Yoga teachers often refer to the pelvis as ‘the junk drawer of emotions’. The link between the hips and one’s emotional state is actually quite profound and fascinating.

Understanding hip pain emotions can help you reveal what’s hiding in your hips.

The hip muscles are programmed to be easily activated for a fight, flight or freeze response. From birth, the ‘sympathetic nervous system response’ can stimulate a strong contraction of the hip flexors of the body, drawing the ribs around visceral organs and the knees up towards the torso to offer protection should we suffer a fall.

When the body suffers a trauma our instinctual reflex is to clench these deep muscles. The problem is, we don’t let go.

Our hips are like a bowl that’s catching and containing the residue of trauma or prolonged periods of stress.

To let go of past emotional states, you have to let the hips get unstuck - rather literally.