Help To Lift The Chest (and a chance to prove me wrong!) 😉
I’ve been a student and teacher of anatomy since the 80s. But it wasn’t until about fifteen years ago that I really got it: the chest is nothing but the shoulder girdle and the ribcage. And the top of the ribcage is crucial. It needs to move up and forward. If it doesn’t, you can never have an open chest or a head that’s balanced over your body.
I’m willing to bet money that the number one thing you do to stand up straighter moves your chest in the exact opposite direction – down and back. Watch this very short video if you’re hoping to prove me wrong!
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Lifting the chest up and forward is associated with strength and power. It makes you look slimmer and more socially confident. It’s also associated with better function throughout the body.
In the video below, you’ll learn a couple of strategies to bring the ribs into their proper alignment and range of motion. When you do that, you’ll improve many of the most common postural and pain problems in the body.
The ribcage doesn’t get enough attention (so please tell as many people as you can today). It’s a silent contributor to problems in the neck, arms, and low back. It’s a big weight segment like the pelvis and the head, as opposed to the low back and neck, where the spine stands alone. But unlike those other weight segments, the ribcage has tremendous motion in side-bending and rotation. It also has a capacity for arching which, while small, is essential. The upper back curvature – the “dowager’s hump” – is equivalent to a down-and-back ribcage. Restoring the upper back arch is crucial to overall body health.
The ribs aren’t as common an area of physical complaint as the neck, arms, and low back, but often, its problems – which often have to do with immobility – are silent. But they manifest as dysfunction and pain elsewhere:
– head forward posture/neck pain
– shoulder blade and arm problems
– knee pain and injury
– a compressed abdomen and low back
– worsening of scoliotic symptoms
– difficulty taking – and releasing – a full breath for grounding and energy
Head Forward Posture/Neck Pain
People can work for decades on bringing their head/neck backward to line up with the trunk. More often than not, though, they need to bring the top of the ribcage forward under their neck and head, not the other way around. A back-and-down-tilted ribcage leads to stress in the lower neck and also at the base of the skull, leading to disc problems, strain/pain, and a posture that looks stiff, weak, and collapsed.
Slumped Shoulders
Most people work on slumped shoulders by pulling their shoulder blades back, only to find that their position is stilted and unsustainable. You need to be able to move your shoulder blades around in order to live in the world. But if the ribcage isn’t upright, the shoulders can’t sit properly, so you can’t move your arms properly.
The shoulder girdle sits on the ribcage like a dress on a dressmaker’s dummy. The dress will always hang weird if the dummy isn’t upright. (I’m not necessarily calling you a dummy.) Get to the ribs and the shoulders will follow.
Knee Pain and Injury (Is this one more of a surprise than the others?)
When you hear a noise behind you and turn, the main places you twist from aren’t the ones you’re thinking about right now. The main twist comes from the lower ribcage and from the knees when they are bent, which is why athletes almost always have bent knees. When there is diminished space between the ribs, they can’t twist. The knees take up the slack and can then they can end up injured and off center.
Compressed Abdomen and Low Back Discs
If the ribcage doesn’t lift up and forward, it’s unbalanced and heavier on the low back, adding stress and compression and preventing the trunk lifting off the legs for grace and core strength. The less balanced the upper body is, the more uneven the forces are through the supporting lower body, and the result is strain, pain, and vulnerability.
Worsening Scoliotic Symptoms
I can’t think of a population that needs to lift the ribs more than people with scoliosis. Scoliosis is defined as unusual curvatures of the spine, mostly side-to-side and rotational. Gravity acts unevenly on an uneven spine, leading to stress and strain on muscles and joints. But uneven ribs are even more pernicious. Remember your Archimedes? “If you give me a lever and a place to stand, I can move the world.” Smart guy. The ribs are levers, so they exert more force over the spine than it exerts on them. If a person with scoliosis doesn’t work to strengthen, mobilize, and align the ribs, their curvature – and their symptoms – will worsen.
Breathing Impairment
Because the shoulder girdle rests on the ribcage, it makes sense that the ribcage ends above the shoulder blades, in the area we think of as the lower neck. The whole ribcage needs to be mobile and lifted for the greatest diaphragm range and fullest strain-free breathing. And it’s not just the inhale that gets restricted. A freely moving ribcage also makes it possible to exhale fully.
See the attached video for ways to improve your chest and rib alignment.
If you try these easy exercises, let me know how it goes.
Hope to see you soon. -George
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