Anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness, guilt. These negative emotions that sometimes wash over you don't just vanish. Your body stores them in one very specific place: your hips. The same ones you look at with disdain in the mirror and dream of slimming down. One more reason to imitate Shakira and improvise a belly dance as soon as the blues threaten to strike.
The hips, a reservoir of negative emotions
The negative emotions that plague you after a fight with your partner or bad news at work remain etched in your body. Literally. After putting you through the wringer, bringing tears to your eyes and making your heart race, they land straight in your hips, where they're stored. That's where your daily troubles accumulate. Rest assured, this is purely a metaphor. It's not why you can no longer button your jeans or why your waistline is growing.
However, there is another anatomical fact to highlight. The hips are central to all our movements. They are the foundation of our skeleton. They connect our torso to our legs. Thanks to them, we can sit, walk, and run. In short, they serve as the framework for our body and support it in its movements. These hips, which give shape to your silhouette and rekindle your insecurities with every garment you put on, house a muscle you will almost never encounter in fitness programs: the psoas.
This muscle, which works behind the scenes, connects the spine to the legs and contributes to the body's balance. In holistic practices, it is sometimes called the "muscle of the soul" because it contracts under stress. Another characteristic: it is particularly receptive to chronic tension. "The psoas muscle contains the kidneys, responsible for filtering toxins from the body, as well as the adrenal glands, which control the fight-or-flight response. This helps explain the link between the hips and emotions, where repressed feelings are trapped," explains Dr. Martha Eddy, a somatic educator, in Healthline .
The pelvis, also called the “sacral chakra”
If you have wobbly knees, prone ankle sprains, and aching feet, it might not be due to a "wrong move" or a lactose deficiency. It might be because your hips are saturated with negative emotions, and this "overflow" of discomfort needs to be released. The pelvis, the seat of your negative emotions, holds symbolic importance in ancient traditions. It's no coincidence that modern yoga teachers engage the soles of their feet and make the butterfly pose with their legs. It's to "reset" their bodies and release them from all these traumas.
This chakra is linked to emotions, pleasure, and creativity, and the hips, which allow for fluid movement, symbolize precisely this ability to "let flow" what we feel. When they are supple, we speak of emotional fluidity; when they are tense, some see blockages. The pelvis, also the starting point of human life and the cradle of your vital energy, is sometimes "clogged" by your mental baggage.
“If energy does not flow well in your sacral chakra, then we are cut off from our creative power, our pleasure, our confidence in ourselves and in others. Sexual blockages, lack of self-esteem, lack of motivation, indifference…” yoga teacher Mariana Roth lists the consequences of an overloaded, blocked, unbalanced pelvis.
These key steps to free your hips
On social media, many users are reacting to this news with humor, gyrating like Shakira in “Hips Don't Lie” and twerking enthusiastically. Except, aside from risking sciatica or dislocating something, it's hardly cathartic. Shaking your hips like in a nightclub isn't the most effective technique.
While women are busy with squats and Bulgarian split squats to round out their curves, they would benefit from focusing on their hips. And not to eliminate "fat," as weight-loss articles recommend, but rather this excess of discomfort. Yoga instructors often prescribe the butterfly pose, which has the power to externalize everything that weighs you down and trigger spontaneous trembling. Others recommend combining this exercise with mental visualization, keeping the color orange as a recurring theme.
Gentle stretching, walking, breathing exercises, or certain yoga practices can help release tension, without resorting to overly literal interpretations of the body. Your hips aren't just stress magnets; they're also the stage for your personal growth. Hence the importance of being kind to yourself.
