Many people suffer from a leg length discrepancy, and this is almost always a muscular issue rather than an issue with the length of the bones.
The body can be divided up in several ways—top and bottom, inside and out, back and front, and for today’s discussion, left and right. I have written before about the bones of the legs following a very cool 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 pattern of bones—one femur for the upper leg; two shin bones; three bones for the ankle; four for the mid-foot; and five toes.
The coolest aspect of this pattern is that each bone on the opposite side is the same length and breadth.
In rare cases, people are born with bones of different sizes, and very often traumatic injuries can affect the length of the bones; but for the most part, the hard bits of our skeleton are equal to each other when they exist in pairs.
Getting that out of the way leaves us with our psoas major muscle and its ability to wreak havoc on our bodies.
The quadratus lumborum, next door neighbor of the psoas, is also at play in these patterns.
A tight psoas major can move the body in myriad ways.
A classic and primary pattern is when the tight psoas pulls one leg into the hip socket, often moving the femur forward. At the top, the tight psoas pulls the shoulder and rib cage down towards the hip. I say primary because this is the first tightening pattern for many psoas issues.
In some cases the assorted torque and pull on the spine and ribcage can get much more extreme leading to scoliosis and even a hunchback.
Everyone has a leg length discrepancy—it is merely a matter of degree. If you don’t know which of your legs is shorter than the other, here are a few things to look for to figure it out. Very often, one foot turns out more than the other—that is your shorter leg.
One hip is usually higher than the other- the higher hip is your shorter leg. One shoulder is often lower than the other—that side will often be your shorter leg. If you have never observed these details about yourself, spend some time looking in the mirror to explore your physical body.
Everyone should get to know themselves, but to use one of my favorite quotes from the German writer Goethe, “Know myself. If I knew myself, I’d run away”.
And I’ll throw in a Ben Franklin quote for good measure. “Three things are extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know oneself.”
How to work with this discrepancy is another story entirely. One of my favorite psoas releases, Foot on a Block, addresses leg length discrepancy directly.
You can do this release on your shorter side, or both sides, feeling what it is like to stand before and after. It can be a fairly radical feeling, even though the exercise only takes about thirty seconds.
Another important issue with leg length discrepancy and yoga practice is that the shorter leg is the tighter leg, which won’t have the same range of motion as the looser leg.
Many people are right-handed, and our dominant side is often our shorter side. This is a hypothetical, but let’s say that your right side is tighter and the ability to stretch it is limited both physically and emotionally.
Then you move to work your left side, or more open side, and the available stretch is deeper and feels better—so you dive into it.
Unfortunately, if you can relate to that feeling, you are likely increasing your imbalance and leg length discrepancy with every yoga pose that you do.
It is very hard to approach the practice from the point of view of limiting yourself but everyone should really be stretching to the limit of their tighter side and be focusing on bringing the body into balance rather than just stretch both sides as much as you can.
Good luck with that.