Jenni Rawlings Yoga & Movement Blog

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We Never Internally Rotate Our Hips in Yoga!

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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:

  • When we're standing, if we turn our toes to face out (away from us), we are externally rotating our hip joint.

  • 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:

  • warrior 2

  • triangle pose (pictured here)

  • side angle pose

  • half moon pose

  • tree pose

  • pigeon pose (and all of its variations)

  • 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!


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