Let's practice breathing with stacking a habit.
So pick something that you do decide on something that you do every morning. And you're going to stack it with breathing. I believe I've mentioned this once before, I like to have coffee in the morning. So if you're a coffee drinker or a tea drinker, while that coffee is brewing or that water is heating up, you can use that time to focus on your breathing. And if you're not a coffee or tea drinker, then maybe you find maybe there's something else some other ritual that you practice in the morning, something else you do in the morning during that time, and I'm thinking two to three minutes, maybe just to practice your breathing.
Many of us breathe a little bit higher in our chest, our shoulders tend to rise up, we don't do this deep breathing, to expand the rib cage like it is supposed to do. And if you're not one of those, then you might be a belly breather, maybe you've done yoga or something. And you have practiced deeper breathing, which takes it all the way into the belly. But yet again, you're not expanding that ribcage, especially into the back. So you're creating a lot of tension back there.
So what we're going to practice is we are going to practice breathing through this 360 position of our rib cage. So I always like to say imagine your rib cage is like a jellyfish. And when that jellyfish is moving through the ocean, how is it opening, its opening in that 360 fashion, everything's opening up and then closing together. That's what we want our rib cage to do. I want you to place your hands around your rib cage. And then I want you to relax your shoulders. And I'm not gripping my ribs or anything. I've just got my hands relaxed around my ribs, and my shoulders are relaxed as well. So they're not up near my ears. And I want you to breathe in and just see initially, what happens with your rib cage.
So what did you notice? Did you notice one side, maybe the ribs in the front expanded more, maybe you didn't feel that at all It may be what you felt was your shoulders rising up to the ears. If you are breathing higher up into your shoulders, you are in a sympathetic state. So this is going to mean you're more anxious, you may deal with high blood pressure, you may deal with heart palpitations, you need to really focus on this because we need to bring it back down into the parasympathetic state so that you can start calming yourself down. The other thing is our diaphragm and our pelvic floor work in conjunction with one another creating a pressure system. If that is off due to posture and breathing, then we can have pelvic floor prolapse, we can deal with incontinence, we can have diastasis recti, we can have acid reflux issues, and low back pain. So it is important for us to make sure that we are practicing our breathing and getting it back into this more parasympathetic state where we're able to breathe more deeply into a 360 breathing pattern.
So once you have taken a deep breath in and you felt where your rib cage, you know where your ribs have moved, I want you to try to redirect. So this time you can breathe in and when you breathe in, we're going to try to get our back ribs to move into our thumbs. And if you don't have your hands wrapped around your ribs, what you can also do is you can lean back in your chair wherever you are, and I want you to try to press your back into that chair when you take a deep breath in. So you can do that now. And you should feel a slight expansion when you do that, and that's a good thing. So we want to start working on breathing deeper into our system. We want to try to breathe deeper into our back to help with that, trying to get back into that 360 breathing pattern. The other thing that you want to work on is craving movement through the sides of your rib cage as well. Again, this is a lot of focus, there are some exercises that you can do.
So pick something that you do decide on something that you do every morning. And you're going to stack it with breathing. I believe I've mentioned this once before, I like to have coffee in the morning. So if you're a coffee drinker or a tea drinker, while that coffee is brewing or that water is heating up, you can use that time to focus on your breathing. And if you're not a coffee or tea drinker, then maybe you find maybe there's something else some other ritual that you practice in the morning, something else you do in the morning during that time, and I'm thinking two to three minutes, maybe just to practice your breathing.
Many of us breathe a little bit higher in our chest, our shoulders tend to rise up, we don't do this deep breathing, to expand the rib cage like it is supposed to do. And if you're not one of those, then you might be a belly breather, maybe you've done yoga or something. And you have practiced deeper breathing, which takes it all the way into the belly. But yet again, you're not expanding that ribcage, especially into the back. So you're creating a lot of tension back there.
So what we're going to practice is we are going to practice breathing through this 360 position of our rib cage. So I always like to say imagine your rib cage is like a jellyfish. And when that jellyfish is moving through the ocean, how is it opening, its opening in that 360 fashion, everything's opening up and then closing together. That's what we want our rib cage to do. I want you to place your hands around your rib cage. And then I want you to relax your shoulders. And I'm not gripping my ribs or anything. I've just got my hands relaxed around my ribs, and my shoulders are relaxed as well. So they're not up near my ears. And I want you to breathe in and just see initially, what happens with your rib cage.
So what did you notice? Did you notice one side, maybe the ribs in the front expanded more, maybe you didn't feel that at all It may be what you felt was your shoulders rising up to the ears. If you are breathing higher up into your shoulders, you are in a sympathetic state. So this is going to mean you're more anxious, you may deal with high blood pressure, you may deal with heart palpitations, you need to really focus on this because we need to bring it back down into the parasympathetic state so that you can start calming yourself down. The other thing is our diaphragm and our pelvic floor work in conjunction with one another creating a pressure system. If that is off due to posture and breathing, then we can have pelvic floor prolapse, we can deal with incontinence, we can have diastasis recti, we can have acid reflux issues, and low back pain. So it is important for us to make sure that we are practicing our breathing and getting it back into this more parasympathetic state where we're able to breathe more deeply into a 360 breathing pattern.
So once you have taken a deep breath in and you felt where your rib cage, you know where your ribs have moved, I want you to try to redirect. So this time you can breathe in and when you breathe in, we're going to try to get our back ribs to move into our thumbs. And if you don't have your hands wrapped around your ribs, what you can also do is you can lean back in your chair wherever you are, and I want you to try to press your back into that chair when you take a deep breath in. So you can do that now. And you should feel a slight expansion when you do that, and that's a good thing. So we want to start working on breathing deeper into our system. We want to try to breathe deeper into our back to help with that, trying to get back into that 360 breathing pattern. The other thing that you want to work on is craving movement through the sides of your rib cage as well. Again, this is a lot of focus, there are some exercises that you can do.
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