Ep 76: Excessive Hip Flexion In Yoga & What To Do About it

Let’s discuss the issue of hip flexion in yoga. 

• What is it? 
• Is there too much? 
• And what can you do about it. 

Hip flexion is normal; You need to flex your hips to walk, sit down, and even curl up on the couch. 

In this episode, I’ll share some ways you can create more intentional sequences with specific goals in mind. Plus, smart class language to help students understand the importance of their full range of hip movement so that they incorporate them in their daily movement.

Let’s get to it!

Transcript

Monica: 0:00

Let's discuss the issue of hip flexion in yoga. What is it? Is there too much and what can you do about it? Hip flexion is normal. I mean, you have to flex your hips to walk, sit down, and even curl up on the couch. In this episode, I'll share some ways. You can create more intentional sequences with specific goals in mind, plus smart class language to help students understand the importance of their full range of hip movement so that they incorporate them in their daily movement. Welcome to the Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers Podcast with me. I'm Monica Bright and I've been teaching yoga and running my yoga business for over a decade. This is the podcast for you. If you are a yoga teacher, you're looking for support. You love to be in conversation, and you're a lifelong student. In this podcast, I'll share with you. My life as a yoga teacher, the lessons I've learned, my process for building my business and helpful ideas, tools, strategies and systems I use and you can use so that your business thrives. We'll cover a diverse range of topics that will help you, whether you're just starting out or you've got years under your belt and you wanna dive deep and set yourself up for success. I am so glad you're here. Listen, I don't take myself too seriously, so expect to hear some laughs along the way. Now let's do this together. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here. Here is where we get real about yoga's role in helping students with conditions and injuries and what you can do to help them find relief while they're in your classes. Today I wanna discuss the issue of hip flexion in yoga. What is it? Is there too much and can you do anything about it? Hip flexion is normal. I mean, you have to flex your hips to walk, sit down, and even curl up on the couch. The question I wanna tackle is, does this become a problem for students with hip back and postural issues? And if so, how can we create sequences with intention and use language that helps students take your teaching off the mat and into their lives? Let's start with what is hip flexion? Flexion is when your thigh bone, the femur moves closer to your torso. Imagine yourself sitting, squatting, folding, forward, lunging, or bringing your knees towards your chest. All of these movements involve hip flexion. Now think about an average Vinyasa class or even a yin style class. Especially Vinyasa includes sun salutations. Numerous forward fold after forward fold seated poses. Many are variations of forward bins, pigeon pose, the deep hip flexion in the front leg, and even downward facing dog. Chair pose, warrior one, two, and three all involve hip flexion. So what's the problem? Well, you should imagine your students' lives outside of yoga class. Most people are already in hip flexion for most of the day. Think sitting in cars, sitting at their desks. Sitting on couches and maybe sleeping in a fetal position. What we're doing is reinforcing already shortened hip flexors yoga often adds more time in this position without also attempting to balance it With hip extension, which is the thigh moving behind the pelvis, Excessive hip flexion can contribute to postural imbalances like an anterior pelvic tilt, which is when the front of the pelvis tips down. Low back compression and anterior pelvic tilt can lead to compression of the discs between the vertebrae, the lumbar spine. Tighter, weak SOAs muscles. The SOAs muscles attach at the lumbar spine and wrap around the front of the pelvis and attach to the inside of the upper femur bone. It's the only muscle that connects the upper and lower parts of the body. And here's a fun fact. Your brain cannot decipher between tightness and weakness, so it sends the same signal, which is. Tightness. Then when students feel tight, they try to resolve it with stretching when the resolution should be strengthening. This is an understanding that we need to have as yoga teachers, especially if serving our students' needs is more important than sticking to a sequence. Finally, the glutes and the posterior chain take a backseat when we focus our sequences around hip flexion. Lots of students already walk in with these issues and our planned sequences can unintentionally reinforce this pattern. Excessive hip flexion also limits normal functional movement in real life. We need hip extension for walking, climbing stairs and stability. However, we can be more intentional with our sequencing and our cues and teach students the importance of hip extension in their daily movement. We can help students practice the full spectrum of movement that's appropriate for their bodies. Now, you know, I'm not going to bring up an issue and not offer solutions for you. I would never do that. So let's shift into solution mode. You can still teach the yoga you love. Just become more intentional about bringing in more balance between flexion, extension and other hip movements. Here are some other solutions. Okay, number one, add more hip extension to your sequences. Hip extension is the opposite to hip flexion. We need to intentionally bring it back in. Try incorporating bridge pose with glute engagement locus pose. Crescent lunge. I like to bend and straighten the back leg to help with hip extension. How about a kneeling warrior, but a more active version, so it is not the deepest lunge, which is what most students are used to. And also I like prone leg lifts or BirdDog as prep for movement and posterior chain strengthening. Speaking of posterior chain strength, we can teach strength in the glutes, the hamstrings, and the back extensors. Think of these muscles as the brakes and the stabilizers that protect the hips and the low back. Include chair pose, but with a controlled lowering. Get creative by teaching movements similar to deadlifts with a yoga block. Do tabletop leg lifts, locus or shaana variations like I mentioned before, and functional transitions that ask the glutes to activate. The third thing you could do is balance out your forward folding as much as you can instead of sequencing back to back forward bends. Alternate with neutral or extended poses, heart opening or chest opening poses, as well as spine lengthening. Transitions, even subtle shifts, like teaching half sun salutations with a back bend between folds can help. If you're teaching full sun salutations, be sure to emphasize either low cobra or upward facing dog. Ask students to pause in these shapes for a moment instead of racing through them. I've even replaced chaturangas with tabletop and camel pose with hands on the hips to invite more hip extension into the sequence. The fourth thing you could do and I think is always valuable is to bring awareness to daily movement patterns. Remind students that yoga is just one part of their movement diet. If they're sitting most of the day, more hip flexion in yoga probably is not going to help balance their body. Encourage your students to take movement breaks throughout the day. Invest in standing desks if they can. Walk more. My sneaky way to get students to walk more is to tell them to drink more water and they will have to walk more because they will have to use the bathroom more. It's a win-win because we could all stand to drink. A little bit more water. Anyway, invite your students to become more aware of glute engagement during everyday tasks while they're walking. Especially, it'll make a difference when you talk about these topics in your classes, the hope is that it sticks and it empowers them to integrate what they've learned into their lifestyle. Finally, use language that builds awareness and not fear. It's super important to avoid fear-based queuing like. Tight hip flexors are bad, or this pose will ruin your posture. We wanna stay away from that and instead, invite awareness. Notice how your hips feel in this shape. See if you can find both support and spaciousness. Or you could say this sequence is intended to balance the movement of the front of your body while we strengthen the back of your body. I wanna be clear that too much hip flexion isn't inherently a bad thing, but it becomes a problem when it's the default, especially in our culture that already sits too much and moves too little. Remember, as teachers, we don't need to fix our students. We need to support functional movement. Restore balance and offer more movement options in class and ask students to incorporate these teachings into their daily lives. In your classes, think about integrating more hip extension, strengthening the posterior chain, and approaching alignment with curiosity instead of rigidity, so that you can help students build strength, mobility, and longevity in their practice. Now it's your turn to go out. Have a look at your sequences, see what degree of hip flexion you have in them and where you can make some changes. Understanding anatomy, biomechanics, and the effects yoga Asana have on the body helps you help your students. It's so important for us to have this conversation so that you remember that students of all shapes, sizes, alignment, and abilities come to your classes and you can serve them all. You know that my goal is for you to love the yoga teaching life, and it's important to understand movement and the issues students come to your classes with. If you love this episode, let me know. Don't forget to download the ebook sequencing for different injuries. The link is in the show notes I promise you, it will help you form a foundation for teaching students with injuries and aging bodies. The information will also help you understand how to accommodate students of different accessibilities, and it'll be a great resource for you to return to again and again. When you download the ebook, you'll be joining my newsletter. That's just for yoga teachers. I've got more exciting teachings coming really soon, so I wanna tell you all about them. The link is in the show notes below, and I would love for you to join it so we can always stay connected. if you wanna send me a quick text message about your thoughts on this episode, I've also added a link in the show notes below. I won't know your phone number. It's just a neat addition to the platform that I use that allows for this new and super easy way for you to communicate with me. Once you click on it, it will take you to your messages, but don't delete the code. That's how your message will get to me, and I would love to know your thoughts. Subscribe to the podcast so you're always in the know when a new episode drops and share it with another yoga teacher who you think would love to be in on these conversations. Thank you for helping to spread the word about this podcast and if you've been taking notes in your journal as you listen to these episodes, I'm so glad you are and I would love to hear about it. Alright. now it's your turn to go out. Have a look at your sequences, see what degree of hip flexion you have in them and where you can make some changes. Alright, that's it for now. Bye.