remembers patterns of response. Posture, breath, and sensation can reflect past experiences. And these memories live in the nervous system, but not necessarily in the tissues themselves. This is subtle but important. This means maybe the hips don't hold trauma, but they participate in protective patterns that are shaped by Our nervous systems. So when we are in our sympathetic nervous system again, the muscles will hold tension and that tension can become chronic holding patterns. Like you might feel constant tension in your shoulders or in your belly or in your hips. So if memories don't live in the muscle, but they live in the nervous system, you might be wondering how this might relate to fascia or even the myofascial system, which is the muscles and the fascia together. Because the fascia is a big stimulus, sensory organ, it's highly innervated. So there are claims that fascia stores emotional memory. So here's what we do know. Fascia is highly innervated. Like I said, there's nerves running through it. It responds to hydration and load and movement and inflammation. And fascial restriction can amplify sensation.
[00:07:00] So we talked about these different muscular holding patterns in the body. And the fascia can actually shape around these muscles, which ultimately is this protective mechanism. But it misalign the body and cause even more discomfort over time. But right now, what we know, because learning about fascia and studying fascia is still very much on the cutting edge, we're still learning so much. Science does not confirm yet that fascia stores emotional memory in a literal sense, but it does transmit sensation.
[00:07:32] It responds to chronic tension and it participates in how we feel in our bodies. When fascia releases, the sensation changes and sensation can trigger emotional awareness. So it doesn't necessarily mean that fascia is this vault for trauma, that it's not trapped in there, but it does mean that sensation and emotion are linked through the nervous system, and the nervous system does run through the fascia. And I find this really interesting because I personally have had experiences before where I'm practicing myofascial release and memories come up and I feel emotional out of nowhere. So it's interesting to me to think about how these chronic patterns of tension, when released, maybe interact with the nervous system and brain to unlock these memories. But it's just not something that we know enough about yet scientifically to really explain. So why can hip openers feel emotional?
[00:08:34] Why? Maybe have you cried in pigeon pose before? One reason is time and stillness.
[00:08:41] So when you're holding a posture for a long time and find that stillness in your system, it reduces distraction and it allows awareness to surface. So it might be awareness of things that are already there, but we just are not paying attention to them because we're too distracted or busy. Another reason would be nervous system down regulation. So moving into more of a space of rest and digest when we Breathe slowly and we rest in postures, we can shift more toward parasympathetic states where we're more receptive. Another reason is interoception. So this is this awareness of our internal world. Time and stillness can help with this as well. And the nervous system downregulation to where we become aware of what is happening within us. Bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions, energy. And we start to see things a little bit more clearly. Another reason is this release of habitual guarding. So when protective tension, remember, the muscles will become chronically tense due to this protection. When it softens, the awareness can expand and emotions may arise. And I know I've personally felt this a lot of times as this sense of relief and crying can be this sense of relief too. Like I might have released a chronic holding pattern that I didn't even totally know was there. And then once it does, I just feel such a sense of spaciousness and release that it feels very emotional. So this might not be a stored emotion necessarily being released. It's your awareness changing and space being opened. So what does yoga philosophy say about this? Classical yoga does not say emotions live in our joints or in our muscles.
[00:10:33] Instead, it teaches us that samskaras, or habitual patterns and memories, are these impressions that are formed by our experiences. These impressions, or samskaras shape our thoughts and our behavior and our sensations. And they manifest through habitual patterns, not necessarily through localized body parts. So we can think in terms of philosophy that a tight hip isn't this container for trauma.
[00:11:00] Instead, it's a pattern of sensation that is shaped by our habits, our nervous system, tone and our awareness. When we look at the goal of yoga, it's not necessarily a practice that was designed to release trauma or release trauma from body parts. It's meant to cultivate svadhyaya, or self study. This self awareness, pratyahara, or internal awareness, Santosha, contentment with experience, and vivika, which means discernment. Ultimately, the goal of yoga is the mastery of the mind's FL fluctuations. And we find that through stillness and spaciousness. And the awareness that can arise through the yoga process is the practice itself. And it's where we start to dig up a lot of these emotions wherever they are stored. Now, this is for the yoga teachers. Let's talk about our responsibility as teachers. I touched on this a little bit earlier, but saying this pose releases stored trauma, can create an expectation that it will do so.
[00:12:02] It can imply a sense of inevitability.
[00:12:05] It might pressure students into emotional experiences or trigger trauma responses. So a more responsible framing might be this pose may increase awareness, notice any sensations that arise, and of course, always giving students the choice to opt out to change their position and validate that there are a variety of experiences that can happen and normalize that for them.
[00:12:30] Yoga helps support regulation. We are not forcing catharsis, so do we actually store trauma in the hips? Probably not. But the body absolutely reflects emotional and nervous system patterns. Yoga doesn't unlock trauma from tissues that we know of, but it does create the conditions for safe awareness, for regulation and for integration, as well as creating space and cultivating a sense of curious and compassionate awareness that allows us to see what is truly there. And I think that's so powerful. So as you're practicing this week, I invite you to notice sensation with a sense of curiosity without the need to interpret it, emotion without having to put it into a storyline. It's okay just to feel what comes up and awareness, that compassionate, curious awareness without needing to fix anything. We can hold space for what is. And that in itself is yoga. So thank you so much for exploring this topic with me. I know I'm not full of definitive answers, and like I said, this is still something I'm exploring and learning about and have felt and experienced. And it's an honor and privilege to be able to work this out with you and create a discussion around it. I'd love to know what you think, what you've experienced before.
[00:13:55] Feel free to comment on my Instagram True loveyogacase or I am Lauren Leduc or feel free to write me an email. It's laurentruloveyogakc.com and if you're interested in more topics like this, please let me know. It's so much fun to explore with you. So thank you so much for joining me today. Om Shanti, Om. Peace.
