Stalking Wild Psoas: Embodying Your Core Intelligence

Named after the author’s popular exploratory workshop of the same name, Stalking Wild Psoas contains nine short essays to inspire somatic therapists, bodyworkers, and yoga and movement teachers to conceive of the body not as an object to be fixed, but as a self-organizing, self-healing, and bio-intelligent system.

Growing out from the embryonic midline, the psoas (pronounced so-as) is the deepest tissue of the physical core influencing multiple layers, systems, and subtle dynamic expressions. Coalescing the central nervous system, kidney adrenals system, and enteric (gut) brain, the psoas literally embodies our deepest urge for survival. Located behind the abdominal muscles, deep within the belly core, the psoas is an essential aspect of the sympathetic neuro-core; as an involuntary tissue, the psoas is perceived as both instinctive and emotionally responsive, a messenger of core integrity. When thriving, healthy psoas is a fluid tissue, as demonstrated by the full-body wave of orgasm. Strain on the psoas can disturb digestion, reproductive functioning, and create a host of other ailments. Author Liz Koch helps us to tune into the core psoas through awareness rather than deploying invasive or manipulative techniques. By shifting the paradigm she urges the reader to begin by changing the language body to actively explore the psoas as a vital messenger of integrity and creative expression. Weaving new findings in biology, living systems thinking, somatic movement, and storytelling, Liz Koch emboldens us to recognize the limitations of the predominant mechanical thinking about our body and to actively explore our psoas as a vital core messenger.