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We never internally rotate our hips in yoga!
I know this may sound like a bold statement, but hear me out. 🙂
We never (or to be technical about it, we very rarely) internally rotate our hips in yoga.
In case you’re new to the anatomical movement of hip rotation, here’s a quick guide:
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When we’re standing, if we turn our toes to face out (away from us), we are externally rotating our hip joint.
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And if we turn our toes to face in (pigeon toed), we’re internally rotating our hip joint.
Now that we’re experts on hip rotation ;), let’s use this understanding to take a closer look at our traditional yoga pose lexicon.
We have an abundance of asanas that take us into external rotation, including the following:
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warrior 2
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triangle pose (pictured here)
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side angle pose
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half moon pose
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tree pose
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pigeon pose (and all of its variations)
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gomukhasana (contrary to popular belief, this sneaky hip opener is actually an externally rotated pose, not an internally rotated one – I visually demo this in the video I’ve linked below!)
But compared to allll of those externally-rotated poses, which asanas in a typical yoga practice take our hips into internal rotation?
Hardly any, in comparison! There are a couple of seated poses that do involve a bit of hip internal rotation. (I mention them in the video below). But that’s about it!
Is the lack of hip internal rotation in yoga a bad thing?
I definitely don’t think the fact that we don’t meaningfully target hip internal rotation in traditional asanas is a bad thing – or any sort of “strike against yoga.”
Not at all!
I’m not aware of any movement practice that takes all ~350 joints of the human body through all of their ranges of motion in an equal and “balanced” way. 😉 I don’t think it exists!
All movement practices move some parts of our body in some specific ways more than others. That’s just the nature of any structured movement practice.
Side note: This is why I’m a big advocate of cross training for yoga practitioners – so we can expose our body to a more well-rounded selection of movements and loads across a variety of activities. (Pssst! Our Strength for Yoga Remote Group Training program is an excellent option for cross training your yoga practice with strength!)
Again, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we don’t meaningfully internally rotate our hips in yoga.
However, if moving our hips through their full range of motion on a regular basis is important to us – or if specifically improving hip internal rotation mobility is a goal for someone – then I think there’s value in bringing more internal rotation into our yoga practice.
And that’s why I created my newest free tutorial: How to Target Hip Internal Rotation in Yoga!
Learn my top 5 ways to bring hip internal rotation into yoga – along with a quick, geeky anatomy lesson about the hips in yoga.
I hope you enjoy!
