Psoas-Nasal Connection..?

Just a short post on an odd and interesting occurrence I have noted twice now..  Often when I find myself up at 1am, and not sleepy, I will have a movement exploration session (with lights off).  Twice now, I have decided to explore stretching of the deep hip flexor (psoas) muscle, via a number of methods.

Getting a stretch directly in the psoas is no small feat, and as I have mentioned in another blog, people often put themselves into poses/postures that should stretch the psoas, theoretically; but in actuality they have little stretch in it and no sensory awareness of it.  This was what I was doing for a very long time, too.  A true psoas stretch is an odd and somewhat confronting sensation (and it can be a very strong sensation).  It feels fantastic after it has been carefully stretched (passive, or better yet, PNF style).

Besides the wide-ranging postural, movement and gait benefits that are felt after this (or I should say, that I personally feel after I do it), I noticed a strange connection.  On the first night I really 'got into' psoas, and felt it tangibly relax (PNF style), I had a moderately strong head cold and blockages in both nasal passages.  After the post-isometric contraction relaxation of the deep hip flexor had happened, and I was in the 'relax and re-pattern' phase of the stretch, my nasal passage on the side of the hip flexor being stretched dramatically cleared.  Hmmm..  interesting.  I stretched the second side and, sure enough, the other nostril cleared.

Two nights ago, I was up at 1am again.  I decided to do some late night deep hip flexor exploration and stretching-with-awareness.  This time I had no cold.  What I did notice was a very large, tangible increase in my awareness of the breath going in and out of the my nostril, nose and nasopharynx!

Two attempts does not make anything conclusive, but it is interesting enough for me to continue to play around with.  If it turns out to be something, the method of its working is an interesting thing to contemplate.. does it work via freeing the movement of lumbar spine (thus whole spine) up; is it somehow linked to the nerves of the lumbar plexus being freed.. or something more reflexive.  First I need to continue to observe if it works every time. 

No nasal sensory enhancement from rectus femoris dominant hip flexor stretches, no matter how good a stretch I get from them (and they are great stretches for other reasons).  Simon Thakur's (Ancestral Movement) comment's from facebook were:

" ..could be some sort of stimulation of the autonomic nervous system. Either the sympathetic trunk in the deep abdomen, or the sacral branches of the parasympathetic system. Either way, there's a reasonable amount of evidence linking breath flow in each nostril to relative dominance of the opposite cerebral hemisphere..."

Do, please, let me know if you try it and get similar (or different) results.

Bolster Psoas-emphasis Hip Flexor Exercise

Today I filmed THIS video of a psoas awareness variant of the bolster hip flexor stretch, from the Stretch Therapy syllabus.  As I mentioned in the clip, for me I can get right onto the deep hip flexor (psoas) using this position and sequentially contracting different bits of my leg.

The sequence of contractions I found worked for me was: shin into the bolster (knee extension); tail tucking then finally hip flexion with a straight-ish leg.  You can also do stuff up in the spine and torso (and with the opposite leg), but it's a little bit hard to explain in writing.  If you have high level body awareness you'll figure it out pretty easily. 

Also, the methodology for the exercise is different than the standard contract-relax method used in a large number of Stretch Therapy™ stretches.  In this, I use the contractions to get a sensory awareness of psoas contracting - and then I hold it.  I might contract it, then over-contract it (modulate the tension from medium to high, then back to medium) - but I never full relax the muscle. You add other movements to increase the stretch on the deep hip flexor (lateral flexion; rotation; rotation and extension (if no back pain or dysfunction prevents this)).

There are other complex things (like adding in additional spiral contraction vectors) you can do to enhance this stretch, but as I said above, until I figure out a way to accurately describe what I'm doing, you'll just have to explore yourself. 

A few people who tested this stretch reported just a standard hip flexor stretch, so I am musing about whether you need to have relaxed the rectus femoris muscle sufficiently before this stretch actually works for psoas..

My current physical cultivation explorations with stretching and stretching related body-mindfulness practice, have lead me to some interesting sequential contraction stretching techniques (which I will continue to post up for people to try).  Hope it works for you!  Go easy on the intensity, this is a 'introspective' stretch.