My Soul, My PSOAS and the Space Between Them

It’s 4am, in the deepest depths of the silence of the night, in the darkest pitch of black, amongst the palm trees in my room in Goa when I wake up with the most excruciating pain in my right knee.

The pain is throbbing down my thigh and into my knee and I wondered for a moment if this is IT, ACTUALLY IT, the end, because the pain is at an unbearable level and it feels like a nerve has popped out over the kneecap or perhaps I was having a thrombosis or a blood clot? Should I wake up my hosts? What is happening to me?

I’m here mid the 2020 corona virus outbreak, I’m 5 days behind schedule on my trip back to Europe, 4 cancelled flights in and although a lot is uncertain i thought I felt like I was safe.

I’m hoping to get out of India the next day, but I have a terrible fear of yet another cancelled plan and my deepest fear is getting stuck in Bombay, alone, indefinitely and very, very, scared.

And that is where the pain was coming from!

From that deep seated fear, from that FEELING, from that emotion, from that tension, from that flight or fright primal instinct that had been activated in the previous days and that is how I arrived into this new fascination with my psoas muscle.

This is also how I realized that this relationship with my Psoas had deeply punctuated so many events in my life thus far, years of PMT knee pain and lots of stress reactions that I had put down to hormonal issues, now I realize were all to do with the profound reaction of my psoas muscle, also know as the seat of the soul  … how apt!

What is the psoas muscle?

Often called a hip flexor and commonly known as the psoas or illiopsoas these are the muscles that connect your spine to your legs.

Anatomically linked to your breath, it connects to the diaphragm through connective tissue and diaphragmatic ligaments. 

Where is the psoas muscle?

It starts around the middle of the torso, runs either side of the spine, sits behind the digestive organs and runs through the front of the hips to connect to the thigh bones.

Structurally, our psoas muscles are the deepest muscles in our core. They attach from our 12th thoracic vertebrae to our 5th lumbar vertebrae, through the pelvis, and then finally attach to the femurs. 

The illiopsoas, are three muscles: psoas major, psoas minor, and illiacus all hidden deep within the abdomen.

The psoas’ posterior layer attaches to the transverse processes of the five lumbar vertebrae, and its anterior layer to the side of the vertebral bodies and intervertebral disks of T12–L5.

The psoas major joins with the illiacus muscle in a common tendon at the lesser trochanter of the femur to form the illiopsoas complex, which is surrounded by the thin, tough iliac fascia.

The left and right psoae, together with the left and right spinal erector groups surround the spinal column like four guy-wires around a mast.

In sitting or standing, the two psoae work bilaterally to stabilize the spine. In side bending and twisting, they work unilaterally to exert powerful torques on the spine. The movement pattern most associated with the psoas is flexion and extension of the hip and external and internal rotation of the thighbone.

The psoas muscle and the nervous system

The psoas is an extremely sensitive muscle.

It is a sensor which sends information about spinal position and movement to the central nervous system and understanding it as a sensor allows us to understand its relationship to stress and holding patterns.

The psoas’ sensitivity is also due to the numerous nerves that pass around, within, and through its muscle mass. Lying alongside the spinal nerve exits, the psoas’ front and back layers sandwich the nerves of the lumbar plexus. These nerve trunks, which give rise to the obturator, genitofemoral, sciatic, and other nerves which pass right though the psoas’ belly.

Stress not only signals the psoas to contract which creates tension in the diaphragm, it also signals shallow, pant-like breathing which doesn’t engage the diaphragm. 

Both of these factors signal an ancient fight or flight response in the body, activating stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.

When the psoas is contracted it becomes short and tense and this is called hypertonic.

In my personal case this is what was happening to me,  I realised 24 hours later on the floor of the prayer room at Bombay Airport in a yoga class online with my teacher when something moved, something softened and something relaxed in my leg allowing me to move again without pain. I had effectively released my hypertonic psoas I now understand.

Other common disharmonies associated with the psoas muscles are: low back pain, hip pain, digestive irregularities, menstrual disharmony and pain, infertility, and emotional imbalances.

The connection between a deregulated nervous system and an unhealthy psoas muscle, being either tight and weak, or tight and overactive could cause symptoms of anxiety.

For example, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, pain, and feelings of fear, which we see from the connection between the nervous system and fascial restrictions created by chronic hip joint flexion in the deep front line of the body.

This could negatively affect the different sections of the torso which the Chinese call the upper, middle, and lower jiaos’. Everyday ergonomics or life threatening trauma can cause compensations leading to a shortened and dysfunctional psoas says the psoas guru Liz Koch.

Here we see that traumatic experiences, such as a car accident, or simply sitting for too long in your chair at work can cause harm to the psoas muscle.

Exposure to trauma affects brain development, the immune system, the hormonal system, and even how DNA is read and transcribed

Looking further into the effects of trauma on the psoas we see that as trauma ininhibits the prefrontal cortex, in charge of impulse control. Additionally, the amygdala, the fear response center mechanism is critically disturbed.

We can see that trauma has real neurological implications (The hypothalamus pituitary axis (HPA), the brain and bodies stress response system, which governs our “fight or flight” mechanism of the sympathetic branch of our autonomic nervous system is also involved.

It works like this: the hypothalamus sends a message to the pituitary gland, which then send a message to the adrenal gland to release adrenaline and cortisol. A persons heart begins to pound, pupils dilate, they are ready to fight and run. This system is either adaptive and life saving or mal-adaptive and health damaging.

In Chinese Medicine the body is seen as a holistic interconnected organism that is not constructed of separate parts. Therefore, exposure to trauma could negatively impact this unifying muscle.

When a person experiences stress or a sympathetic charge to the nervous system blood rushes from the core of the body (middle jiao) and the vital organs (zang fu) leaving the muscle and fascial tissue less hydrated and innervated with blood flow, causing hypertonic or restricted state of functioning.

From the Tao Te Ching and the words of Lao Tzu, “Human beings are soft and supple when alive, stiff and straight when dead. The myriad creatures, the grasses and the trees are soft and fragile when alive, dry and withered when dead. Therefore it is said: the rigid person is a disciple of death; the soft and supple and delicate are lovers of life. An army that is inflexible will not conquer; a tree that is inflexible will snap. The unyielding and mighty shall be brought low; the soft supple, and delicate will be set above.”

It is clear that working with habitual holding and stress patterns is the key to unwinding and healing a chronically flexed, dry or stiff and overstretched psoas muscle. Prevention includes stretching and releasing holding patterns through yoga, somatic meditation, limiting sitting, and working with the nervous system and emotions. Sensing through subtle movements and awareness rather than invasive techniques that aggravate the sensitive region that is highly innervated with nerves and in close proximity to the kidneys, ovaries, and lower intestines.

The Lumbar Plexus is made up of several motor and sensory nerves; any of which can be affected by a dysfunctional psoas. Example: "A hypertonic and inflamed psoas can lead to irritation and entrapment of the iliolinguinal and the iliohypogastric nerves, resulting in a sensation of heat or water running down the front of the thigh.

The sympathetic nervous system originates in the spinal cord and extends as the sympathetic chain along either side of the spinal column from the thoracic to the lumbar vertebra.  As discussed, the diaphragm and psoas connect in the region of the thoracic spine and psoas respectively from T12 to L5, again where a large part of the sympathetic system resides.

What organs are involved with the psoas muscle

Psoas muscles  create a muscular shelf that your kidneys and adrenals rest on. ... The nerves of the reproductive organs embed throughout iliopsoas, and a tight psoas may pin down the uterus, creating painful menstrual cramps. 

In fact, according to Liz Koch, author of The Psoas Book, “The psoas is so intimately involved in such basic physical and emotional reactions, that a chronically tightened psoas continually signals your body that you’re in danger, eventually exhausting the adrenal glands and depleting the immune system.”

And our kidneys are absolutely involved here as they live right behind the psoas. There are no fixed attachments such as ligaments, that hold the kidney in place. Instead they are surrounded by a layer of connective tissue, FASCIA which is closed at the top and open at the bottom forming a kind of “sock” that covers the kidneys. This “sock” is filled with fat which helps support the kidney in it’s position.

The open end at the bottom allows the mobility of the kidney in order for it to adapt to movements of other structures, for example the diaphragm. As the diaphragm moves up and down with each breath, the kidneys move up and down along the Psoas muscle within their connective tissue “sock”. They move roughly 4cm with each breath (2cm up and 2cm down), averaging a total distance of 600m per day! So, the kidneys have a lot of mobility with very little stability.

The kidneys and adrenals aren’t the only organ affected: as the psoas travels through the pelvis it supports your organs and works like a hydraulic pump pushing lymph and blood into and out of your cells. So a properly functioning Psoas is also important for the release of toxicity from the body and also key in circulation.

What feelings are assosicated with our Psoas?

According to Liz Koch Serving as messenger of the core our psoas translates and transmits all expressions of safety, harmony, and integrity; signaling whether or not we are centered and congruent or encumbered and vulnerable."

Interestingly the psoas is directly linked to our reptilian brian, the most ancient part of our brain stem and spinal cord and the reptilian brain is where we deal with survival. 

Adrenaline over production due to stress triggers the Psoas, the psoas connects to the brain and then we get into the pain body and the feelings of FEAR, lack of safety and all those destabilising feelings associated with not being safe.

How do feelings travel through this muscle?

According to Chinese medicine, the kidneys are affected by cold and fear and therefore those same emotions can affect the psoas. In addition, Mantak Chia explains the relationship between the heart and kidneys and psoas and diaphram; when these are balanced the psoas will release. The psoas and its significance in the body's center or tan tien and major role on body structure, balance, emotions and energy, has rightfully been given the name, "Muscle of the Soul."

Feelings are in the FASCIA … I never knew that!

After all of the feeling of the feelings I can only confirm, for me that my soul is flowing through my psoas and through my fascia and I hope it never feels terror like it has again.

But I am forever grateful to have this new knowledge which will for sure impact not only how I teach but also how I choose to live as I realize the deep connection between my feelings and my body.