R Blog: Mt Ashland and My Psoas Muscle

Wherein I test my Psoas and offer another key to the universe.

If we walk out in the street in front of our house and up the hill about twenty paces we can see the summit of 7500’ Mt Ashland. Six years ago I decided walking to Mt Ashland would be a good test of physical condition and provide a benchmark for whether or not I still had what it takes.
It’s twelve miles and 4500 vertical feet to the lodge which is where we end the hike. There’s not many places where one can walk from the front door of one’s home and end up five and a half hours later on top of a mountain. We don’t walk back. Someone drives up to pick us up. For the last five years my walking mate has been DH who this year was a bit out of shape as he had just spent three weeks trying to win the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He didn’t win. But, as usual, DH was game to make the trek. The forecast was for 100+ degrees and we agreed to a late start because V, D’s wife and T, their nine year old wanted to meet us at what is locally called Four Corners and walk the last eight miles. The first four miles of this hike are the most strenuous but we cruised up to Four Corners talking all the way and made it in two hours flat. V and T arrived.
V served a delicious raw food lunch of pineapple, vegetable pate wraps and cookies. T served up a bag of water balloons which by 11 am were welcome. Around noon we continued. It was hot and sweaty but the views were great and the wild flowers even better: columbine, indian paintbrush, orchids, lupine, vetch, wall flowers, twin flowers to name a few. We’ve done this in all kinds of weather. It’s hardest when it’s really hot. We should have started early because by midday we’d lost our shade with the sun directly overhead. We have had very few problems. But last year both D and I became well-acquainted with our Psoas muscle.
We knew it was the Psoas cuz V told us so. She’s a yoga teacher and therapist and got us both up the mountain by having us stop periodically to do yoga lunges which released tension. This year I had the same problem even though I’d been working hard to stretch my Psoas in the days leading up to the walk. You probably don’t know it but the Psoas is pretty dang important. There’s even a Psoas expert by the name of Liz Koch. She’s been giving Psoas workshops for twenty years and, of course has written a book. I really can’t get into everything that Liz knows about the Psoas. You can read it yourself if you are tired of reading about Karl Rove or Supreme Court nominees. But let me just pique your interest by saying that the Psoas is almost the muscular equivalent to the “theory of everything” that physicists are
always looking for.
I sure didn’t know this about my Psoas: “In walking, a healthy psoas moves freely and joins with a released diaphragm to continuously massage the spine as well as the organs, blood vessels, and nerves of the trunk. Working as a hydraulic pump, a freely moving psoas stimulates the flow of fluids throughout the body. And a released, flowing psoas, combined with a stable, weight-bearing pelvis, contributes to the sensations of feeling grounded and centered.”
You will have to agree that the Psoas is pretty cool but after you’ve walked a few miles it can start to hurt like hell; make you think you can’t go on. But there’s more, more than I have time to tell you. But you’ve got to get right with your Psoas. Because it goes deep into the emotional core of your being. Liz Koch again, “Because the psoas is so intimately involved in such basic physical and emotional reactions, a chronically tightened psoas continually signals your body that you're in danger, eventually exhausting the adrenal glands and depleting the immune system. As you learn to approach the world without this chronic tension, psoas awareness can open the door to a more sensitive attunement to your body's inner signals about safety and danger, and to a greater sense of inner peace.”
The Psoas is clearly a New Age muscle, possibly the key to one’s entire growth and personal development as a human being.
So, it turns out the the annual Mt. Ashland walk is much more of a test than I thought it would be. The great mountain through my Psoas tests the very quality of my life on this planet. Monday I was found wanting once again. I will work hard on my Psoas/pelvic relationship and I will read The Psoas Book, a guide to the iliopsoas muscle and its effect on the body, mind, and emotions (Guinea Pig Publications; P.O. Box 1226, Felton, CA 95018; http://www.guineapigpub.com)
And next summer DH and I will test Psoas’s against the peak again.