Is trauma stored in the hips?

No. Probably not. I mean, it might be, there's not much evidence either way, but gut feels - nah.

TikTok is one of my favourite places to doom scroll. The content is wild, it’s varied, and the algorithm is tuned in rather specifically to serve up odd things which can also be entertaining.

It’s also responsible for hosting a tonne of health related trash that we are sometimes susceptible to lapping up and making it our brand new thing.

The thing that popped up on my screen and then continued to for weeks was the idea that we store emotional trauma in our hips, and if we buy this specific exercise programme, we can learn to release the emotional trauma in our hips, which will then lead to things like happiness. And weight loss. Wellness folks love them some good weight loss.

So, I have spent the last few weeks looking for even a shred of evidence of this, and unsurprisingly found a total sum of none.

Because of the lack of evidence, I have virtually nothing official to go on. I read a couple of articles that made sense to me, but nothing from my trusty peer reviewed medical journal sites had much insight.

So my take on it, is that without really knowing why, some emotional trauma can have a physical response. The emotional trauma itself is not stored anywhere other than the brain. Like we can’t point to our hips and do a bunch of exercises and expect that the traumatic event has now been released into the wild and is now gone.

My feel on this is that any lingering trauma or memories from a traumatic event that either does or does not manifest in physical pain, really can’t be healed without psychologist or psychiatrist help.

Physical pain manifesting from either an emotional trauma, or a physical trauma, can feel better with body movement - we know with lots of studies that body movement gives us lovely endorphins which help us to feel super - even for just a short time.

Again without sighting any proper research, I weirdly feel confident the reason for pain in our hips is from the shortening of the hip muscles (hip flexors) from sitting at a desk or in a car for long periods of time rather than emotional trauma being stored in the muscle or joint. I am so willing to be proved wrong, if anyone can point me in the direction of a paper or even a half baked thought about this, please do - I am genuinely interested.

So in summary, buying an exercise plan and doing the plan might help you feel better in terms of how moving our bodies makes us feel good, but I am highly sceptical about exercise programmes that tout for emotional trauma release from the hips and I urge caution if you are in position of considering a purchase purely for the hip trauma release gig.

As always, reputable, and qualified physicians are the best people to see about dealing with emotional and physical trauma. If you are suffering, I hope you are able to get good quality help and assistance and have the strength to not purchase from unqualified charlatans.

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Thanks for reading this newsy. I really appreciate the time you give to me for this and I hope you get some value from it. If you have any questions you can reply directly to this email or if you’ve landed here from a link, email lou@sweatypals.nz. You can also follow me on Twitter here, and instagram here.

Please remember while I am a qualified fitness trainer, and I’ve done some nutrition study, I am not a registered dietitian or nutritionist, nor a doctor of any kind. Information shared here is through my own lived experience, personal study or a peer reviewed study I have nerded out on reading and sharing with you. Or in this case, pure reckons based on not very much.

Lou xx