What Is the Psoas Muscle and How Does It Cause Back Pain?

The psoas muscle (which is sometimes referred to as the Iliopsoas) is a large muscle that connects the upper back and the inner thigh. Though it might be difficult to imagine how a muscle could make this connection, the psoas is an extremely important muscle. It help to stabilize and torso as well as rotate the hips.

This muscle helps you sit up from lying down, stand up from sitting down, and it helps you walk. The psoas is very important in our day-to-day life. But sometimes lack of activity and a sedentary lifestyle can lead to a contracted or tense psoas muscle. This may cause lower back pain and stiffness or lack of mobility in the lower back or hip area.

Over time you may hold your body in an unnatural way either due to poor posture, injury, or just having a job that requires you sitting all day. This causes the psoas to develop a “memory” to hold itself in a contracted or stiff state.

You may have a contracted psoas muscle as well if your back is generally out of alignment. Misalignment of the psoas muscle can cause your back to lean more to one side of the other. This can result in bulging discs, sciatica, or other types of back pain.

Since your psoas controls so many different movements from sitting up, standing up, and walking, it is likely that you may have difficulties or pain with these movements as well.

Understand that the pain you’re feeling is the direct result of a muscle imbalance in your psoas. Specifically, the psoas is contracted and throwing other parts of your back and hips out of alignment.

There are really two things you can do to relieve the pain. The first is to correct any lifestyle problems that may be causing the stiffness in your psoas muscle. Maybe you need to stand up ever now and then during the day instead of sitting for hours on end, or maybe you need to practice improving your posture. Secondly, to loosen up the psoas muscle you will need to develop the daily habit of stretching out the psoas muscle. If you do this consistently, you can start to relax and loosen the muscle tension.

Stretching exercises that target your psoas muscle will help you open and release the tension in this muscle. Stretching your psoas may be difficult at first if you are not particularly flexible. Don’t feel bad, if your psoas is contracted and stiff, many other muscles in your body are probably stiff as well.

One muscle in particular that you may need to stretch in addition to the psoas is the piriformis muscle, which helps to rotate your legs. Often times a tense psoas and a tense piriformis muscle will come hand in hand.

Keep stretching daily and over time, your psoas and other muscles in your body will gain flexibility and the pain you are experiencing will slowly go away as your psoas opens up.