26.08. Yogic training – opening the pelvic floor: the seat of safety and pleasure

The hips, pelvic floor and psoas muscle carry the feeling of being small and weak, the experience of being under attack, and being trapped. In addition, stiffness in this area weakens hormonal balance, and our ability to feel pleasure.

This area carries stress, insecurity and shame, and when these tensions are maintained over time, we “stiffen” – both somatically and emotionally. We age faster, both in body and mind. The very good news is that this process can be reversed! We can re-establish our connection with this area, reverse aging and release tensions we have carried for years.

Welcome to a series of advanced yogic workshops on the hips, pelvic floor and pose, and the connection of these body parts to trauma, stuckness and sexuality. We will explore how our relationship with our own instincts and emotions shapes our spiritual practice, as well as directly experience how yogic tools can open and heal traumas that are frozen in the body.

In yogic anatomy, the pelvic floor is the carrier of repressed emotions and shame: the feelings we do not allow ourselves to feel. This anatomical complex is also the nervous system’s “on” button for anxiety – the first area that tenses up when we feel unsafe. Learning to consciously de-tension this area means in practice that we learn how to establish safety in the body every day, and protect ourselves from going into activation, as well as recognizing early signs of a survival response, and stopping this before we enter a prolonged anxiety response.

Initially, we will touch and work out trauma that is frozen in the hip area. When these experiences have been allowed to move through and out of us, we will allow this area’s natural life force to begin to radiate. We will then activate what in the tantras is called “the hidden chakra”, the anchor for sexual energy, life force and creativity in the psychosomatic system, or energy body. This center is located below the navel, behind the genitals.

Most of us are far too good at controlling, closing and judging, and bad at surrendering, allowing and opening. In this series of workshops we will explore how we can learn to exercise less control by downregulating our nervous system and releasing somatic tensions that can also dissolve mental blocks that prevent us from being in surrender, trust and flow.

We will both explore theoretically, and feel in the body how “everything is connected”, and how there is a direct connection between how we face our own emotions, physical ailments/illness, our sexuality and our ability to open ourselves – both in life and in spiritual practice.