The Best Psoas Release

This is the best and most rapid psoas release you'll find anywhere! No painful stretching required. Do you suffer from low back pain, hip or sacroiliac pain? Have you been told that you have "a tight psoas?" It's never just one muscle causing your pain; there's always a pattern of tightness involved - and it happens in the brain. Martha Peterson teaches you to release the psoas AND the muscles that psoas coordinates with.

If you enjoy our Youtube content and would like to learn more about how you can treat chronic muscle pain from the comfort of your own home, check out our video lessons, attend an in-person Fundamentals Course weekend (offered worldwide), come to one of our many retreats, or sign up for our online classes. The links are below.

[DelightfulDissident]

I have hyperlordosis. I slept for 12 hours about 5 days ago and when I woke up my pelvis was so weak I've been immobile since. This enabled me to stand without pain. THANK YOU

[karinawitchell]

I love the fact that you take the time to answer every single question in full from the viewers. Thank you.

[pasidera]

It works! Amazing! Been having pelvic and back pain for years now. It immediately relaxed my pelvic area.

[TaroIwamoto]

very good exercise that not only releases psoas but also trains muscles very functionally!

[AS-qrmd]

Wow, this is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing this. I have to share my story with you because I've been through years of PT and massage and medication and this psoas issue never recovered following two hip, knee and lumbar spine injuries 6 months apart. I was told I'd just have to live with the pain, which I've been doing 10 years. After another serious injury to my spine, head, shoulder and neck last year, the pain was overwhelming but I didn't want to just take useless pain meds.



When I finally had strength enough to go to PT, my whole side of my body was just clenched and unreleasing, shoulder to trunk, with my leg weakened. Massage and PT even with muscle relaxers was hardly helping, it seemed focusing on one area would cause another tight pain. Studying hip anatomy, intuitively last week I started working in slow hip rotating movements to 'retrain' my hip to rotate instead of the stiff clicking and clenching it had for years.



I started doing hip releasing stretches where I would relax into it as much and as long as I could and started seeing some progress in about a week. But the psoas seemed it was hurting more than ever which is excruciating and disrupts everything from waking to sleeping! A friend mentioned TRE to me, so today I tried that full sequence and it was great. That led me to a psoas releasing TRE video which I did, and afterwards I just fell asleep for 7 hours! It was an improvement on waking, where normally my psoas is so painful it wakes me or immediately hurts and is stiff from sleep. I felt I was on the right track targeting psoas release, scrolled down and found your video here.



Doing your releasing set was profound, and your explanation tied together everything I'd been suspecting. I could feel the whole side of my body's part in the SMA, and so I just made the movements as slow as possible to work out the clicking, a constant problem in my hip on clockwise rotation.



Afterwards, laying and just resting, I could feel my psoas actually feeling very warm and gently contracting and releasing on its own!! It felt like bloodflow was going back there after a decade and it was actually MOVING and not stuck in tension! Even my shoulder (which at one point was frozen) was fluttering and releasing. This was such a profound simple movement that helped me immediately. I cannot thank you enough. I know this is long but I had to share how helpful this is! I'll be doing this daily now. Hopefully I'll be able to get my leg back flat onto the floor in cross legged sitting soon, something i haven't felt in ten years! Thank you so much!


EDIT: OKAY, this is REMARKABLE. Right after writing this comment I went to eat. I sat on my couch cross legged as I usually do, and right away noticed how much more relaxed my left leg (the left side is the one with all the injuries/issues above), low back, and psoas already were. I thought, "Wow, I really AM going to be able to get this thigh flat on the floor in no time!"


But as I sat there eating, I noticed that my leg WAS flat on the couch. Thinking this was probably because of the softness of the couch, I went and sat on the floor and to my great and dumbfounded surprise, MY LEFT LEG WAS COMPLETELY FLAT ON THE FLOOR. Both my thighs and knees were equally touching the floor. I was dumbstruck for a few minutes then burst out crying happy tears of joy and gratitude thanking God for this miracle!



I have not felt this sitting position in over ten years, since December 2009 when my hip first got injured and changed my whole life. I was so active before then — running, biking for commute daily, bodysurfing, hiking, swimming, yoga, weight training. All of that stopped and I've never quite gotten it back. Ever since, my left leg has been tilted upwards in this sitting position, so that my left thigh and knee are hovering inches over the floor. I've been in constant pain in every single position no matter what I did, walking, standing, laying, sitting, anything. I just taught myself to ignore it because there was no other usable option.


Even more amazing, I stood up and noticed that the constant pain in my low back and psoas is no longer there. There was this intense painful tension continuously for ten years that is GONE. It's just gone.



It was a deep, hard pulling and tightness that no matter how I massaged, foam rolled, stretched, soaked in hot epsom salt bath, heat pad, so much PT.... none of it got it to release. This whole area was incredibly sensitive to even light touch, especially over the iliac and SI areas. Even just last night, I was massaging it and feeling how painful it was, 8/10 nearly bringing tears, thinking how can I get this to release?



So many diagnoses (IT band syndrome, SI joint syndrome, piriformis syndrome, psoas syndrome, patellofemoral syndrome) and NO ONE has been able to get this resolved. I've lived with this pain for 10.5 years, and thanks to this incredible combination of following my body's intuition, retraining it to do its natural hip movement, but most importantly, trying these TRE sets targeting my psoas release... a decade of pain is GONE. If it wasn't happening right now to me I would have a hard time believing it, just because of how much pain I've been in with NO options other than horrible medication or painful injections, which never truly helped and knocked more things off balance in my body.



THANK YOU SO MUCH. That's not even sufficient of thanks, but thank you thank you thank you!!! I know it's a combination of the things I've done over the last week, but I truly know I would not have experienced this without your profound psoas release set pulling it all together and making sense of all the parts. It was the final turn of the key that unlocked — literally — my psoas. You have changed my life. This set is now my permanent daily maintenance and thanks for my body's innate wonder!! Thank

Update 14 Sep 2020: I thought I'd share another update. I'm still so thankful I found these exercises, because they have helped keep me going this year when I was unable to leave my house or even schedule PT because of illness.

I do these nearly daily, if I don't, my body will remind me with tightness returning slowly. I have found over the past few months increased flexibility in the hip and now have a longer length of time before it starts feeling locked up (few days instead of less than a day or just constant). That pain that was relenting and just released is still completely gone though, like this huge knot from inside. That is a HUGE quality of life improvement for me over the past 10 years just from adding these into my routine. I have been adding trigger point release in surrounding muscles to try to help get the connected areas loosened and get my "uptime" even longer.

Still able to sit cross legged without issues! And it has progressively gotten more even in my hips, also been focusing a lot on consciously correcting the tilt in my hips while standing, which doing these exercises has REALLY helped me reconnect with the conscious awareness of those muscles. That's really major for me right now because I'm recovering from an accident that really messed that up in my whole body. Looking forward to PT again soon, I am having some kind of issue with my left leg strength that needs someone to look at it.

[bethannorr]

There are 2 different versions of this exercise I do now … even just after a few days … I can feel the difference!

[robynaust]

Martha, thank you so much for this. I've had psoas issues for years which, as well as what seemed like hip problems, has created digestive issues as well. This particular movement has helped me to be able to walk more confidently, feel much better, and I feel like I'm coming out of a dark painful place. Can't thank you enough.

[dhaneshwaridangwal]

Thank it did really help me, after doing these exercises my pain is totally relieved

[hofhofandaway]

Man, you weren’t kidding!! Thank you!! ❤

[dianemoore]

That is amazing! I could hardly walk, my hip flexors were so tight & weak feeling. Now I’m 75% improved. Thank you!

[jasminejc]

Thank you for an excellent presentation.

[randallflinn]

I agree with all, except for the cervical flexion forward or in rotation....especially with elbows aimed forward.
If psoas and transverse abs are weak - then the cervical flexing even adds more strain to the next muscles. There are safer ways of approaching this with the muscles of the neck not employed in the movements.

[bschuber]

I'm so happy I discovered your videos, it has helped my chronic pain and anxiety a lot. Thank you for sharing these!💓

[FaithAlways]

I have multiple sclerosis and both my weak leg and functional leg need to have my psoas muscle released. I get horrible pain in my right hip after walking too long because it's doing the majority of the work. I can barely lift my left leg, maybe 5 inches from the ground. I have foot drop and every physical therapist I've gone to focuses on my flexibility in my ankle and totally ignoring my hip flexor.

This has made me realize that both my hip pain, pain in my right side torso are all probably related to this muscle. Thank you and your video is hugely beneficial because you are on the ground and for me with balance issues that's very important. So thank you, I'm starting this today.

[dgolnh]

Are you talking about abdominal bracing at the beginning of the movement, thank you!

[Artomya]

does this also release fascia and consequently trauma stored in ? thank you!

[napakamu]

I have hip flexor tightness that inhibits my glute activation when doing glute bridges. This release method done before my glute workout does wonders to allow glutes to do all the work. Thanks for sharing!

[loveblooms]

Thank you for this video. Why does it feel so good when I try the typical more active psoas releases but it doesn’t quite “get there?”

[bsam]

I’m so thankful, I’ve been incorporating this with a few other movements and with constructive rest and meditation. It has literally saved me. I was in a very dark place before due to not being able to do the things I love. ❤️

[RNC]

if someone is recovering from a psoas/iliopsoas strain, would you recommend they wait until movement is completely pain free to do this technique?