Have you heard the cue to knit your ribs?
I’m sure you have heard this cue before, “Knit your ribs!”
And you probably have followed it before, haven’t you?
Well I want to help you find out why it is not a cue you ever want to take. It can lead to more challenging breathing, harder movement, and limits the mobility of your spine.
These are all things we don’t want to make harder or more limiting for ourselves. This is why I wanted to share a very important video with you today. In this video I go into detail on how limiting it is for your body, and how many issues it will cause for you. Understand the reasons why this is so damaging for your body.
The reason I wanted to share this with you today is because it’s part of something exciting I will be telling you all about in just a couple days.
We have been hard at work making something that will really make you stop and think and say yes!
I can’t tell you yet what it’s all about, but I promise I will let you know soon. Because it is is too exciting not to share.
So after 5 minutes of hearing what you dislike about “knitting the ribs” as a cue, what is the cue you prefer?
As a yoga teacher, I’ve been taught to BRIEFLY knit the LOWER, FLOATING ribs closer to the waist together (not the mid-ribs as you demonstrate) in static standing poses (not while walking or moving) initially, in the case of a means to reduce an excessive lumbar curve, not to provide stability, but to balance the front body length to the back body length from ribs to pelvis, and then return to free floating ribs for natural breath.
Just want to clarify my understanding of the use of this cue.
“Allow the ribs to move and swing” is the cue Eric uses here.
That was great! Thank you for being you!
You can ‘soften your ribs’ instead. Our ribs are flexible like rubber so if someone is rigidly flaring their ribs forward too much making you feel the need to tell them to knit their ribs together, you may want to assess the flexibility and mobility if their thoracic spine and work on mobilising that so they can find a better rib to pelvis relationship. That’s my observation.
This left me a little confused. There are a lot of people who have iperlordotic spines (me included) with one of the causes a thrusted forward rib cage. I do not give the cue of knitting the ribs but dropping the ribs back so that they can be in vertical alignment with the pelvis which should be vertical. Certainly I along with many of my students have had good results with back pain by keeping the body vertical meaning the pubic bone is in the same alignment below the asis bones, the ribs vertical above the pelvis and the sternum vertical above all the below cues. This is not knitting the ribs and still allows for three dimensional breathing which is important. Any feedback?
As someone who has a tendency to hyper extend pulling my ribs down help to open the back ribs., but there is much more going on than just pulling front fibs down from my feet to the top of my head. I’m not just isolating my rib cage. Not sure what I’m missing here. Never heard about knitting the ribs.
As a Pilates teacher, I find your videos excellent . Thank you
. to Catherine who left a comment..how are you able to to knit together only your floating ribs? That’s an interesting challenge…
Thought about rib movement at ballet today. Excited to hear more about cleaning up this queues for ballet.