A Sequence for Healthy Hips

There is a global health issue that the greater fitness community can either address or continue to ignore. Musculoskeletal pain is on the rise, and movement educators are at the precipice of providing solutions or accelerating damage. The easy sell of “weight loss” and “fast results” drives people and dollars toward unhealthy biomechanical practices. Students flock to classes and trainings because of these lures, and studios, gyms, and clubs repeat exercises and drills that fail to address foundational imbalances, weaknesses, or postural faults. Students walk in with dysfunctional posture and aches and pains, then work out in a way that reinforces their poorly coordinated blind spots, unknowingly perpetuating their imbalances. Their workouts set them up for further weakness and injury until one day their bodies give out. This is not a dig at any specific format or method. This is a call to action for more anatomy in all movement education programming. This is a call to instruct students so that they learn to embody their bodies and are not taught to “push through it.” Rather than teaching “moves,” I believe we should be focusing on teaching how to move. Rather than teaching poses or choreography, let’s help our students to develop an understanding of human movement.

Anatomy is not a concept that lives in your head; it is the matter that minds your body.

Anatomy is not a concept that lives in your head; it is the matter that minds your body. I have taught at many conferences and conventions with rooms full of movement educators. When I ask students where a certain muscle is, the majority can point to it on a chart, but few can locate it within their own bodies. This is an embodiment disconnect. In a culture where musculoskeletal diseases are on the rise, it is not okay for movement educators to overlook the inner workings of human anatomy. It is time for us, as the ambassadors of well-being, to take control of our own self-care and body habitats to be better examples of fitness and health for our students. To not know your way around your own body is to lack self-knowledge. We have lost our way inside our own skin. We are dissociated and disembodied from our own structures. Our collective reliance on others to take care of our own basic needs cripples us, perpetuates our dependency on drugs and doctors, and is simply disempowering.

But this body ignorance goes far beyond the fitness community. It is my dream that everybody could have a basic education and understanding of how to hold themselves to maximize health and minimize damage. Along with that, a basic toolkit that helps you self-locate and then fix the “issues in your tissues.” Posture, breath, movement, and lifestyle matter to your overall health. It is through our own embodied exploration and education that we can create social change through self-care healthcare. We as a society need to stop reacting to issues and move toward proactively treating ourselves.

What Is the Roll Model® Method?

The Roll Model is a simple self-treatment method that teaches you to use a variety of grippy, pliable rubber balls to eradicate your aches and pains and reform your body from the inside out. The Roll Model Method helps you identify your body blind spots: those areas of your body that are catalysts for pain and injury. These areas are overused, underused, misused, abused, or totally confused and need to be felt, seen, and heard by you. What you don’t see inside your body can and will hurt you unless you skillfully integrate your blind spots into your global movement patterns.

Now it’s time for you to get the ball rolling! Let's put everything we've discussed into practice. The following practice is specifically helpful for the hips.

For the sequence below, you'll need two Yoga Tune Up balls. (If you don't have the Yoga Tune Up ball, you can use tennis balls.)