Your physical therapist, chiropractor, or yoga teacher might have told you that you have a tight psoas muscle, and they may have taught you stretching exercises to release it.

While they’re probably right—having a tight psoas is a very common problem—static stretching has little to no lasting effect on the level of tension in the psoas muscle. As a former ballet dancer, I used to have an extremely tight psoas muscle, which caused me to have back pain, back spasms, and functional leg length discrepancy. In the course of my training to become a Clinical Somatic Educator, I learned the technique of pandiculation, which allowed me to finally release years of built-up tension in my psoas muscle. As I practiced Clinical Somatics exercises daily, my psoas muscle gradually lengthened, my back pain and spasms disappeared, and my hips evened out. I’ll explain why stretching doesn’t work later in the post, but first I’m going to explain what the psoas muscle is and what problems a tight psoas muscle can cause.

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