Ok, when I was like 12, I was starting to play soccer more seriously. I had been put on a summer league and I was playing for the Jr. High team at BC and I was starting at center half back. My coaches all said I needed to be able to run…a lot. Well, my dad, he ran. Still does. Three times a week. He goes out and pounds the pavement. Back then he did too. And he said, why don’t you start running with me if you have to get into shape. Ok, I thought. He did about three miles a pop. At the time it seemed like more mileage than any one person should ever attempt. Little did I know that about 16 years later I would be sidling up to a full marathon. Anywho, 12 years old, running three miles, three times a week with my dad, on top of soccer practice five times a week which was pretty much sprints, suicides, uphill sprints, relays and laps. Ok, in 1985 no one really knew about stretching. I mean my dad did. After we went running we had to stand and lean against the NiMo pipes in front of our house and do quad and calf (gastrocnemius and soleus) stretches. But like, no one knew about this magical muscle that I have come to discover for the 4th time in my life, the Psoas.
I first learned about it roughly 4 weeks into my first junior high soccer season when one day after a run with my dad I started to notice a really bad cramp. But not like a stitch in my side, like a really bad muscle cramp, dare I say spasm but like deep, not in my belly, behind that. And it started slow and and I kept bending over and saying “Dad, this really hurts.” Now I was a well known drama queen but my dad would never be one to say buck up to me, he was always there to hold my hand, carry me home and do what needed to be done. Well he was trying to get me to walk it off back to the house and I made it to about the front lawn when the muscle cramp turned into a full blown spasm and whether I wanted to or not my head was going to get really well aquainted with my knees and fast. I buckled to put it lightly. Pretty much crumpled to the ground. I don’t think I cried so much as wailed. I had never in all of my 12 years felt such a pain. I’m sure my dad thought it was a menstrual cramp as who the heck had heard of a psoas muscle and who had ever heard of a healthy young girl collapsing on the front lawn after a run.
Well, after it subsided about twenty minutes later my father did what we often did when something ailed us in our family. He took me to the Chiropractor. Doc got me on the adjusting table and began to palpate my abdomen. He kept telling me to breath and I saw flashes of white light from the pain as his hand sank deeper and deeper into my abdomen. He stopped and had me bend my knee and straighten it a few times. He did that for what seemed like an eternity while tears streamed down my face and I clenched my fists. He then had me lay on my stomach, adjusted me and then showed me a very simple stretch where, while laying on my stomach, I put my hands under my shoulders and lifted up my shoulders off the ground. He said that when we do a lot of running and sprinting or anything that lifts our knees up it tightens the psoas muscle and if we don’t stretch it out, it will do that spasm thingy that it did. He told me to do that stretch every day. I did. I do. Every day.
The second time I have encountered the psoas muscle was later in life and in a much more intimate circumstance. It was during the act of coitus. And the spasm was the same. I handled it a little bit better, I didn’t drop to the ground and wail but I did have to cease and desist all activity, politely excuse myself, retire to the bathroom, while in the dark hallway stopping to lean against the wall and bite my lip, sweat profusely and once again wait it out. I was never sure when this was going to come up, but it did. Occasionally. I checked in with the gals, some had never experienced it others were in full solidarity with me on that and yeah it sucked but it passed and when I checked with my Ob/Gyn he said, “yeah, that sounds like a tight psoas muscle, make sure you do your upward facing dog stretch.” Yeah Doc, got it. Every day. This year, when we started studying the pelvis I learned that only 40% of humans (or rather of those autopsied and recorded) have a Psoas Minor, in one book it basically says that all it does is assist in the posterior pelvic tilt, aka, the forward thrust, aka schtupping. It’s the schtupping muscle. In the picture below on the left, you can see Psoas Major (what we all have) and the elusive Psoas minor.
Ok, third time I encounter Psoas. I’m in Kinesiology class. My teacher is giving a 40 minute lecture on Psoas. She is explaining why it’s on her top ten list of all time favorite muscles. She explains that it is not only one of the only muscles to attach directly to the spinal cord. It is the only muscle that connects our vertebrae with our femur (big bone in thigh). It shares a connection through the fascia (the connective tissue of our bodies) to our feet. It shares a connection with our Diaphragm up through the Pericardiam (the sack around our heart) up to the Duramater (a surrounding layer of our brain and spinal cord) and it has a direct connection to our Pleural (lung) cavity. It creates a shelf that our lower intestine and our reproductive organs sit on. The nerves that travel next to it give us feeling in our external gentilia, our thighs, hips and buttocks. And to me, biggest of all, it is the “Survival Instinct muscle.” It does this in both the preliminary of “fight or flight” as it is a major hip flexor which means when you lift your leg to haul ass, your psoas is the muscle instigating the movement and then even bigger, say you are Nicole and you run into a bear in the woods and you decide to play dead, it also is the muscle that instigates the movement of pulling your head to your knees.
I pretty much immediately did all the psychoanalysis of of times one and two so you can too now………..And ok time number four goes a little something like this:
Today, in class, I got to do what the chiropractor did to me all those years ago. But my client didn’t cry. She buzzed. I moved really slowly and moved with her breath and after a few minutes I felt like I was touching her back rips but sure enough it was her Psoas and I saw her face buzz when I did it. I swear to freaking that which is true in your heart I made contact with the deepest muscle I have made contact with yet, I looked up to see how that was affecting my client and her face was buzzing. She said she felt it in her head. Uh, YEAH! After an hour’s worth of work we did some feedback and she said it felt amazing. I felt like I was meant to do that. Like I felt really connected to the work.
Later, when Nicole and LIz and I were talking about how much we loved the steak at this one restaurant. I was thinking how it was tender, like Filet Mignon. And then I remembered that one of our teachers told us that Filet Mignon was the Psoas. So I guess I’ve had more than four encounters. Below are some pictures.
