Neutral Pelvis and the Hip Flexors: An Expansive Alternative

For years, I’ve cued people to push their bum to their heels to help them shift their pelvis into a neutral position. This past week, I altered the experiment. While practicing the Tai Chi form, I concentrated on extending upward through the fontanel while keeping my hip flexors, the creases of the waist, open.

This changes the entire feel of a neutral pelvis. Instead of compressing the lower back to force an alignment, the movement becomes one of expansion and extension.

While mechanically simple, this cue might not be readily available to you if you sit at a desk all day. Extended sitting trains your body to be excellent at sitting. Over years, the tissues on the front of your body adapt by shortening. When you finally stand, those shortened front muscles anchor your pelvis forward. To keep from falling over, your body compensates by pulling the torso back, which permanently parks tension in your lower back. You cannot simply “open” the front if the tissue is glued shut.

Here is 1 warm-up, and 3 long-hold, passive stretches that rebuild compliance in your pelvis, hip flexors, and thighs. I have linked videos for each detailing the specific safety progressions, but here is how they map to neutralizing your pelvis through expansion.

1. Humming & Shaking - This is a foundational, full-body warmup that loosens everything except the feet. Gentle, rhythmic shaking combined with humming down-regulates the nervous system, driving your body toward homeostasis. Committing 10 to 15 minutes to this before the passive holds pays immediate dividends: the tissues yield faster, you can access deeper ranges of motion, and you will tolerate longer holds with less mechanical resistance. As a side benefit, doing this before bed will likely improve your sleep quality.
2. Hero Pose – This is a staged progression. If you cannot sit on your heels, start with a pillow. As things open up, you spread your feet until your hips reach the ground. Only when your hips are firmly grounded should you begin leaning back—first to locked arms, then to your elbows. As detailed in the video, the strict rule is that you must feel zero compression in your lower back. (It took me over 3 years to get my shoulders to the ground, requiring the other stretches to make it possible).
3. Jackknife Blaster Pose – A massive, targeted stretch on big muscles. The key here is treating your shoulder and knee as a single hinge. This alignment actively forces the hip creases to open—the exact kinematic feeling we are aiming for in a standing neutral pelvis. Opening the front of the legs here accelerates your progress in Hero Pose and begins releasing the constant tension on your lower back.
4. Modified (Yin-Style) Frog Pose – In the video, I show this standing first and cover how to protect your knees. While Frog is often used for the groin, this modified approach directly targets the hip flexors and the mechanics of “sitting back” into a squat.

If you have been sitting for years, that final pose will not be your friend at first. The initial blockage is often deep in the joint capsules themselves. However, committing to three 5-minute holds of this pose (spaced at least 72 hours apart) fundamentally opened things up for me. There is always more road ahead, but clearing that initial joint restriction is the required first step.