Alright, y'all, so this line of inquiry started for me several months ago when, after many moons of wondering how on earth I am supposed to "open my heart" without "sticking out my ribs" a teacher FINALLY gave me an image that rocked my little rib-cage world. "Imagine," she said, as we stood in tadasana with our arms raised (um, that's the one where you're just standing up, for those who left their Sanskrit dictionary in their other pants), "that your rib-cage is heavy and descending downward." And maybe she said something about thinking of the rib-cage as one solid unit, or maybe that's just how it occurred to me as I tried it, but something about that image just clicked for me, and suddenly I felt how my ribs could...how do I put this...RELAX?
Yes, that's it.
I imagined my rib-cage dropping straight down...as if it were some kind of bony sweater-vest being hung to dry from the clothesline of my collar-bones, and everything my teachers are constantly telling me to do ("pull in your bottom ribs", "expand your back ribs", "tuck your ribs in") it all just happened...effortlessly. And I felt this immense and I mean IMMENSE relief.
And I realized that my heart is inside this cage of my ribs...and that if the whole structure descends and then the heart lifts...well there's more room for it to peak its little heart-head over the top of the cage, like a prisoner checking to make sure the coast is clear before she escapes.
I mean, I'm positive that physiologically that's not what's happening...but still.
So, it's this image I've been working with in my own practice for months now, and the more I work with it the more I realize that my ribs have been trying to do waaaaaaaaaaay more work than they need to do. My ribs are showy little buggers--"Here I AM!"--they seem to be always shouting, all jazz-hands and protruding chins. Well, no more, you scene-stealers! No more!
It's just one more way, I'm coming to see, that my body is trying (sneakily) to escape from itself. Because when I hush those ribs, when I quiet them down and in, when I let them descend, when I give them the day off...I become...with myself. The ribs literally become integrated back into the center of my body and likewise I become more centered. My breath drops to my belly. My shoulders relax. And as things begin to loosen up down there in that protective armor of my torso, I realize...my god, I have spent so much time walking around HOLDING on. My ribs have been like some puffed up bodygaurd. (I'm mixing metaphors like crazy, here...my heart is a jailbird, and my ribs are apparently both like an attention-starved choreographer AND a juiced bouncer at a club. What can I say, but that it's 3AM and I'm blogging...).
What I mean to say is...my ribs used to be like some puffed up bodygaurd and NOW they are not.
Isn't it interesting, how we hold on to ourselves in all these ways...thinking that it will make things easier, or safer, or more perfect, and isn't it interesting how that is just never the way? When when when when when will we learn (and by "we" I mean "me) that the safety and the ease and the beauty comes from fluidity...from letting go...NOT from always gripping so damn hard?
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