The other week when I met with my pilates instructor, she asked if there was anything I was feeling in my body that day. I said I’d like to open up the side of my ribs to have more access to my breath. While we were releasing the side of my right ribs, I noticed that same side hip drop down so it was more relaxed.
I’ve had an imbalance in my pelvis that we focus on most sessions. It’s most noticeable when I’m laying on my back. My right up is usually raised in this position. I have to pay attention more to stabilize it and almost feel like there’s a weight on that side. This ends up bringing it closer to the floor so my pelvis is in alignment.
Feeling that connection between my ribs and my pelvis felt like it unlocked something for me. When I’m working with clients, I feel anxiety when there’s stiffness in the ribs. It’s like a bracing in the energy and in the muscles. If my pelvis relaxed more when the tension around my ribs was released, then the holding in my pelvis is related to anxiety. This probably happens as a response to feeling unstable in some way as one of the connections of the pelvis, is to our feelings of safety and stability.
When we’re anxious, we tend to breathe with our accessory breathing muscles instead of the largest breathing muscle, the diaphragm. If you close your eyes and breathe normally, notice where your torso is moving. If your chest is rising and falling on inhales and exhales, you’re using little helper muscles to breathe. If your breath is in your ribs and/or belly, you’re using your diaphragm.
The reason this is important is because the former makes your body work harder, using smaller muscles. They’re like assistants and called accessory breathing muscles. They can help out, but doing the full job is above their pay grade and taxes them more. If we’re asking our body to breathe for us in this way, it’ll burn out over time. It's not sustainable to expend this much energy to breathe for too long. We want our body working smarter, not harder.
In this month’s video, I show how optimal breath works and ways to strengthen these natural movements along with a release to the muscles on the outsides of the ribs, the lats and serratus anterior. This can be tender and the body might brace, so there’s no prize for intensely releasing them.
Your body has a built-in mechanism to brace itself so it doesn’t get injured. If you go too hard, too fast in any movement, the Golgi tendon reflex will activate. This mechanism contracts the muscle, and we want it to stay relaxed to get the most release. If you try to release a muscle and the GTR comes into play, it just creates more pain and you get less release, so easy does it. Using the breath and relaxing the surrounding muscles will help ease into the release.