What would you like to care for?
Yoga for your hips in Uluwatu
Open up and move more freely.
Hips gathers classes that spend time on the hips and the muscles around them: yin, hip-focused flows, mobility classes, somatic work and some Pilates. Expect lunges, pigeon, deep squats and long floor holds.
8 classes coming up at 1 studio.
What Hips does for you
You get to open up the part of you that sits on a chair or a saddle most of the day. Moving the hips in every direction can make sitting cross-legged, climbing stairs or getting on a bike feel easier. Many people describe a pleasant heaviness and spaciousness afterward. It is slow work that pays attention to a part of you that rarely gets any.
It suits you if
- you sit a lot or cycle everywhere
- sitting cross-legged on the floor feels like effort
- you run or play sports and feel tight afterward
- you like slow, deep stretches
Read the full guide to HipsWhat a class is like, your first time, history and the words you will hear
What a class is like
Classes run 60 to 90 minutes. Expect a slow warm-up, then lunges, squats, rotations and floor work such as pigeon, butterfly and frog, often held for several minutes in yin-style classes. Props help you find a comfortable level: blocks under the hips, bolsters under the knees. Some classes move dynamically, others are almost still. Facilitators often invite you to breathe and let gravity do the work.
Your first time
- Wear stretchy trousers that let you lunge and sit wide.
- Grab a block and a bolster before class starts.
- Go to about 70 percent of your range and stay there; the stretch builds with time.
Good to know
- If you have a hip, knee or groin injury, a hip replacement, or pelvic pain (including in pregnancy), check with your doctor, midwife or physiotherapist first and tell the facilitator.
- Deep hip poses can strain the knee; if you feel it in the knee rather than the hip, come out and use props.
- Some people feel unexpected emotions in long hip holds; that is common, and it is fine to come out of the pose.
Where it comes from
Hips have long mattered in yoga because seated meditation depends on them. Medieval hatha yoga texts such as the 15th-century Hatha Yoga Pradipika describe mostly seated postures, with lotus (padmasana) and the accomplished pose (siddhasana) given special praise, and both need a lot of hip rotation. Modern posture practice later added many standing and lunging shapes that work the hips actively.
Today's hip-opening classes owe a lot to yin yoga, developed in North America by Paulie Zink, Paul Grilley and Sarah Powers from the late 1970s to the 1990s, which holds floor poses such as butterfly and frog for minutes at a time. Mobility training in fitness and physiotherapy added active hip rotations and controlled movement from the 2000s onward.
A popular idea in classes is that the hips store emotions. Many people do report feeling emotional in long hip holds, but the claim that specific feelings are stored in specific muscles is not established. In Berlin, hip-focused classes often run as weekend workshops or evening yin, and they are popular with cyclists and anyone who sits a lot.
Words you will hear
- Pigeon
- A floor pose with one shin forward across the mat and the other leg stretched out behind.
- Baddha konasana
- Butterfly or bound angle: soles of the feet together, knees out to the sides.
- Malasana
- A deep squat, often with hands together at the chest.
- Padmasana
- Lotus pose: sitting with each foot resting on the opposite thigh.
- Frog
- Knees wide and shins parallel, with the hips easing back toward the heels.