Movements of The Ribcage

From Supine –

• Without pushing your ribs into the floor, as you inhale allow your back ribs to grow wider into the mat.
• As you inhale expand your ribs backward away from your spine.
• Inhaling, imagine your heart expanding, getting bigger and bigger so that you have to expand your back ribs to make room for it.

From Prone –

• Allow your ribs to be held in place, or restricted by the floor (could be over the ball etc.), feeling your back ribs expand upward toward the ceiling.

• Imagine you had gills right under your armpits. Expand your gills as you inhale. (Madeline Black)
• Imagine a bellows under each under arm. As you inhale the bellows has to expand making more room between your armpit and waist. (AU)
• Think of your ribs like blinds. As you inhale open the blinds from top to bottom. As you exhale let the blinds gently close. (AU)
• Breathe into your side ribs as if you were trying to expand them into the room.
• Inhale into the ribs, right to left, as if trying to reach out across the horizon line like a sunset. (Chantill Lopez)
• As you inhale, expand your ribs wide from right to left, as if you could push your arms out of the way. (Chantill Lopez)

• Imagine your ribcage as a giant wheel that gently spins downward toward the floor. Allow this current to draw the front ribs down and into the body. (Taken from a variation of the “wheels concept” by Marie Jose-Bloom.)
• Rather than pinching the ribs together in the front allow the tips of the front ribs to drip down toward the floor while still maintaining an open chest, open collar bones. (Chantill Lopez)
• Fill up the back ribs and maintain an open back as you reach the shoulders out into the room.
• Gently draw the ribs into the body without collapsing the chest or gripping the abdominals.
• Imagine wearing a very tight vest.
• Picture a serape wrapped around your ribs. (Ellie Herman)
• Keep the ribcage contained and connected to the rest of the body.
• Imagine you were made of a stack of rings: one ring for your head, shoulders, ribs, waist, hips, thighs, knees, and feet. A strong upright posture is one where all the rings are aligned one on top of the other and energy or effort can move freely through all rings without disruption. When you feel your rib ring slip forward the energy gets blocked and creates tension in the mid back. Keep bringing your rib ring back in line with your other rings.  (AU – variations abound.)
• Imagine your front ribs gently knit together by fine wool.

• Picture a small light (flame, fire, flashlight etc.) inside your ribs, as you breath try to spread the ribs open so that the light is able to peak through in all directions. (AU)
• Inflate your ribs side-to-side and backward as if a balloon was being inflated inside the ribcage. (AU)
• Imagine your lungs sitting inside a wide-open hallow tube. As you inhale try to expand your lungs equally into every inch of the tube. (Chantill Lopez)
• As you inhale feel as if you could send breath into every last tiny crevice, in all directions, inside the ribs.
• Imagine your ribs like bucket handles that attach to your sternum in the front and the bottom of your shoulder blades in the back. As you inhale let the bucket handles open outward and upward as high as they can go without creating tension in the body. (Taken from a variation by Carol Appel.)