Yoga Poses to Release Trauma in Hips and Support Emotional Healing
Have you ever been in pigeon pose and suddenly felt like crying? Or noticed that your hips feel impossibly tight, like they're holding onto something you can't quite name?
You’re probably not imagining it.
Yoga teachers often talk about hips as "storage places" for trauma, but the reality is more nuanced than that.
The hips are a central hub in the body, responsible for bearing weight and enabling a wide range of movement, which makes them especially important for overall well-being. The centrally located psoas muscle, a deep core muscle within the pelvis, connects the upper and lower body and plays a crucial role in both emotional and physical health.
The hip joint is a key anatomical structure involved in movement and is known for holding tension, making it significant in trauma storage. The hip region itself is closely linked to both physical movement and emotional healing. Within the pelvis, the reproductive organs are also present, and they are connected to emotional energy and overall health.
Trauma isn't literally stuffed into your hip muscles like your clothes in a closet. What's actually happening is far more fascinating.
Introduction to Hip Openers
Hip openers are a group of yoga poses and stretches specifically designed to release tension in the hip area, supporting both physical flexibility and emotional healing. The hips are a central hub in the body, responsible for bearing weight and enabling a wide range of movement, which makes them especially important for overall well-being. When we experience emotional tension or go through stressful events, it’s common for tight hips and physical symptoms to develop as a result of stored trauma.
By weaving hip openers into your regular yoga practice, you create opportunities to gently release stored trauma and emotional tension, helping to ease discomfort and support emotional healing. Poses like pigeon pose, lizard pose, and even downward-facing dog can be adapted to suit your body’s needs, making hip openers accessible whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned yogi. These yoga poses not only target the hip area but also contribute to a greater sense of well-being, both physically and emotionally.
Where Trauma Really Lives
According to Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, trauma lives in your nervous system. When your body experiences something overwhelming and can't complete its natural survival responses, fight, flight, or freeze, that activation gets stuck.
Your hips are major players in those survival movements. Running away from danger. Kicking to defend yourself. Curling up small to protect your vital organs.
The psoas muscle, a deep core muscle connecting your spine to your legs, is heavily involved in the body's fight-or-flight response and is known to hold emotional trauma. The psoas muscles often become tight due to stress and trauma, leading to a tight psoas muscle that can cause discomfort and restrict movement. Trauma and tightness in the hips can also create tension in the lumbar spine, affecting posture and overall well-being.
When those responses get interrupted or suppressed, your hip area can become a place where that unfinished energy settles.
This is why hip openers can feel so loaded. Your body remembers.
But yoga can't erase trauma from your tissues. What it can do is create safety, space, and awareness that support your nervous system in gradually letting go of what it no longer needs to hold.
What Emotions Are Tied to the Hips?
People report all kinds of emotions surfacing during hip work: grief, fear, rage, shame, relief, or sometimes just a vague heaviness they can't put words to.
These experiences are part of emotional processing, and allowing them to arise can support emotional health by helping you work through stored feelings and stress.
Physical manifestations, such as muscle tension, tightness, or other bodily sensations, may also accompany emotional release during hip work.
But there's no universal "hip emotion." What comes up for you has everything to do with your body's unique history and how your nervous system adapted to keep you safe.
Instead of expecting a specific feeling or chasing a particular release, try approaching your hips with curiosity. What is your body showing you today? What does it need?
Understanding the Benefits of Hip Opening
Practicing hip opening exercises offers a wide range of benefits for both emotional and physical health. By releasing tension in the hip flexors and surrounding muscles, you can improve your flexibility, increase your range of motion, and support a healthier posture. On an emotional level, hip openers help to release stored trauma and emotional blockages, which can lead to a noticeable reduction in physical symptoms like hip pain, lower back discomfort, and even poor posture.
Many people also find that regular hip opening can ease emotional stress, anxiety, and feelings of heaviness, fostering a deeper mind-body connection and a greater sense of well-being. It’s important to approach hip opening with patience and self-compassion, honoring your body’s limits and needs.
If you’re working through emotional or physical challenges, a mental health professional or experienced yoga teacher can help you modify hip openers to create a safe, supportive environment for your healing journey.
Yoga Poses to Release Trauma in Hips
Think of these poses as gentle invitations, not prescriptions. Your body gets to decide what it's ready for and when.
Hip opening stretches and hip opening yoga sequences are designed to release trauma and emotional tension stored in the hips, supporting both physical mobility and emotional healing.
Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana) This deep hip opener can feel intense. Use as many props as you need: bolsters, blocks, blankets. You can also do pigeon pose reclined on your back. If it feels overwhelming, back off or come out completely. There's no prize for pushing through.
Bound Angle Pose (Baddha Konasana) Sitting with the soles of your feet together, knees wide. If you have them, you can place blocks underneath your knees to offer more support and stability... This encourages grounding through your sit bones and a gentle softening of your inner thighs.
Happy Baby (Ananda Balasana) Lying on your back, holding the outsides of your feet. This playful stretch can ease tension in your inner hips and lower back, often bringing a sense of lightness or even laughter.
Supported Bridge with Block Place a block between your thighs and let your back rest on a bolster. Another option is to place a block at its lowest height underneath your sacrum. This restorative variation is stabilizing and soothing for both your hips and nervous system.
Child's Pose (Balasana) Sometimes the most profound thing you can do is curl inward. This pose provides safety and containment, supporting deep rest and integration. You might wish to warm up your body a bit with a yoga practice before settling into a child's pose.
Practicing these hip opening yoga poses releases tension in the hips and supports emotional healing by allowing the body to let go of stored stress.
Remember, this isn't about forcing a stretch or "opening" something that wants to stay closed. It's about listening to your body's cues and giving yourself permission to pause, adjust, or stop whenever you need to.
For additional support and guidance, consider joining a specialized yoga class like ours focused on hip opening to deepen your practice and experience the benefits of these trauma release techniques.
Restorative Yoga for Emotional Release
Long-held, supported poses can be especially powerful for nervous system healing. When your body feels completely held and safe, it might finally loosen its protective grip.
Restorative practices help signal to your system that it’s safe enough to soften, supporting the body process of releasing trauma and emotional tension. These mind body practices not only target the hips but benefit the entire body, promoting holistic healing.
By connecting the upper and lower body through gentle movement and awareness, restorative yoga encourages emotional release and improves overall well-being. Sometimes that leads to emotional release: tears, shaking, or waves of feeling. Sometimes it just feels calming and grounding.
Both are valuable. Both are working.
Hip Trauma Release Exercises Beyond Yoga
Other practices can complement your yoga practice in supporting nervous system regulation:
Gentle somatic shaking or trembling: Let your body do its natural discharge movements
Walking or slow movement: Simple ways to complete interrupted survival responses
Breathwork focused on expanding your belly: Deep diaphragmatic breathing that signals safety to the body
These don’t guarantee “release” (nothing does). They’re ways of giving your body safe outlets for whatever energy it’s been holding. Try incorporating these trauma release exercises into your daily life to support ongoing healing and nervous system regulation.
How Long Does It Take to Release Trauma from Hips?
This is a common question, and we wish we had a neat answer for you.
For some people, a single yoga session might stir up emotion. For others, the process unfolds over months or years. Some notice subtle shifts in how they move through the world. Others have more dramatic experiences on the mat. Stored trauma in the hips often affects posture and mobility, leading to misalignment or discomfort until it is addressed.
Healing isn’t about racing to a finish line. It’s about creating consistent, gentle safety so your body doesn’t feel like it has to grip so tightly to whatever it’s been protecting you from. Releasing trauma is a gradual journey that involves both physical and emotional healing, allowing the body to let go of stored tension over time.
Conclusion on Yoga for Emotional Healing
Yoga, and especially hip opening exercises, can be a powerful ally on your path to emotional healing. By gently releasing tension, stored trauma, and emotional blockages, you support both your physical and emotional well-being. Incorporating hip openers into your yoga practice helps you build body awareness, regulate your nervous system, and create space for emotional healing to unfold.
Remember to approach hip opening with patience, mindfulness, and compassion, always listening to your body’s cues and seeking support from a mental health professional or yoga teacher when needed. With consistent practice in a supportive environment, you can experience the profound benefits of hip opening exercises—releasing tension, fostering emotional healing, and nurturing your overall well-being.
A Note Of Compassion If You’re Recovering From Trauma
Your hips aren't filled containers that need to be emptied. You're not failing if you don't have a big emotional release on your mat.
Trauma resolution isn't about prying stuck energy out of your muscles. It's about slowly, tenderly inviting your nervous system to recognize that the danger has passed. That you're safe (enough) now. That it can begin to trust again.
Yoga offers one doorway into that trust: one breath, one pose, one moment of presence at a time.
And if strong emotions do arise? That doesn't mean something is wrong. It means your body is wise enough to have protected you all this time, and intelligent enough to know when it's finally safe to let go.
Your healing happens at exactly the pace it needs to. Your body knows exactly what it's doing.
🧡,
Looking for online yoga classes or yoga classes near me?
Join Abby Albright for FREE yoga classes every Monday morning at 7:00am. Abby is a trauma therapist and yoga teacher who is passionate about helping people reconnect with their bodies through the gentle practice of yoga.