When your hips feel tight, the root cause is often stored trauma that's stuck on your body.
Your hips are the storehouse for trauma and unprocessed emotions within your body. This is primarily due to body's physiological survival response.
When you experience trauma, your psoas muscle contracts and stays contracted until you manually release it. The psoas is a large, deep muscle in your body that connects your diaphragm to you hip joint.
You can release your psoas muscle at home with somatic exercises. (I teach 3 ways to do this in my Free Your Hips course).
Your adrenal glands also kick into overdrive as a response to trauma as well, pumping your body full of adrenaline. Your adrenal glands are located along your psoas muscle.
And then, there are neuropeptides, which are chemical signals that connect your emotions to your muscles, gut, and heart. This accounts for how trauma and unprocessed emotions get stored (and stuck) in your body.
Here are the top 25 academic studies, articles, and books that dive into the relationship between hip tension and stored trauma for your reference:
1. How emotions get stored in your body (academic study)
2. Pain and PTSD (academic study)
3. The psychobiology of post-traumatic stress (academic study)
4. Leading Neurologist on the connection between the emotions and the body (several academic studies)
5. Past trauma may haunt your future health (Harvard article)
6. Hips and trauma (article)
7. How unprocessed trauma is stored in your body (article)
8. The surprising connection between your hips and your emotions (article)
9. Stored trauma in the body (academic study)
10. The Psoas Book (book)
11. Your Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, Body In The Healing Of Trauma (book)
12. Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma (book)
13. Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep At A Time (book)
14. The Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine (book)
15. My Body Keeps Your Secrets (book)
16. Move: How The New Science Of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free (book)
17. Why rocking is heals (academic study)
18. How rocking can help you heal (article)
19. Rocking and substance abuse healing (article)
20. The link between your emotions, mind, and health (article)
21. Inflammation and PTSD (academic study)
22. The Relationship Between Psychological Factors and Weight Gain (academic study)
23. Weight Can't Be Tackled Until We Address The Trauma That Causes It (article)
24. The Weight Of Traumatic Stress: PTSD and Weight In Women (academic study)
25. The Myth Of Normal: Trauma, Illness, And Healing In A Toxic Culture (book by Dr. Gabor Mate)
26. The Best Way To Treat Long-Term Back Pain Is Through Therapeutic Techniques, Not Pills (academic study)
Want to release stored trauma from your body? Get guided through the step by step process of relieving your hip pain and releasing stored trauma in my 30-day Free Your Hips Course.