The Hip Consternation

"Your 1st blog post will be bad, but your 1000th will be great.
Your 1st workout will be weak, but your 1000th will be strong.
Your 1st meditation will be scattered, but your 1000th will be focused.
Put in your reps." 

From James Clear 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter

So, this morning I persuaded my 13-year-old son to do some yoga stretches with me. All went well with a lot of “do what you can” and “accept where you are” encouragement from my side and many forms of grunts from him. But he humoured me and we flowed through sun salutes and warrior poses, laughing and farting in between as mothers and sons do.

When we stretched and open into the hip flexors, two things happened. I became angry and agitated and my son has an unforeseen flow of tears. We were both suddenly engulfed in a flux of unexpected emotions. Apparently this is a thing. We store our emotions in our hips. Who would have thought.

“When we repress strong emotions, the body finds a way of storing them that can later cause repercussions in the form of blockages at a physiological level. This is particularly true of the hip flexors which is where we store emotion, often the kind we keep hidden, such as anger, anxiety, sadness and frustration.”  

Louise Cook Edwards 

Read the rest here, it's quite interesting.

It reminded me of what a yoga instructor said at a retreat many years ago: “In pigeon pose, no one can see you cry”. It completely makes sense now.

We live a world where we are so connected to everything that we are utterly disconnected to ourselves and the people closest to us. It will take a thousand meditations to get closer to our most inner being again. A thousand journal entries to truly come to face our fears, dreams and expectations. A thousand pigeon poses to break through our sadness, anger and anxieties. I believe we have to simply start somewhere with the first one and just get better at it.

After this very strange catharsis from both of us, my son sighed, smiled and professed that he is feeling surprisingly good. Tomorrow same time?

You bet.
Put in your reps.