The Importance of the Coccyx

Part of the work I have been doing recently has been on trying to get the coccyx to move more freely and naturally when  I walk. The coccyx is the very bottom portion of the spine. It represents a vestigial tail (hence the common term "tailbone") and consists of three or more separate or fused vertebrae. A lot of people have a lot of tension in the hips and pelvic basin (which is a one of the common repositories for negative emotions, the other being the shoulders), and sometimes it is due to unconscious holding in the coccyx. Many animals also use the tails as a balancing device when changing directions, and is especially valuable during fast and slow movements. For marital artists and dancers, training the movement of the coccyx can provide the basis for a freer, more natural movement and also for that "edge" over your opponents.

It was originally thought that the coccyx is always fused together (with no movement between the coccygeal vertebrae), it is now known that the entire coccyx is not one solid bone but often there is some limited movement between the bones permitted by the fibrous joints and ligaments. It is an important attachment for various muscles, tendons and ligaments—which makes it necessary for physicians and patients to pay special attention to these attachments when considering surgical removal of the coccyx. Additionally, it is also a part of the weight-bearing tripod structure which acts as a support for a sitting person. When a person sits leaning forward, the ischial tuberosities and inferior rami of the ischium take most of the weight, but as the sitting person leans backward, more weight is transferred to the coccyx.

The movement of the pelvis backwards and forwards is called nutation and when one is walking naturally the coccyx should swing backwards and forwards. Martial artists already know that one should tuck the pelvis forward when standing in zhan zhuang or to fa jin. It is easier to feel your weight supported on the hip joints in this position, when you counter nutate, the weight is felt more in the lumbar spine or the sacral vertebrae. Hip flexion and sacral nutation are closely related, if you grip the tailbone you will not be able to nutate the hip joints properly and this is a mistake made by many yoga practitioners or martial artists, where the focus is upon placing the the pelvis in the correct position or holding muscles to position the pelvis, resulting in you losing hip flexion and forcing absorption in your lower spine. If this muscular holding continues for a prolonged period of time (which some martial arts teachers wrongly advocate), one tends to lose sensitivity in the tailbone and the sacrum, and part of my recent exercises have been rediscover the sensitivity of the nerves from the coccyx up to my spine. 

In body work there are many valuable exercises and visualizations that can be incorporated to achieve better movement in your sacrum and coccyx. The sacrum can be vizualised as a pendulum or the sacrum can compel the sacral spine with a sense of bounciness. In nutation (tucking in  the tailbone) the spine lands on the sacrum like a ball. In counter-nutation the spine is compelled upward like a ball being tossed from underneath.

From a spiritual point of view, the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine is where kundalini is supposed to lie coiled awaiting to rise. Several factors led the ancients to the symbolic idea of the coiled serpent. First when kundalini does rise one of the initial pathways it takes seems to be around the spine between the two sympathetic trunks. The discharge of a double helix of energy can be felt rising up around the spine.

Although the some traditions mention it, there is no such thing as ejaculating up the spine. But the nerve energy is perhaps reversed to flow its power back through the nerves to the spine. This is done through the inner kinesthetic sensing, directing the eye of the mind, and breathing. This redirection of nerve flow might be how the yogis prevent ejaculation while still having orgasm. It might "feel" as though there is ejaculation up the spine because the coccygeal body at the base of the coccyx is composed of smooth muscle and can pulsate like an ejaculation. Thus to a man it might appear that he is ejaculating up his spine.

The coccygeal body is an irregular, oval-shaped gland between the rectal wall and the tip of the tailbone or coccyx. This is also known in Tantra as the Kundalini gland. During active kundalini one can often feel a pulsation in the sacrum, I suspect that this rhythmic movement might be the kundalini gland becoming active.

The coccygeal gland is fed by sympathetic and by parasympathetic nerves; and by the median sacral artery and vein, directly influencing the nervous system via chemical messages arising from the blood. It is several millimeters in diameter and is composted of epithelioid cells and smooth muscle cells. A study suggests its possible blood forming function and an immune-modulatory activity by the regulation of the sympathetic nervous system. Removal of this gland can cause nervous breakdown. My mother once fell and injured her coccyx and she experienced prolonged fainting spells and dizziness.

Because it is nexus of all the various systems: hormonal, blood, sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves and the immune system, it is important for the homeostasis of the body and to shifting metabolism over to the metamorphic state. Further study could lead science to discover whether kundalini awakening could be initiated or maintained by stimulation of the coccygeal body.

Yoga has devised a wide variety of techniques to awaken this gland into activity: Including Mula Bandha (Root lock-contracting perineum and lower abdomen), Asvini Mudra (contracting the pubococcygeus muscle of perineum, as in kegel exercises), Tada Mudra--(knocking the buttocks upon the ground, sending rhythmic shock waves rippling up the spine) and rolling on a cotton ball placed under the tip of the tail bone. (Found in Ecstasy Through Tantra, by Dr John Mumford).