The Sacred Psoas: Meeting the Muscle of the Soul
Deep within the pelvis, where the spine meets the legs and the earth meets the body, lives a muscle rarely spoken of in polite conversation—but intimately known by those who’ve lived through tension, trauma, or the long ache of disconnection.
It is the psoas (pronounced so-as)—and it may very well be the messenger your soul has been waiting for.
More than a muscle, the psoas is a bridge:
Between body and spirit,
Instinct and emotion,
Survival and surrender.
This article is a reverent invitation to meet your psoas—not to fix or stretch it, but to listen, to learn, and to let it lead you home.
Anatomy of a Sacred Place
The psoas major is the only muscle to connect the spine to the legs. It originates at the twelfth thoracic vertebra (T12), spans the lumbar spine, and threads its way through the pelvic bowl to attach at the inner thigh. It’s part of what’s known as the “core,” but not in the way fitness culture describes—it’s deeper, subtler, more mysterious.
When the psoas is in balance, it supports upright posture, fluid walking, and pelvic stability. But that’s just the beginning of its story.
In the language of somatics, the psoas is the muscle of fight, flight, and freeze. It contracts instantly in response to threat—pulling the knees up, curling the spine, bracing for impact. Over time, if the body doesn’t feel safe enough to release, the psoas becomes shortened, dense, or dormant.
Many women live with a chronically tight psoas and don’t even know it.
Others sense it in their bones: a gripping in the belly, a fatigue in the hips, a disconnect between upper and lower body that feels like soul-loss.
The Psoas and the Nervous System
To meet the psoas is to meet your survival system.
It is deeply intertwined with the autonomic nervous system, particularly the sympathetic (fight or flight) response. When the body perceives danger, the psoas fires like a coiled spring—ready to run or resist.
This was lifesaving for our ancestors. But in modern life, where danger takes the form of microaggressions, emotional suppression, societal pressure, and chronic stress, the psoas rarely gets the full release it needs.
For women—especially those with histories of trauma, anxiety, or over-responsibility—the psoas becomes a quiet sentinel, holding years of tension, unshed tears, and protective instincts in its sinewy grasp.
This is not weakness. This is intelligence.
The body does not betray you. It speaks in sensation, waiting for your return.
A Muscle That Feels
Liz Koch, author of The Psoas Book, calls the psoas “an organ of perception.” Unlike other muscles that respond to linear movement and logic, the psoas responds to emotion, to breath, to vibration.
It is exquisitely sensitive to how safe we feel in our bodies and in the world.
When you lie in stillness and bring awareness to your low belly and pelvis, you may begin to feel its presence—not as a muscle to manipulate, but as a being to relate to. The psoas doesn’t respond to force. It unfurls only with trust.
And this trust is where the magic begins.
The Feminine Body and the Frozen Core
Many women—especially sensitive, intuitive women—live in a state of partial freeze. We smile, we work, we serve, but something remains locked inside.
An inner flinch.
A resistance to letting go.
A clenched centre we’ve learned to ignore.
This is often the psoas speaking.
In somatic trauma healing, we understand that the body doesn’t distinguish between physical and emotional safety. If your body has ever felt objectified, violated, overpowered, or silenced, the psoas may still be bracing for the next blow.
It’s not about what happened. It’s about what wasn’t completed. The psoas holds these unfinished stories in tension—until we’re ready to feel, release, and reinhabit ourselves.
Meeting your psoas is an invitation to reclaim your sacred core.
Not just your abs—but your power, your intuition, your softness, your rage, your pleasure.
The Psoas and Intuition
What if your gut feelings weren’t just metaphors?
The psoas lives in intimate connection with the gut, the womb, and the vagus nerve—all key players in your intuitive system. When it’s supple and free, the psoas becomes a tuning fork for truth.
It helps you sense when something is off.
When someone can’t be trusted.
When your body says yes—but your mind hasn't caught up yet.
In this way, healing the psoas isn’t just physical—it’s psychic. It’s a restoration of inner authority. It reconnects you to the voice below the noise.
You begin to walk differently. Speak differently. Move with the confidence of a woman who doesn’t need proof to trust her knowing.
A Muscle of Birth and Becoming
The psoas also plays a profound role in birth—not only the physical birth of a child, but symbolic births of identity, creativity, and change.
During childbirth, the psoas must soften and lengthen to allow the baby to descend. When it is tense or constricted, labor becomes more difficult.
The same is true of spiritual rebirth. We cannot force transformation. We must yield. We must open.
Many women find that as they work somatically with the psoas—through gentle movement, breath, and awareness—they begin to shed old identities. They release shame. They remember how to receive.
The pelvis becomes less of a prison and more of a cradle.
Practices for Meeting the Psoas
This isn’t about stretching your hip flexors.
This is about listening.
Here are some gentle ways to begin:
✧ Constructive Rest Pose
Lie on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the floor, hip-width apart. Place your hands on your low belly or over your womb space. Let gravity do the work. Breathe slowly, feeling the back of your body settle. Stay 10–20 minutes.
Let the psoas un-grip at its own pace.
✧ Pendulation
In somatics, we move between safety and activation in gentle waves. While lying down, bring your attention to a place of ease in your body (a hand, your breath), then gently shift awareness to your belly or hips. Notice sensations without judgment. Then return to ease. Repeat.
This builds capacity and trust.
✧ Womb-Space Visualisation
Close your eyes and breathe into your pelvic bowl. Imagine your psoas as a soft river running through you. Let it speak. Let it show you where it’s tired, what it’s holding, what it needs.
Sometimes the psoas will speak in images, memories, or emotions.
Let it.
Signs Your Psoas Is Healing
You’ll know your psoas is softening when:
Your belly feels more spacious
Your hips feel less tight
Your breath moves deeper
You feel more grounded
You experience sudden waves of emotion or memory (release)
You say “no” more easily
You feel the desire to move, rest, cry, or create
Healing the psoas is rarely linear. It is spiral-shaped, like the feminine path. You’ll revisit old wounds, uncover new wisdom, and slowly feel yourself drop back into your body—not as a burden, but as a beloved home.
The Psoas as a Portal
To walk with an open psoas is to walk with presence.
To live from your centre.
To be rooted in the earth and attuned to the stars.
Your radiance doesn’t live in your performance.
It lives in your pelvis.
It lives in your posture.
It lives in the way you rise from a chair, greet the morning, hold yourself at night.
The psoas teaches the art of surrender, not collapse, but yielding with strength.
Not submission, but sacred listening.
It is a reclamation of the feminine body as wise, holy, and alive.
In Closing: A Love Letter to Your Psoas
Dear woman,
You do not need to “loosen” this muscle to be lovable.
You do not need to fix what has been so loyal in protecting you.
You only need to return—with softness, with breath, with time.
Let your psoas know:
You are safe now.
You are allowed to rest.
You are allowed to feel.
You are allowed to take up space.
This is not a quick-fix blog. It is a beginning. A remembering. A homecoming.
To the sacred muscle.
To the soul that never left.
To the body that always knew.