Breathe Better with Your Ribcage

Season 2 Episode 11 Transcript

Today I'm going to teach you how to breathe with your rib cage. Here's what we're going to do:

• All I want you to do is sit up nice and tall, or stand up nice and tall, if you're standing, and just take a few breaths
•  Arms are at your sides
•  Just breathe, in whatever is a normal position for you

• Now, place one of your hands on your chest, on your breastbone, and take some more breaths. Do you feel that chest rising and falling? Do you feel it, lifting up do you feel your upper back rounding, arching forward to help that chest lift?

• ​Now what I want you to do is take both hands,
  • or you can use something like a belt, a yoga strap or even an ace bandage
• Hands, or some type of strap, around your rib cage
• Now if you've got your hands around your rib cage,
  • you might have your thumbs in back,
  • or you might flip your hands around so your thumbs are in front, and your other eight fingers are around the back of your rib cage

It really doesn't matter which you use in order to feel this, but what I want you to feel is that the shoulders are not all shrugged up into your ears. Whatever position your hands are at, the shoulders are down.
 
And if they're not comfortable, if the shoulders can't be down, then grab yourself a belt, or maybe the belt off your robe, or that Ace bandage or yoga strap or something, and wrap that around your rib cage instead.
 
If you've got a strap around your ribs, I want you to hold it snug against your ribs but not overly tight, not restrictive.

• And now I want you to try to take a breath, or three or four
• And can you feel movement, with your hands or under that strap, of expansion in the ribs​

Now, the ribs go all the way around. So you might feel the V that is in front of your rib cage, where it comes to a point right up against your breastbone. You might feel that V, expanding and contracting.

• You might feel the ribs on the sides of your torso, moving
• You might or might not feel ribs at your back, engaging expanding

So this first set of breaths is all about finding out what's moving: chest, belly and ribcage. Now, if you've got a strap, put it aside for a second.

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• ​And all I want you to do is stretch your arms up, way overhead, and take a nice big yawn
• Stretching arms, stretching fingers, big breath in, and just let it all out at once in a great, big Whoosh. Let all your air out.

And now, notice where your rib cage is. It's down. It's relaxed. The side effect, the after effect, of good yawn is to relax your ribs.
 
We tend to walk around with the rib cage thrust out forward, I talked about that in last week's episode about that “boobs out belly in” position.
 
A yawn is one of the simplest ways to relax your rib cage back down into alignment, so that your ears, your shoulders, your ribs, and your hips are all stacked on top of each other, instead of that rib cage being thrust forward, of that line.
 
So if you need to you on a couple of times, take a couple of big breaths and just let them out, and the ribs drop and the shoulders drop.

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• ​And now, take your strap or take your hands back around your rib cage, and take that inhale/exhale again
  • And now that the ribs are not reaching forward, can you get more movement, 360 degrees all the way around your rib cage?
  • At the V of your ribs, in the sides of your ribs, sort of under your armpits and down towards the waist.
  • And also, behind you, where those ribs bones wrap around and join at the spine.

Everywhere bones come together, are joints. Not all of the joints in our bodies hinge. So the joint of your fingers move back and forth. The joints of your ribs at your spine don't, but they are still connected there with cartilage, which has some flexibility.
 
So, when those ribs come back down and stop straining forward, the rib cage gets some flexibility, right there at your spine, which can feel really yummy, but it also might feel really weird in the beginning.
 
So don't go too strong into this. We're not trying to force anything. We're just trying to take nice even breaths, feeling the rib cage, expand.
 
This is a thoracic breath.

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​It's going to help take pressure out of your pelvic floor. It's going to help you take a nice deep breath, which leads into all the things you want breath work for: stress, anxiety, mindfulness, lifestyle.
 
If you speak if you play an instrument, if you sing, if you have any manual hobbies, like gardening, like even exercising, being able to take a full breath, super helpful, I promise!
 
This is going to be the breath that we are trying to create, this thoracic breathing, this movement in your rib cage, in the breathing challenge, it's going to start next week.
 
So look out for that on my website, get on my email list if you're not so that you can join the challenge.
 
It is free. It's just a five day challenge teeny tiny steps, couple of minutes every day to just watch a video and listen to me and then practice when you can.
 
It's not going to be a gigantic investment of your time, but it is going to require some concentration and little practices throughout the day, so that at the end of the week, you are breathing better.
 
All of this is going to be super helpful, super important, and it should feel really good. I hope to see you in the challenge!

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