Neck pain and tension can be stubborn, but you don’t have to push through it or rely on pain meds. If you breath using your upper chest, slouch, over-train your upper body and suffer a lot of stress, your ribcage could be stuck. This could be the hidden cause of your neck pain.

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The Hidden Link Between Rib Cage Function and Neck Pain

Why It Matters, And What You Can DO

If you are dealing with constant neck pain or tension and nothing seems to work, this might be the most important thing that you hear this week, because here’s the thing, your neck may not actually be the problem. It’s where pain shows up, but the root cause is often hiding lower down often. For example, in your rib cage.

Hi, I’m Alexis Weidland, osteopath and co-founder of Blossoming Me and Healthy Learning Lounge, and today I want to explain why your ribcage plays such a huge role in neck pain and what you can do to start fixing it at the source.

Zooming Out

So let’s take a look at the big picture. Your head is basically this big heavy bowling ball balanced on a stack of bones. It relies on a stable base, and that base really includes your ribcage. If your ribcage isn’t moving properly, if it’s locked up or collapsed or not sitting right, then your neck has to pick up the slack, and as a result, you get

👉 Ongoing tension
👉 Poor posture
👉 Headaches
👉 Shoulder tightness

And when all of this happens, constant stretching doesn’t seem to help to release anything, at least not for long.

Here’s how it works.

Your posture

If your rib cage is collapsed or flared, your head will shift forwards and your deep neck, flexor muscles and your neck extensors like your traps, will have to work 24/7 just to hold your head upright.

Breathing

When your ribs don’t expand well and the diaphragm can’t do its job, the body has to start cheating and using your upper thoracic shoulder and neck muscles to do the breathing for you. This overloads, your scalenes, your traps, your deep neck flexor muscles, and surprise, surprise, pain will start to show up.

General mobility

Your upper ribs and thoracic spine need to rotate, bend and flex. If they don’t, your neck ends up doing all of the movement, which it’s not built for.

And this adds more tension and irritation to the joints of the neck, as well as the muscles making it more likely that your neck will become restricted, tight and painful.

So Now What?

But here’s the good news. Once you restore ribcage function, the neck can finally start to calm down. In our clinic, we look at the body as one whole connected system.

At BlossomingMe

So when you have neck pain, we treat the neck, but we also treat the rib cage and your whole body, and that’s why we developed our rib cage reset mini course.

It’s a way we can support our clients to help to improve their rib cage mobility, their breathing mechanics, their posture and restore movement where it’s missing. This can help our rib cage to work more effectively and support our shoulders and neck. So that we can improve our neck pain, shoulder pain, head pain, chest pain, rib issues.

👉Speeding up treatment by supporting our ribcage, its mobility and the way it supports our whole body … from home.

What About You?

If your neck pain isn’t going away, even after massaging it and stretching it, or doing lots of exercises. This is probably why. So if you want to go deeper,

👉 watch next week’s video where I’ll discuss how shallow breathing is wrecking at your neck,

or if you’re ready to make a difference,

👉 book your whole body reset session at our clinic now, where we tailor our treatments to exactly what your body needs.

👉Or if you want our ribcage toolkit to support you from home. Comment, reset and I’ll DM it to you.

Got Questions?

So that’s it for today. Did it raise any questions or aha moments? If so, I’d love to hear them. So please put those in the comment section. I love answering questions. I hope you found today useful. And if you know someone who could use this information, please share it. Remember to comment, like and subscribe.

Until next time and in health, bye for now.

Click the Button Below for my RibCage Reset min-course

Interested in further reading?

1. 1. Chronic Neck Pain and Respiratory Function
   2. Thoracic Mobility and Mechanical Neck Pain
   3. Influence of Thoracic Spine & Chest Mobility on Neck Pain
   4. Breathing Intervention Effects on Neck Pain & Posture 
   5. Diaphragmatic Breathing for Mechanical Neck Pain & Pulmonary Function
   6. Breathing Exercises for Neck Pain Management

About Blossoming Me

BlossomingMe offers a fully integrated approach to your wellbeing. Located on Sydney’s Upper North Shore. Sarah is our Cranio-sacral and Remedial Massage Therapist and health and lifestyle coach. She can help relieve those problematic knots, tightness and other specific ailments to promote a healthy recovery. These complementary massage therapies can be combined to suit your needs, and include: craniosacral therapy, shiatsu, acupressure, reiki, remedial, swedish, and body-mind-massage. 

Our qualified Osteopath, Alexis, offers a drug free, minimally invasive, “hands on” treatment focusing on the musculoskeletal system with its associated muscles, tendons, ligaments, membranes, bones and joints. Alexis takes a functional approach. This means that she focuses on the way a component (body part, tissue or group of tissues) performs its role, as well as the way the body works, performs and integrates as a whole. Our team can support you to improve your posture and therefore your overall health.