I bet you never thought sitting all day would affect your sex life or that it would have anything to do with physical therapy or tight hips! It’s obvious the more active you are, the healthier you look and feel (which is very attractive). But what does this have to do with sitting? Sex is a wonderful thing and who wouldn’t want to enjoy it to its max? But the truth is for many men and women, sitting all day will affect their performance in bed!

Let’s look at the hips and psoas muscles in trying to explain this: A tight hip isn’t just a physical limitation but it’s also an emotional one. The hips are the primary movers in sex and it’s somewhat common sense that we want our hips to be loose and flexible in order to achieve great dynamic sex.

Excessive sitting causes tightness in the psoas muscle, which will lead to stiffness throughout the body (not in a sexual way either). And since the psoas can be responsible for good health as well as bad health, it’s safe to say taking care of this region of the body will prove to be beneficial.

We want you to fully grasp what your psoas does and its direct affect on your sex life.

Any type of pain in your middle and lower back, hips or abdominals can cause shallow breathing and difficulty with certain movements of the hips. This has everything to do with how certain body functions are unable to happen smoothly from the restriction and limitation of muscles and organs. Not only does pain restrict our sexual performance but also the body responds to pain as a threat and quickly moves from a state of pleasure to a state of panic. Sex and panic do not go together.

Sitting all day will cause your pelvis to rotate backwards, which forces the femur bone to get thrust forward. This forward thrust of the femur bone into the hip joint will cause your hip socket to become compressed (a.k.a. femoral acetabular impingement syndrome) leading to pulling and shifting of joints, tendons, and muscles pulling on your lower back and sacrum as well as shortening your psoas. This pulling on the lower back/sacrum will decrease blood flow and circulation as well as delay nerve response to the hips.

The psoas muscle works closely with the sympathetic nervous system which regulates our emotions, homeostasis and survival state. If the psoas is allowed to stay in a shortened position (picture head to knees/slouched sitting or fetal position). The fetal position is the position of survival during a time of eminent danger- it is an automatic protective mechanism. The body mistakes this prolonged shortened position as a prolonged survival state, thus releasing hormones needed to elicit a stress response for survival (a.k.a. Cortisol). This then causes prolonged stress response (due to overexertion of adrenal glands) eventually leading to a weakening of the body’s natural immune response to stress, decreased sexual appetite, and chronic headaches, among other things.

IF your psoas is constantly tight and overworked, the body is faced with permanent roadblocks of emotional and physical stress which forces the brain to continue to send warning signals to all of the systems of the body, including the reproductive system.

So what does this mean for your sex life? If you sit all day and aren’t doing the appropriate work needed to fix your hips, you can be sure you are not tapping into your peak sexual health and that’s why you are reading and searching for a solution.

If you would like to learn about how to fix your hips and keep your psoas muscles as well as your spine in a healthy and optimal state, please check out our website for any questions you may have (https://universuspt.com) or call us at (631-533-2888). We also regularly post health, mobility and other treatment tips on our instagram page (@universuspt)!