The Hips Hold What the Mind Won't

Why your hips feel tight, heavy or emotional - and what to do about it

I had heard it a million times before that we store emotions in our hips. I believed it in a vague, surface-level way. Hip openers felt intense. I wanted to get out of them. But I didn’t truly understand the weight of that statement until 2013, after I had just moved to New York City.

I was teaching at New York Pilates in the West Village, back when it was a small, intimate space. One day, a woman came in for class and she was the only one who showed up. I offered her a private session. Her hips were incredibly tight, so I guided her through a release and encouraged her to take a few deep breaths.

Then she started sobbing.

Through tears, she told me she had been raped a few years earlier and had never told anyone until that moment.

That day changed something in me. I began to see that tension in the body wasn’t just structural. It was layered, emotional, protective. I started approaching movement with new curiosity. Was this tightness coming from a physical imbalance? Or was it something the body was holding onto, memories, emotions, trauma, and how much of it was both?

I began learning how our fascia, the connective tissue that surrounds everything in the body, holds more than just physical tension. It holds the things we don’t process. The words we couldn’t respond to. The pain we didn’t feel safe enough to express. The fear or shame or grief we pushed down and forgot about. It gets stored somewhere, and for many of us that place is the hips.

The psoas muscle runs from your spine to your femur, connecting the torso to the legs. It’s one of the first muscles to fire in a stress response, priming you to run or fight. But it doesn’t know the difference between running from a tiger or freezing in response to a stressful email. It reacts to your nervous system. And unless you interrupt the pattern through intentional breathwork paired with movement or restorative release work, it can stay on all the time. That ongoing bracing shows up as low back pain, hip tension, and gripping in the pelvic floor.

Fascia is part of your sensory and emotional system, and the hips are a hub where so much intersects. Spine, pelvis, legs, deep core. They’re a natural place for the body to hold on. Hip openers ask us to pause and become aware of what our body is trying to tell us. The more we are able to breathe and listen, the deeper the release.

I’ve seen people start crying in pigeon pose. I’ve not just felt my own emotions bubble up, but old memories I had suppressed resurface. These aren’t breakdowns. They’re breakthroughs. It’s what happens when your nervous system finally feels safe enough to let something move through.

But hip tension isn’t only emotional. It’s also mechanical. Most people don’t have enough spinal or pelvic rotation, so the hips lock up trying to stabilize. We also don’t push off our big toe when we walk, which prevents the pelvis from fully rotating and extending. Over time this leads to stiffness in the hips, pelvis, and even the low back. And when you look out the window of a tall building and feel your pelvic floor reflexively tighten, that’s your body bracing. Now imagine that same gripping happening all the time, subtly, as you go about your day.

So what can you do?

You don’t need a complex routine or fancy equipment. What matters is combining your breath with the right positions. One of the simplest and most effective is a passive psoas release with 360-degree breathing. Here’s how:

Lay down with your feet on a couch or chair so your legs are at a true 90-degree angle. Let gravity support you. Inhale slowly through your nose, letting the breath expand through your belly, ribs, and low back. Then exhale softly and fully, allowing your body to melt into the floor. No phone. No distractions. Just be present.

If your legs have trouble relaxing, try placing a band around your thighs. Stay for 10 to 30 minutes if you can. Even a few minutes is powerful, especially if you come back to it consistently.

Here’s a video of the release I recommend:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcyjCSNK2BB

If you want to go deeper, I have my favorite 9 guided psoas release classes available inside RMTV:

👉 Explore them here

Stretching can feel amazing and is often needed, but for lasting change you need to take the time to combine breathwork with restorative poses. And the truth is they feel amazing too. I did them almost every night for a couple of years to help unravel stored trauma. It took away my back pain. It improved my sleep. It gave my body a chance to reset.

Your hips may be holding more than tension.

They might be holding things your mind was never ready to process.

When you give yourself time to release, to soften, and to stay present, you’re doing more than stretching.

You’re allowing your body to come back home to itself.

Let me know if you try the release or if anything comes up for you when you do. And if you know someone who’s been carrying too much, you can share this with them below.

With love,

Regan