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When you don’t deal with stress directly, it can impact you physically. Not only will your mood suffer, but your body will also store extra stress inside itself. This can take the form of fat accumulation from stress eating and cortisol, impacting your internal biochemistry, but it can also effect muscles, tendons, and ligaments, making them a lot tighter than they need to be.

Dealing with tight hip flexors isn’t just a good way to feel better physically. Doing so can also make you feel a lot better emotionally and mentally as well. Hip flexors aren’t just important to your hips, but, in fact, most of your body. Your hips connect your torso to your legs, so they are vital parts of your body in terms of mobility. Hip problems will impact your knees and ankles just as much as your low back and abs. That means if you have tight hip flexors, you need to loosen them for the sake of your posture, stamina, and metabolism.

If you have localized hip discomfort, trouble arching your back, low back pain, or difficulty stretching your legs behind you, then you have the most common symptoms that indicate tight hip flexors. Fortunately, there are exercises you are free to do to loosen them, and most of them you can do safely at home.

Do you have any personal experience with Yoga, Tai Chi, or Pilates? If so, then you probably already know specific exercises and poses that help loosen your hip flexors. Anytime you go to a yoga class and are put into the “Pigeon pose,” your teacher is directly targeting your hips and hip flexors.

Of course, any exercises you do should be performed gently at first. No matter how tight a hip flexor might be, you don’t want to apply equal assertion in the opposite direction. Just give it a little relief, and your body will know how to kick in quite a bit of healing on its own.

If exercises don’t bring you relief to your hip flexors, or the relief just doesn’t last, then stress might not be the issue. Consider your shoes, your posture, and any place you spend sitting for extended periods of time. These can all be factors impacting things.

As always, consult your physician to find out more on general physical health.