Hips
Greatest Hips
By Paige Greenfield
They're key to your practice--and your mobility
Most people don’t think about their hips until they break one in their 70s. But the hips aren’t only the most overlooked joints in the body, they’re also the most crucial to your overall health and well-being. “Your hips are the foundation of your anatomy,” says Natalie Nevins, D.O., an osteopathic physician with a private practice in Hollywood. “If hips are not stable, nothing above or below them will be either.”
The good news: Loosening your hips is easy. The best way to stretch them: Get down. Literally. “On the floor, you can sit in a pose from 10 breaths to 10 minutes and notice some improvement,” says Seane Corn, a YogaLife advisor who teaches at Sacred Movement in Santa Monica, California. “The more your body has an opportunity to melt into the shape, the deeper your experience will be physically and psychologically.
If after a couple of practice sessions your muscles still feel stiffer than John Kerry delivering a punch line, tight hips may be in your DNA, Corn says. “Your hips may be designed where, when you attempt forward-folding poses, your femur bone pushes against your pelvis.” If your tight hips are the result of genetics—not neglect—you will feel a lot of pain if you try to fold at all. Simply do these poses without folding.
The pose that follows is “very passive for a reason,” Corn says. Which doesn’t mean it’s easy. The only way to get connective tissues (ligaments and tendons connecting muscles to bone) to expand is to hold the pose longer than you’d like. Due to the intensity of these hip openers, we recommend Lamaze-like deep breathing (8 second inhales and 8 second exhales through the nose) to both increase heat and circulation through those melting muscle fibers and relax your nervous system. Begin by holding this pose for at least 1 minute. Every time you practice, add another minute, building up to 5 or more. While you should expect discomfort, any sharp, shooting pains are a sign you should back off.
