For many women Survivors, healing doesn’t begin with words—it begins with breath. With stillness. With the brave decision to return to the body that
For many women Survivors, healing doesn’t begin with words—it begins with breath. With stillness. With the brave decision to return to the body that once felt like a battleground.
One of the gentlest, yet most powerful ways to begin this return is through hip-opening exercises. These movements aren’t about performance or perfection. They are about release, reconnection, and reclaiming what was always yours: safety, self-trust, and sacred space.
🌀 Why the Hips Hold So Much
In many healing traditions, the hips are known as the body’s emotional storage unit. When women experience fear, violation, or betrayal, we often tighten or clench the hips—consciously or not. This area becomes a vault, holding the stories we weren’t ready to speak, the grief we had to silence, and the boundaries we were forced to ignore.
It’s no surprise, then, that hip-opening exercises can sometimes bring up tears, memories, or sudden emotions. This is not regression. This is release.
🌿 The Benefits for Women Survivors
1. Releasing Stored Tension
Hip openers like Reclining Butterfly, Happy Baby, or Figure Four Stretch help loosen deep muscles that hold trauma—like the psoas, glutes, and hip rotators. Releasing them sends a signal to your nervous system:
It’s okay now. You are safe here.
2. Restoring a Sense of Control
Trauma can make you feel like a stranger in your own body. Practicing slow, intentional movement allows you to decide when and how to move. That choice alone is a form of healing.
3. Regulating the Nervous System
Gentle stretching paired with mindful breathing helps soothe your fight-flight-freeze response. Over time, this supports better sleep, calmer thoughts, and a more grounded sense of presence.
4. Reclaiming Feminine Power
The hips are not just bones and muscles—they are sacred. They are tied to birth, sensuality, intuition, and strength. When women reconnect with this area, we often begin to reclaim what trauma tried to take: our voice, our no, our yes, our worth.
5. Creating Safe, Private Ritual
These stretches don’t require a gym, studio, or audience. You can practice them at home, in silence, with music, with prayer, with tears. This makes them ideal for women who need privacy, gentleness, and care on their healing journey.
✨ What It Looks Like in Practice
You don’t need to do a full yoga routine. Just start small:
Lie on your back. Gently hug your knees into your chest.
Open your legs into Happy Baby Pose, letting gravity guide the stretch.
Or cross one ankle over the opposite knee, drawing the legs toward your body (Figure Four Stretch).
Breathe. Stay. Listen.
You may feel soreness. You may feel nothing. You may feel… everything.
Whatever you feel is valid.
💬 A Note to Every Woman Reading This
You were never meant to carry all of this alone.
And you don’t have to stretch perfectly or understand the anatomy of the psoas to begin healing.
All you need is space. Breath. A little time. And permission to come back home to yourself.
You deserve safety—in your body, in your spirit, in your life.
And if all you do today is lie down, open your hips, and let go of one thing that doesn’t belong to you?
That is enough. That is everything.
Share if you feel safe and ready—your voice might be the lifeline someone else needs. And if you do share, remember to cite the messenger. Words carry legacy.
[rosaschildren.com] | [wesurviveabuse.com] | [survivoraffirmations.com]
