The Breath: Shoulder Connection

If you’ve tried everything to relax your shoulders. Have you looked at how your ribcage functions and how you breath? It might be time to investigate the breath soulder connection

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here it is…

Stop Stretching Your Shoulder

  Your shoulder pain might have nothing to do with your shoulder and everything to do with how you breathe. Sounds wild, but stay with me. Hi, I am Alexis Weidland, osteopath at Blossoming Me and Healthy learning Lounge and in this video I’m going to show you exactly how poor breathing patterns can jam up your ribcage and how that can affect your shoulder every time you move.

Typical Shoulder Pain

When people think shoulder pain, they usually think

👉 muscles – rotator cuff, traps, pecs,

👉 or even shoulder impingement with sharp pain or maybe pain that with tingling down the arms,

👉 or degeneration of the shoulder joint so bad that surgery is the only option?

Another Perspective

But your shoulder sits on top of your rib cage, and your rib cage is meant to expand and contract with every breath. When that doesn’t happen quite as well as it should, the entire chain becomes affected.

Sub-Optimal Breating

Here’s what bad breathing does, generally upper chest breathing causes upper ribcage tightness, belly breathing, but not diaphragmatic breathing causes core disengagement and flaring of the lower ribs.

Shallow breathing can be affected by ribcage movements such as restricted rotation. And every time you lift, reach, pull, push, turn, or bend, your rib cage needs to be able to expand, contract, rotate, and move, and you need your shoulder blade to be able to glide over the rib cage. If either of these are reduced, then your shoulder blade cannot move properly and your muscles get pulled out of position. Tension, restriction, and pain begin. 

Time to FEEL

Try this… If you lie or sit, place one hand on your chest and one hand on the side of your ribs. Now, inhale slowly.

• Does your breath go high into your chest?
• Do you breathe into the side of your ribs at all?

Now try raising your arms overhead. Checking both sides.

• Does one side feel more stuck?

Okay, so now take a deep, full slow breath. And while you do this, side bend to the easier or less restricted side. Simultaneously, bring your elbow up towards your head. – So that you’re side bending and then you’re bringing your elbow up. Slowly exhale all the way out while side bending to the other side  and dropping your arm to the side as you do so.

Repeat three times.

Now lift your arms overhead again. 

• Does that side move more freely now?
• Does it move further now?
• Did it actually improve a little bit even without touching your shoulder at all?

Rehab for the Shoulder vs Treating the cause… first

Most rehab plans will jump straight to strengthening, which sounds logical. Until you realize the root cause is your rib cage function and your breathing. The shoulder isn’t the problem at all.

Why Ribcage First?

If your breathing poorly or your rib cage isn’t able to provide the right base for your shoulder movement, then by going straight into strengthening, you are reinforcing the dysfunction on a locked rib cage and actually exacerbating the joint restriction and muscle compensations that are always already there because, well, yes, you will strengthen the muscles, but you won’t be using them correctly.

And that means that over time the pain won’t shift, the pattern stays broken. The pain overall might even get worse. You could start to irritate, the very structures that you were actually trying to protect.

It could then turn into

👉 muscle overuse,

👉 shoulder impingement,

👉 rotator cuff injury,

👉 tendonitis,

👉 and a higher risk of re-injury down the track.

You can’t out strengthen poor rib mechanics. You can’t stabilize a system that doesn’t move properly. You’ve gotta go back to the basics.

The Process

1. Mobilize your rib cage,
2. Restore the thoracic spine mobility,
3. Restore rib restrictions,
4. Fix how you breathe,
5. Then layer shoulder stability, control exercises, and strengthening on top of that.

That’s exactly what I teach inside the Ribcage Reset mini course. My go-to system for clients who’ve tried everything and are still stuck.

So if your shoulders have been tight, painful, or stiff, and strength training or posture work haven’t quite worked, check out your rib cage and your breathing. Fixing it could be key to unlocking real and lasting mobility, stability and comfort.

If you’d like to learn more about my Ribcage Reset mini course, click the link below.

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. 1. Effect of Head & Shoulder posture on shoulder function
      2. Treating Diaphragm function helps improve Shoulder mobility and pain
      3. Relationship between Breathing Dysfunction and Scapular Mechanics
      4. Thoracic function improvemenmt with manual therapy improves subacromial pain/impingement syndrome
      5. Dysfunciton of scapular mechanics results in pain

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.