A lot of women experience chronic problems with upper back, arm, head and neck pain without really realizing where it’s really coming from, whether they’re athletic or not.
In this video (with the help of Vern), I describe how a woman’s breasts may be creating issues with her flexibility and muscle imbalances and how her choice of bras exacerbates those problems.
Many women press on with life going full blast and aren’t really aware of the load the weight of their breasts place on their ribcage. I’ve even seen my female clients’ chronic neck problems worsen merely due to the length and wetness of their hair.
How does that happen? Most people aren’t aware of light elastic forces. When a woman has bigger breasts, their weight pushes the chest down due to the influence of gravity.
If a woman exercises regularly and does a lot of abdominal work that activates the outer unit muscles — the rectus abdominus and external obliques in particular — it can have the effect of progressively pulling the rib cage downward to the public bone. (By flexing your abs, you’ll know if this is a problem if your chest is pulled downward.)
Then, those tighter abdominal muscles will transfer that load upward through your body into the scalene muscles, some of the key breathing muscles in your body (along with external intercostal muscles that open the rib cage).
If you think of the abdominals as a giant spring, imagine all of that tension transfering up to the neck. As the tension builds, it pulls the anterior and medial scalenes more tightly and closer together strangling the thoracic outlet.
Muscles and nerves aren’t only things to worry about either. There’s blood vessels, veins and lymphatic vessels, so it’s a very busy area.
I talk about the choices women make about their bras and how they may be too tight for their health, re-emphasizing the concept of light elastic forces too.
After watching my video, I hope you’ll better appreciate how a woman’s breasts and her choices of bras can make a huge difference, not only in relation to pain, but proper breathing and subtle energies.
Love and chi,
Paul