Hip Rotations
Did you ever use a hula-hoop? They have been around since at least 500 BCE. In 1958, the hula hoop was made popular and twenty-five million were sold in less than four months. (Joan Anderson brought the ‘exercise hoop’ back from Australia. Her husband showed it to a businessman who cut her out of the deal.) Anyway, could it be the wide-spread use of the hula-hoop was responsible for the sexual revolution of the 1960s in America?
The good news is that we don’t need the ‘exercise hoop’ to gain the benefits of hula-hooping. Benefits include looser lumber, lengthening the psoas, stretching the hip flexors, and opening the hips. The fluids in the spine, the lymphatic, and circulatory systems are moved, and stagnation is prevented. The energy of the reproductive organs can be released and may even spiral up the spine like the two snakes of the caduceus, or staff of Hermes.
In the West, we spend a lot of time sitting in chairs, cars, sometimes trains, and in meetings. The standing desk has helped and we can rotate our hips when we turn off the camera On a videoconference. The hips can be rotated in small circles while waiting in line, at a park, in the shower, or standing in the kitchen.
The exercise is simple. Stand with the feet parallel, just a little wider than the shoulders. Place the hands on the lower back, at the sides, or on the waist. Rotate the hips and keep the head above the feet, breathing naturally. Experiment with the speed of hip rotation and the width of the hip circles. Move in both the clockwise and counterclockwise directions. Try this for five minutes, switching directions back and forth. It may sound too simple, but the benefits listed above are profound.
The Alchemist’s Tao Te Ching:
Transforming Your Lead Into Gold