If you’re reading this blog, you probably have tight hips and are interested in learning how to integrate more hip opener poses into your yoga practice.
We’ll explore some of the reasons behind tight hips, why yoga focuses so much on hip opening stretches and exercises, and a short practice you can do to open your hips and relieve tension while sitting at your desk.
If you’re looking to jump straight into a yoga hip opener practice, you can follow Irene’s YouTube video covering five simple yoga poses using an office chair.
Why Do We Have Tight Hips?
Whether you have a desk job and need to spend a lot of time sitting behind your computer for work, or if you’re active and enjoy walking, cycling or running, you’ve likely experienced tight hips at some point.
The hips are a complex joint that links the upper and lower body. Many different muscle groups determine the overall mobility of the hips.
When sitting for long periods, muscles like your hip flexors can get tight after being contracted to support your position. The repetitive movements of walking, cycling, and running can affect your hip flexors, IT band, glutes, hamstrings, psoas, and adductors.
The degree of tightness and restriction in your hips plays a role in how often you think about having tight hips.
If you have a lot of tension in your hips, it might be something you’re aware of daily or after doing activities that result in more tightening of the muscles around your hips. For example, after a long cycle, you might feel tightness in your hips doing everyday activities like walking up the stairs or tying your shoelaces.
If your hips are less tight, you might only notice a restriction in hip movement when doing hip opening yoga poses that require a wide range of hip movements. This could be the case if you’re doing some yoga stretches like sitting cross-legged (Sukhasana) or coming into a deep squat (Malasana).
Why Do Yoga Sequences Have So Many Hip Openers?
If you look back historically to the origin of yoga in India, there was a large focus on the importance of being able to sit still and meditate for long periods of time. Traditionally, a physical yoga practice was designed to help yoga practitioners sit in a comfortable cross-legged position for meditation.
This is one reason there are so many hip opening exercises in yoga. Practicing lots of hip opener poses helps create more mobility in the hip joint and allows the practitioner to feel more stable and comfortable when sitting cross-legged.
If you’ve tried sitting without moving and meditating for longer than 15 minutes crossed-legged on the floor, you’ll understand that it's essential to find a posture that makes you as comfortable as possible.
Of course, life was quite different in ancient India from how it is today. One notable change to hip mobility is that most people spend little time crossed-legged, squatting, or practicing other deep hip-opening poses.
Historically, it was common for yoga practitioners to spend large parts of their days sitting cross-legged or squatting. Now, we’ve replaced this with sitting in chairs, which might be more comfortable and practical, but it also results in us having less opportunity to work on opening our hips.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that iconic yoga postures like the Lotus Pose (Padmasana) seem out of reach for many people.
There are many more benefits to yoga hip openers than simply doing advanced hip opener postures and sitting for hours in meditation.
Hip openers can also help balance some of the other activities in our daily lives. They allow us to work a desk job and go for long walks, runs, or cycles without feeling imbalanced or in pain.
Learn more about the benefits of chair yoga for office workers.
Which Hip Opener Yoga Poses and Stretches Can You Use to Reduce the Tightness in Your Hips?
There are many different yoga hip opener poses that you could practice. But what should you do to support releasing tightness and improving hip mobility?
If you notice a lot of restriction in one area, say your outer hip, you could focus on doing one or two outer hip openers daily to see if that helps.
Better still, do a variety of hip openers that create balance and movement in the entire hip joint.
The hip openers YouTube video below guides you through a series of yoga poses focused on the outer hip, hip flexors, hamstrings, IT band, and inner thighs (adductors). Allow your body to relax into the poses, focusing on releasing tightness with every exhale.
Home Practice Tip: Try This Vinyasa Hip Opener Flow
This vinyasa hip opener flow includes a sequence of yoga postures focused on creating space in the hips.
Child Pose | Balasana
Child Pose is a great posture to start a hip opening yoga flow sequence. It allows you to gently ease into your hips before you’ve warmed your body up.
You can bring your focus towards your breathing and establish a slow and steady breath to help guide the rest of your yoga practice. Stay here as long as you like.
Low Lunge Pose | Anjaneyasana
The Low Lunge Pose allows you to gently work on stretching your hip flexor at the front of your hips. See if you can keep your upper body long and belly firm as you drop the weight of your back hip forward.
It might feel nice as a warm up to move in and out of the posture several times on each side before holding the posture for around 5 – 10 breaths.
Try to use the pace of your breath to guide the pace of your movement in and out of the postures.
Warrior 2 Pose | Virabhadrasana 2
The Warrior 2 Pose is a great standing posture to begin with in your vinyasa hip opener flow. You can work here on building heat and strength in your quadriceps by bending your front knee deeply and actively drawing your back leg back.
Focus on actively opening your hips. When your right leg is forward, actively spin your right hip and knee out to the right side. While at the same time spinning your left hip out to the left side. After a few breaths, change sides. Keeping your breath steady throughout.
Reverse Warrior | Viparita Virabhadrasana
Reverse Warrior is a great posture to combine with Warrior 2 when opening the hips. Focus on lengthening your front hip flexor. Dropping your front hip down and lifting your back hip up.
Focus on lengthening the spine and top arm upwards on each inhale and sinking down through your hips with every exhale. After holding the posture a few times you could move a few times back and forth between Warrior 2 and Reverse Warrior.
Triangle Pose | Trikonasana
The Triangle Pose is a great posture to focus on the positioning of your hips. Allow as best as you can both legs to be straight, as you reach your torso forward. You can work on stacking your hips here and lengthening from your hips all the way through your spine.
Keep using each inhale to lengthen through your spine and every exhale to soften and ground.
Reverse Triangle Pose | Viparita Trikonasana
Transitioning from Triangle Pose to Reverse Triangle Pose can help you understand the different positions required in your hips. When you come into Reverse Triangle from the Triangle Pose you want to try and send both of your hips a little forward towards the front of your mat.
This can feel a little strange at first since you’re moving your hips forward while your torso leans a little back. If this feels a little confusing don’t worry too much about it! Just do your best to notice the positioning of your hips in the posture.
Cow Face Pose | Gomukhasana
Cow Face Pose is our first seated hip opener in this sequence that really targets the outer hip and IT band. If the full posture doesn’t feel comfortable you can keep one leg outstretched and cross the top leg over. Another option could be to elevate the hips by sitting on a cushion or block.
Once you’re comfortable in the pose you can reach the arms out in front and experiment with leaning your weight a little forward. Keep pressing your hands down and allowing the back of the hips to stay connected with the ground as you lean forward. Staying here anywhere from 5 – 20 breaths.
Pigeon Pose | Eka Pada Rajakapotasana
The Pigeon Pose is a deep hip opener posture that works on the outer hip of the front leg and hip flexor of the back leg. In case the full pose doesn’t feel comfortable, feel free to bend the back leg or place the hips on a cushion or blanket.
If you are comfortable in the full pose do your best to square your hips, thinking front hip back and back hip forward. Allow your body to be heavy in your Pigeon Pose and breath slowly through your nose. Keep allowing the hips to drop down with every exhale.
Reclined Butterfly Pose | Supta Baddha Konasana
The Reclined Butterfly Pose is a great way to finish a hip opening sequence. You can lie down on your back and allow both knees to drop out to the sides. If you feel tension in your knees or hips try bringing the heels further away from your hips, or place a support under your knees.
You can stay in the posture as long as you like, working on passively opening your hips. You can also work with your breath, breathing down towards your hips with exhale and allowing them to sink down.
Happy practicing!
💛 Irene
Receive Personal Guidance from Irene
Would you like personal guidance to help dive deeper into your yoga practice?
Email Irene via info@antarayoga.nl to book your free consultation call and discuss what type of private class would best suit your needs.
Start a Home Yoga Practice
Do you want to develop a home yoga practice but not sure where to start? Follow the three steps in this free guide to start practicing yoga consistently at home.
Complete your details below to receive your free guide with tips for a home yoga practice. In this guide you'll also receive cheat sheets and links to guided videos for seven short sequences, as well as a practice calendar to get started.