12/05/2025
Most people think a tight psoas is caused by bad posture, weak core muscles, or sitting too much.
But the truth is deeper — because the psoas is not just a muscle. It’s a survival organ.
Your psoas connects your spine to your legs, but it also connects your nervous system to your emotional history. In psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), we see that when the body is overwhelmed with fear, hypervigilance, shame, or chronic stress, the psoas becomes a storage site for unprocessed emotional energy.
Why?
Because the psoas contracts instantly during danger.
It curls you forward.
It protects your organs.
It prepares you to run.
And when life doesn’t give you a chance to release that activation — the contraction becomes chronic.
This is why people with long-term stress, trauma, anxiety, or “always-on” lifestyles often feel:
• low-back tension
• pelvic misalignment
• digestive sluggishness
• shallow breathing
• leg heaviness
• or a constant sense of emotional load
Your psoas is doing exactly what it was designed to do — keep you alive.
But here’s what almost no one understands:
A muscle cannot release what the body has no energy to process. And you cannot process emotional energy if your drainage pathways are blocked.
Your lungs, kidneys, colon, skin, and nervous system are your biological exits. If they’re congested, the emotional load stays inside — and the psoas keeps gripping to protect you.
Want to learn more about somatic release and body work to release and realign?
Highly recommend contacting John Carlos Somatic
Also check out the local retreat he will be presenting at in January!
