Calin Van Paris is a Yoga Journal editor and certified yoga teacher who been practicing for more than 20 years and spends way too much time sitting in front of her laptop. Here, she dives into contemporary anatomy and yogic teachings to share five yoga poses that help open the hips and loosen things up.

Releasing tension in your hips—typically caused by too much time spent sitting—vastly improves your quality of life in two ways. First, addressing hip tightness can help ease tension throughout your entire lower body. (Yes, that includes easing low back pain.) And secondly, because the hips are designed to support your body weight, they are also believed to carry emotional heaviness.

Basically, it’s in your best interest to learn to relax and release the region.

Getting to Know Your Hips

Your hips create a junction between your upper and lower body that is an anchor for your entire being, bearing the load of everything that sits above while also enabling you to move in a variety of directions. Rather than exist as an isolated entity, the hips comprise several structures that are wrapped and crossed and influenced by neighboring muscle groups, which together can make your hips feel tight.

Hip tightness can be affected by any of these muscles, including your glutes, hip flexors (a group of muscles that runs along the front of your hips, including the psoas and iliopsoas), quads (the muscles along the front of your thighs, including the rectus femoris), sartorius (the longest muscle in your entire body),  even your hamstrings.

As such, the best hip mobility stretches address the areas around your hips in addition to your hips themselves. As ou move through the following stretches, don’t be surprised if you open your heart along with your hips.

Hip Mobility Stretches: 5 Yoga Poses to Open Your Hips

Work these hip mobility stretches into a yoga flow or practice them one at a time. Either way, your physical and emotional bodies will thank you for your time.

1. Low Lunge

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

Our sedentary lifestyles have pretty much primed your psoas—the duo of muscles that connect the back of your ribs to the tops of your femurs—to be tight. Those prolonged stints spent sitting keep your psoas contracte,d which can eventually lead to hip and back soreness. Low Lunge addresses that issue from multiple angles, lengthening your psoas and other hip flexors on the back leg while strengthening the muscles surrounding the hip on the front leg.

2. Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

Forward bending stretches the entire lower body, including an array of muscles surrounding your hips that contribute to overall tightness. Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend stretches several of these, including your hamstrings, inner thighs (or adductors), and spine. This stretch asks that you hinge at the hips rather than round your back to effectively stretch the area for increased mobility and flexibility.

3. Reclining Bound Angle Pose

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

This yoga pose is a beloved hip opener for a reason. Rather than asking you to fold or twist, Reclining Bound Angle Pose invites gravity to do the work, stretching and releasing your hips and inner thighs.

With proper props—think blocks, bolsters, or pillows tucked beneath each knee—this stretch can be practiced as a truly restorative pose, opening your hips without any hint of stress or strain. Just lie back, relax, and let it all go.

4. Bridge Pose

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

Lift your hips in Bridge Pose, and you’ll feel some effects pretty quickly. The shape stretches your hip flexors while offering the calming benefits of a mini inversion. It also undoes some of the damage to our upper bodies caused by the slouching, slumping, and hunching we’re all guilty of on a day-to-day basis.

This is another pose that can be practiced as a restorative shape by placing blocks and bolsters placed beneath your sacrum, allowing you to let yourself feel supported so your muscles can rest and release.

5. Half Lord of the Fishes

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

A simple twist is always a good idea. Half Lord of the Fishes is a shape that does it all: opens your shoulders and chest, strengthens your upper back, and elongates your spine. It also stretches your hip and thigh muscles and even gets into your glutes, boosting mobility throughout your entire pelvic region.