Psoas Release Party!: Release Your Body From Chronic Pain and Discomfort (Core Walking)

This neat little book unravels the psoas and it's terrain in engaging fashion. The muscle is explored fully from it's anatomy to it's interaction with the abdominal internal organs and nervous system to its release and (finally) stretch.The text is concise and lively. There are lots of helpful illustrations.I've attended Fitzgordon's Psoas Release Party in person years ago and my regular yoga practice (and street practice) underwent substantial change. It's heartening to see that so much of the spirit and content of the live event have been incorporated into the book. No more reliance on my hastily scrawled notes.

As someone who performs manual therapy and mobility instructions for this muscle quite often, I found this book very informative and adept at communicating anatomy and biomechanics in laymen terms. However, I was a bit disappointed with the stretches and exercises provided at the back of the book. They are VERY simple and there are definitely more effective ways to open up your hip and psoas. Active Release Technique and Kelly Starrett's Mobilitywod(dot)com are much more effective in my professional opinion. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this short read.

If there's one muscle of the body everyone should study, it's the psoas major. Jonathon FitzGordon's Psoas Release Party concisely explains essential information on the psoas in plain English. It's a pleasure to read and easy to comprehend even if you know nothing about anatomy. Also, the quality of FitzGordon's bodywork should help alleviate back pain if practiced regularly. I would only add Feldenkrais's pelvic clock, mobilization of the spine with continuous arch and curl movements, and planks for spinal stabilization.-- Alfredo Balaban, author of the Financial Athlete

This book has some interesting pictures and ideas but it has been misleading me in my efforts to fix my back pain for the past 2-3 years. For a book that is about only one muscle I'm amazed how the author has gotten it wrong. The whole idea of the book is that Psoas is a pulley. That it stabilizes the spine by pulling it from both sides downward. That's not true at all. It is completely wrong. I recently learned that it is not a pulley. I can in fact put weight on my Psoas muscles. It holds the weight of my lower spine and transfers it to the thigh bone. My backpain was caused by not using my Psoas muscle properly, not because it was tight. Once I knew that, I was able to let the weight fall onto it and my lower back immediately felt better.

This is exactly what I've been looking for...can not express how much this book has helped me realize connection of her emotions and muscles play on our bodies. Recommend this book to everyone who deals with back pain. The Posas muscles plays such a crucial role in our body.

I bought this book because, forgetting ahimsa, I developed a pain that research suggested was connected to the psoas. On the plus side, the book did teach me about the functions of the psoas muscles. On the minus side, it taught me much more than I wanted to know about the functions of the psoas muscles. Also, the exercises didn't seem to do much for my pain, which went away on its own.Finally, the book it seems to imply that to maintain perfect psoas I should spend about half an hour a day exercising them. Given that the psoas are not our only muscles, this seems like a lot. Per Science.com, "the number of muscles in the human body varies from about 656 to 850, depending on which expert you consult." OK, you clearly don't have to exercise them all, and most of them come in pairs -- maybe 50 pairs need exercise?? Wow, if I only had 25 hours a day ----

After reading this book I have hope of being pain free. This book is meant to be put into action and not passively read. I recommend reading it once through and then reading it again while putting the methods into action for relief of your pain.

I've read only about a quarter of this book but so far I'm loving it. FitzGordon writes really well -- simply, conversationally but with vivid imagery. Most importantly, he knows what he's talking about. If you like Erik Franklin, another body guru who understands that the body and mind have to work together, you'll like this book. I can't give it five stars because I haven't finished it yet. Besides I always suspect that five star blurbs are the product of paid reviewers.