Psoas & Stomach

Welcome to day seven where we w we will be unraveling the PSOAS and the stomach. So as a muscle is a big, big band of muscle that attaches to the base of the ribs in the back, runs in front of this, the spine underneath the stomach muscles and then connection to the legs on the sides of the groin. There's more detailed in this, but that just the concept is completely responsible for the relationship of the rib cage and the hips imbalances between the right and left side of the body and your verticality and you can see it so you can never get a six pack with your, so as soon, but we're going to deal with it very intimately today. Stomach muscles can, especially with people doing [inaudible] get very tight. We do a lot of contracting, pulling the ribs in and controlling the stomach. So we can actually get pretty tight in here.

So we want to keep the stomach muscles long and flexible and strong. So today we'll be unraveling all of this. So our pre test, let's see where we're at before we do the work. Just lying on your back. Just see what you feel like. How much of your lower back is in touch with the floor, how much of your ribs is in touch with the floor. Very common that the lower ribs are not touching and the arc of the spine is quite high up.

That means a so as is tight for some people the hip flexes are grippy. That's all relationship with the SOA. So just test yourself and test the roll up. How much of your spine is articulating and how much of your stomach you feel the right side more than the left side just to observe and see how it is. And then on your stomach, starting out, lying down with your feet together, maybe place your hands about in line with your ears or forehead and then see how much length you can get in your stomach and how high you can do.

Some of you may go very high, but you want to feel the length in the stomach. How far is that going? And then allowing the trunk to rotate. What does it feel like if you're going from side to side? Can you see your heels?

Can You keep your head above your shoulders as you do this? Just to see that central part of the body, just how much it's moving or not moving. We will be working. The first placement of the ball will go between the pubic bone and the hip bone and just above the groin. You're not going into the groin but just above it, so it's like this diagonal between these bony landmarks settling into it and very slowly rolling the body down to the ball will roll up and get to the waist and we'll be doing some things with the arms and legs at the same time to sync and open up that side of the so as so I'm placing the ball again, right between it's in the kind of diagonal between the pubic bone and the hip bone and taking a moment to just, actually I moved down a little bit to sink into the ball because I need to release those muscles and very gently I'm taking my tail and lengthening it to put more pressure into this area. Sometimes it's comfortable to have a little hook here.

And for now extending my arm, curling the toes under me. I'm sorry, I figured out curling my toes under me and lengthening the heel away and the arms. I'm s I'm stretching my body as much as I can, but sinking into the ball in order to lengthen and release any spasms in the Soas, which I can feel. Then rolling down with my body a little bit. So the ball is rolling up and again, letting myself sink into the ball if it's really tight and it may be, you can push your belly in and inhale and then exhale and say let the ball soften into the deeper layers of your stomach and your so as one more time, I'm pushing in just to kind of open up the area and down. And now again, stretching, talking the tail, lengthening the knee and lengthening the arm. Huge stretch along that side.

Rolling a little bit further up. Now it's easier to lengthen this whole lower back. So I'm very gently lengthening the tail down, letting myself sink into the ball, stretching the heel away, stretching the arm away, opening up the distance between my ribs and my pelvis really really long. And then trying to relax into that area, which was quite tight. But I slowly started to release one more time. I'm taking a breath in and last breath out, sinking into that ball as much as I can, keeping the leg long and one last stretch and moving onto the other side.

So moving onto the other side, again, I'm placing this ball between the hip and the pubic bone, a little but higher than my growing and taking a moment to lengthen down into the ball. I'm taking my tail and lengthening it a little bit and trying to soften into the tissue. Check that you're breathing. It can be quite extreme if you've never done any of this work before. Now adding more intensity. I'm reaching my arm and lengthening the leg.

Try to create as much distance as I can, relaxing down one more time, extending and lengthening and I can feel that whole area opening up. And really soon and down. Moving a little bit further down, so I'm halfway up to my naval line on my waistline. Taking the right hip, the hip, the hip bone on the side of the ball and draping it around to the ball. It's cradling into the pelvis. Again, lengthening the arm and the leg. Very good.

A long and releasing and again lengthening out, trying to get the heel as far away from the pelvis as I can and wrapping the bone around the ball so the ball is inside the inside of the pelvis, if that makes sense. It's kind of the pelvic structures wrapping now of rolling up all this is where it's the most extreme. In my case, I'm just below my waist area. Very convenient to have my feet pulling, stretching and opposition, relaxing again, [inaudible] reaching and stretching and draping the pelvis around the ball so it's going right inside that basin and releasing and one more time. Big Stretch, big traction. Pelvises draping down. I'm very lucky I can pull from both sides and press a pelvis down into it, relaxing the belly there.

I've just gone a whole lot deeper as the muscles released and coming down. Now take your ball out just for a minute and see what it feels like. Oh, delicious. So for the next part, we actually take the ball and we place it right on the pubic bone and we'll be spending some time with slight posterior tilt and then rolling it up and down and side to side, just to loosen up the bone and all the tendons and all the tissue around there. Just as a note, very often the first time you do this, it's very, very painful. A women, some women have given gone through childbirth.

There is a lot of impact and solidification that occurs in here. So lightly does it. You want to soften up that whole area so it can receive sensation. If you're a man, you just adjust the, the ball appropriately. It's amazing for what it will do to release energy in the legs and up the front of the body.

Then we'll be moving up the central line towards the navel rolling to the right. So you'll kind of cradling the ball inside the, uh, the pelvis. And rolling it to the laugh and then constantly looking to sink and I will be queuing some adjustments. So that's the journey. So starting out, placing the the ball on the pubic bone and just letting the bone get used to this pressure. We're usually not in touch with that area very much. And again, it may be a sensitive, so let yourself have respect with this journey to release any blockages or congestion, energetic blocks that are going on.

Now I've just rolled my body forward, so with literally taking my pubic bone and pulling it down, I can feel the pull into the tendon between the muscles in the front of my body rolling through the bone. So I'm rolling, the ball is rolling up and my tail is going down and I can now feel the connection into the pelvic floor and the whole tail and sacred connecting in with the front of the body. So it's really a wonderful restoration of relationship that's naturally there. Coming back onto the pinnacle of the bone. I'm rolling my pelvis slightly to the rights of the ball is coming towards you and it's just on the cusp of the side and again, slightly rocking into this area rolling to the other side so the pubic bone can get whipped or jammed and twisted or it can be slightly separated or they're, they can be a lot going on there. I can feel this side has a little bit more drama connected to it, rocking my pelvis a little bit back to the middle and now I'm rolling in up my body. So now my, I'm off the bone and in the tendons of our six pack and uh, rolling little bit from side to side, loosening up all those tendons. Any point that feels very sensitive, stay there or do micro movements.

Let it all start to get hydrated again. And Mobile. Moving up a little bit more now I'm making sure to wrap my tail and maybe settling down time sinking into this bar. You can always do something very similar to what we just did. Stretching your arms, stretching your legs, moving a little bit further up, releasing down. This can get very sensitive. Now for me, maybe for you too, this is where I release. I breathe in and breathe out, letting the body release, allowing my stomach and my organs to get used to the sensation.

They are supposed to be soft and mushy and not hard and armored. So this will start to break up anything. Now I'm moving my body to the right, so the ball is now rolled, right? It's cradled in front of the hipbone and I'm rocking around and just rocking up and down. Just a little bit into that little inside of that bone. Just loosening up that whole front of the pelvic girdle rolling. Now I'm moving to the left of the ball is just gone in to the right, to the inside of my right hip bone rocking.

It's like I'm rolling the whole inside of my pelvis around the bone so I can feel it inside, massaging the inside of that bony structure. And again, just gently stretching, stretching the other side, pressing into the inside of my hip bone. Just to kind of widen it a little bit and back to the middle. Now it's so much easier for me to sink down and lengthening all the way back down towards the pubic bone. I'm not on the bone, but I'm just in front of it because it feels so good. Now rolling from side to side and then taking the ball out and just for a minute lying down and feeling what my pelvis feels like. It's buzzing.

It's so interesting when I do this work, the CI or the energy or the nerve flow opens up so much. That is like your body starts to sing. Right now I have all of this vibration in the front of my body, so I hope you have it too. So this next part is to really create a lot of lengths in the six pack and the distance between the ribs and the pubic bone. So if you're doing too much of a back extension where the back is bending, you miss the traction. This is about tractioning here.

So we'll be placing the ball just above the pubic bone in the tendons where the banner muscle running in the front connects in and then very gently lifting up the trunk and then we'll slowly move up a little bit. But all every time we lift up, the intention is to Elongate the front of the body. So I'm placing the ball just above my pubic bone and very slowly starting to press my tail down and I can feel the beginning of the length actually going all the way into my hip flexors. And then instead of pushing up, I'm stretching my stomach. So the feeling is the time pulling myself forward, my rib cage and chest forward.

And interestingly the ball is anchoring the base of the muscles and I'm getting a much deeper stretch than I normally would if I was doing this without the help of the ball. I can also feel how my body is lengthening and opening up in this whole front band. Also going side to side, elongating the whole front of the body, rolling a little bit down. So now I am still the probably at the base of the muscle numb out of the tendons, pressing my tail down and pulling. This is the funny part, the feeling is that you're pulling your chest forward but your tail is anchored so I can get a huge stretch in the whole front of the body and let me go up and down a few times, calling my chest forward, anchoring my tail, lengthening my hip flexors to get, oh, the whole front of my body just released. Such a lovely feeling. And one more time. Big length.

Now I can feel the whole hinge of the pelvis starting to be freed up. And again, now let's walk the hands a little bit over. Stretching the whole front and side of the body. Very good. Thanks for a little more. Rolling a little bit further back. So again, tail is very long, sinking into the sole as just for a minute and tractioning everything forward.

Tractioning up, lengthening up, big, big, big stretch in the front end of my stomach muscles. So I'm actually not putting any pressure into my lower back at all. Just lengthening up, rotating, rotating, lifting a little bit further up. Now my diaphragm literally starting to release as well. It's wonderful. I pushed a little bit back and last time pulling my body up, pressure into the belly, but now lengthening from my pubic bone up.

I feel like I've just grown about two inches. I don't know if I have, but that's the feeling because it's so much more length available and then the hinge joints are doing it so much more easily. I can feel all this delicious lengths coming into my front body all the way up into my diaphragm, which is so delicious and night relaxing down, taking the ball out just for a minute, letting everything relax and then just take a moment and rest and feel what your stomach feels like. What do your ribs feel like? Very relaxed, very open for me a lot longer. I hope the same for you. So now let's test again and see what changed.

So I'll just hold the ball for fun. I'm just feeling, my goodness. In my case, my spine is much more in touch. In fact, even my lower back is almost there in my sake room is very long feeling doing a roll up, rolling through. What did that feel like for you? I hope a lot more easy articulation and on your belly with your hands wide. How much lift in length? For me, I can go a whole lot higher than I could a minute ago. Quite easily because there's so much openness in the front of my body. Last time I couldn't get the on this and then how much side to side articulation. Now for me, this is still a little tight. It's looser, but I know there's more work to be done to really free the movement up.

So enjoy. Stand up for a minute, see what your body feels like. It's so, it's sometimes so different. You take some moment, wow, where's my balance? Where's my calibration? And as always, it's really nice to take a walk afterwards to absorb the all these changes into your body. So your nervous system and your programming goes, okay, this is the new me. I'm stepping into it and embracing it. Have Fun.