Support The 'Muscle Of The Soul' And Get Low Back Pain Relief | Louisville, CO

A while back I did a workshop where I taught my personal embodied awakening routine which consisted of a series of yoga poses from a tradition called Swaroopa Yoga. Swaroopa Yoga is a form of yoga that’s based around the motto that support equals release. So most of the poses are slow and gentle and not about pushing or stretching muscles, but about the release that happens when they are supported.

The series of poses that I taught at my workshop was designed to work it’s way up the spine, from the tail bone to the occiput. The exercise in this video, the twisting lunge, is designed to support the psoas and the low back. The psoas is a deep muscle that attaches on the anterior lumbar spine, comes through the inside of the pelvis and attaches on the thigh bones. Rolfers and massage therapists and runners and yoga people are always talking about the psoas because it can give people a lot of trouble when it's tight.

To give you some idea of its importance, the psoas is often referred to as the ‘muscle of the soul. That's because it’s tied into the diaphragm. The diaphragm is tied into the primitive part of our brain that is responsible for creating survival patterns in our nervous system; the patterns that get installed the second we come into this world when we feel into our environment and perceive that it’s not so safe. As a result of these survival patterns that are created in our system, we grip onto the life force energy in the area of our low backs and belly. So we end up with this chronic tension being held in that area. Down the road it can result in a lot of problems, one of them being low back pain.

When we support the psoas, we can start to feel into the chronic, survival tension that is held there so that the energy that is sequestered in that tension can be digested and integrated into our body and being. In my own experience it can also lead to some great relief as far as low back pain goes.

The exercise that I’m teaching in this video is really helpful for supporting the psoas and the low back to soften and release. I highly recommend it if you suffer from low back pain or any number of problems that might stem from chronic tension in the low back and belly.

In case you're interested, here's a link to the rest of the exercises from my Embodied Awakening workshop.