Ep 139: Should You Keep The Hips Square in Twists?

Teaching students to keep their hips square is one of the most consistently taught cues in yoga twists, but the anatomy behind it is more nuanced than what we were initially taught. This episode breaks down where spinal rotation actually comes from, what changes mechanically when the pelvis is allowed to move versus held still, why allowing pelvic movement can actually increase total spinal rotation rather than reduce it, and how to decide which version serves your students in any given pose. The answer is not about the position. Instead, it's about the purpose behind it.

• Where Spinal Rotation Actually Originates
• What Happens Anatomically When the Pelvis Moves
•  When Squaring the Hips Does Serve a Purpose
•  Why This Matters for Specific Student Bodies
• Poses Where Pelvic Movement Works Well
• Takeaways for Your Next Class

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Transcript

Monica 3:59

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here. Here is where we talk about anatomy, injuries, the nervous system, and answer some of the burning questions that you wish had been included in your yoga teacher training. If this is your first time listening, I'm a yoga teacher who specializes in helping teachers work confidently with students who have pain and injuries. I facilitate anatomy trainings for yoga teachers, and I mentor teachers inside my six-month mentorship program. Today's episode is one that has been in the queue to record for a while because it addresses a yoga cue that a lot of teachers use when we're teaching twists. It's the cue to keep your hips square or keep your pelvis still and in seated twists to anchor through the sit bones and don't let your hips move. I am going to approach the answer to this question in the following way. I am not going to tell you, "Yes, always keep the hips square," or, "No, never cue squared hips," because to frame it that way, we miss something that we can actually get curious about. So what I wanna do instead is to explain what's actually happening in the body when a student twists, what happens differently when the pelvis is allowed to move versus when it's held still, and then give you a way to think about which one you want to cue and why. Because the answer is more about the purpose of what you're teaching and less about the positioning. I think once you understand the mechanics, you will find a lot of what you have been naturally cueing will automatically make more sense to you and some of the twists you've been cueing in certain poses you might begin to think differently about. So let's start with a quick look at spinal anatomy because it's important to have a solid foundation on this before we can proceed to examining spinal rotation. Your spine has different regions, and each region of it is built a little bit differently, which means each region rotates differently. Your cervical spine, your neck, has seven vertebrae and is the most rotationally mobile part of your spine by a significant margin. This is why you can turn your head so far. The joint surfaces are oriented in a way that allows for a lot of rotation. Your thoracic spine, your mid and upper back, has 12 vertebrae, and this is where the majority of your spinal rotation is designed to happen. The orientation of the facet joints in the thoracic spine make it favorable for rotation. We know that the ribs attach to the thoracic spine, which does limit the total range compared to the cervical spine. But structurally, the thoracic spine is your primary rotation zone. Your lumbar spine, your lower back, has five vertebrae, and this is important because the facet joints in the lumbar spine are oriented almost vertically in a way that is really well-suited for flexion and extension, meaning bending forward and back, which is why back bending naturally happens here. But the positioning of the facet joints make them poorly suited for rotation. The available rotation in the entire lumbar spine is often cited as somewhere around 13 degrees total. However, this does vary between students. Compare that degree of rotation to the thoracic spine where you have significantly more available rotation. And then below the lumbar spine, you have the sacrum sitting between the ilium, the two halves of the pelvis connected at the sacroiliac joints. Those joints have very little movement available and are built primarily for stability and load transfer, not for producing rotation. So I want you to picture this and kind of see it in your mind. When we ask for spinal rotation, the thoracic spine is designed to do most of that work. The lumbar spine has very little movement to give, and the pelvis is not really part of the spinal rotation conversation because it's not part of the spine in the twisting sense. It's the base that the vertebrae above the spine sit on. So remember that distinction because it's going to matter a lot for what we're about to discuss next. Typically, in our trainings, we were taught to cue the hips to stay square in twists because we want the rotation to come from the spine rather than compensating by involving the pelvis in the movement. The logic is that if the pelvis turns, the student is not really twisting. They are just rotating their whole body and getting less spinal work. But mechanically, that is not quite what is happening. When you fix the pelvis in place and ask a student to rotate, you are limiting the total range available to the movement. The spine rotates as far as its structure allows relative to a stationary base, and then it stops, which is fine. This is one way to teach rotations. But when the pelvis is allowed to move with the rotation, something different happens. The pelvis rotating in the same direction as the twist creates a new starting position for the spine. And the spine can then continue to rotate from there. The result is that you often end up with more total spinal rotation, not less, and it's not wrong, it's just different. Let me say this another way because it may sound counterintuitive, but it is the whole reason for this episode. Allowing the pelvis to move does not necessarily mean the student is taking rotation away from their spine. In many cases, it means their spine ends up rotating further than it would have if the pelvis had been locked down in stillness. So Think about how you turn to look behind you, say, when you're walking. You might step one foot back, your pelvis turns, and your spine rotates on top of all of that. You get a huge amount of total rotation because the whole system is participating in the movement. that is a normal, functional human movement pattern and again, there's nothing wrong with it. I realized this when I was taking continuing education on human movement, which was outside of the yoga world, and it was pivotal in helping me start to question why we cue the way that we do, and I started questioning why we have to stick to those cues forever. It also added a layer to my teaching, and still does, where I teach students to notice the differences in the movements we're taking throughout class. So the cue to keep the hips square while twisting is actually limiting the movement to a specific, more constrained version of the twist, which might be exactly what you wanna teach, or it might not be Now, there are legitimate reasons to keep the pelvis still, and I wanna cover those because I wanna be clear that I am not arguing that squaring the hips is wrong or keeping the hips completely still is wrong. You might want a stable pelvis when you are working on a specific quality of rotation, when you want the student to feel the movement happening in a targeted region rather than distributed throughout the whole body. You might also want a stable pelvis when you are working on stability and control, where the point is not maximum range but the ability to keep a base while teaching to move above it. And you might want a stable pelvis when the pose has specific structural intention, But here's the question that I want you to ponder and sit with because again, it's the question of this whole episode. When you cue hips square in a twist, do you know why you're cueing that or is it just what you were taught to say? Because the cue is not wrong, but when you teach it without a purpose behind it, this is what I want you to reconsider. What about students with different bodies, different available ranges of motion, and different neutral postures? We know that students have different degrees of available rotation in their thoracic spine. Some students have a lot of thoracic mobility. Some have very little, often because of postural patterns from sitting or because of structural differences or because of things like arthritic changes in the thoracic spine that limit the degree of rotation Think about it. When a student with limited thoracic rotation is asked to keep their pelvis completely still and twist as far as they can, where does that rotation demand go? It tends to go into the lumbar spine, which as we discussed earlier, has very little movement to offer, or it goes into the sacroiliac joints, or it goes into the shoulders and the neck if the student reaches with their arms and turns their head in an effort to create the appearance of a deeper twist. For most students, that's not a big deal. But for a student with a lumbar disc issue or SI joint irritation or a history of low back pain, asking them to generate rotation from a completely still pelvis is asking them to rotate from a place that is not well-suited to provide it. When you allow the pelvis to participate in the twist, it takes that demand off the lumbar spine and distributes it throughout the entire system that is well-equipped to handle it. Let me give you some specific poses where allowing pelvic movement can serve your students really well. Standing twists are good poses to incorporate this. In a standing twist where the arms are open teach students that it's okay to move their pelvis with the rotation because this can give students a much more functional and often much more comfortable experience in the rotation, and it mirrors how they actually rotate in daily life. Twists in chair pose are another one where this can make a big difference. Chair twists is a pose where a lot of students feel this feeling of, stuckness, right? Because they are being asked to twist from a position that already has a lot going on, but allowing the pelvis to move slightly or allowing one hip to be a little bit more forward than the other gives the spine room to actually rotate rather than fighting against this fixed base. Many of my students have said that they felt immediate relief when I have offered them space to move and not stay completely still or rigid in chair twists. Twists in a wide leg forward fold are a great place to explore and compare movement. In a wide leg forward fold with a twist, the pelvis is already in a position of significant hip flexion and abduction, and teaching twists here while also teaching students to keep their pelvis completely still is a lot to ask. When you allow the pelvis to shift and one ilium to lift slightly, the rotation becomes far more available and many times more comfortable. Now, don't get me wrong. I've taught both. A still pelvis while we are exploring the idea of levelness, and I've taught students to allow movement in their pelvis so that we can explore how the femur heads shift in the acetabulum How one side of the pelvis might feel higher than the other, and to become aware of the degree of rotation they can achieve when they allow their pelvis to move. Lastly, revolved lunges are poses where we can also experiment with. I know the traditional cue is to square the hips and keep them still and then rotate, but allowing the hip of the back leg to move slightly can make the rotation more accessible and take demand off of the lower back. It can also be helpful in feeling the sense of space across the SI joints, especially for students who feel sensation in these types of asymmetrical poses. In every one of these cases, I am not saying that you should always let the pelvis move. I am saying you should know what changes in the body when it does, and you should choose what version you wanna teach with intention. All right, I wanna give you something concrete to do in your very next class because I think this is one of those topics that becomes more real, more concrete once you observe it directly in class while you're watching your students. First, teach a twist the way you normally would with whatever cue you usually use, and just watch your students. Notice what your students actually do. Notice where students are actually trying to create rotation in their spine. Notice who looks comfortable and who looks like they are working against something or forcing the twist. Second, in the same class, offer a twist where you explicitly give permission for the pelvis to move. You can say something like, "In this twist, let your hips move with the rotation if that feels better," and notice what changes. Then watch your students again. Watch their faces. Watch how far they're able to twist. And watch and notice if they visibly relax. Third, ask students either in class or afterward what they noticed, and kinda just be curious here. Listen to what they share with you because often it can be even more useful information than what you just observed in class. And fourth, ask yourself the question we have been circling this whole episode In my regular teaching, when I cue hips square, what am I actually going for? What's the purpose behind that instruction? If you have a clear answer, wonderful. Keep cueing it, and now you are cueing it deliberately. If you do not have a clear answer, or you teach it that way because that's what you were taught, then that's worth mulling over, and it's often the beginning of creating a much more interesting relationship with what you teach, how, and why. The takeaway from this episode is not that squaring the hips is wrong, and it's not that you should let everyone be loosey-goosey and move their pelvis freely in every twist. The takeaway is that the position is not the point. The purpose is the point. When you understand what happens mechanically in both versions, you get to choose. And choosing between the two with an understanding of what you are asking for and why is what separates one teacher who repeats the language they've inherited and haven't examined from another teacher who is actually thinking about the student bodies in each and every class and how their cues are received by students. If you are rethinking how you approach sequencing after listening to this, I have a free resource called Sequencing Made Easy that helps you think through how to build a sequence that is clear, accessible, and well-structured, and it's your sequence, not mine. I have it linked in the show notes, and you can download it, use it, and let it give you a framework that you can return to whenever you feel unsure about your sequencing intentions Sequencing takes skill. It's just not the skill most of us were taught to think. We were taught that sequencing has to change often, or it's gotta be different in order to keep students coming back, and that's just not true. The skill is not in how many ideas you can fit into your class. It's in knowing what your students need and creating a sequence that actually offers it to them. I hope this episode helped you think about the cues you use and the reasons behind why you use them. again, thank you so much for being here and joining the conversations we deserve to have to help continue your education and evolve your teaching. All right. Bye.