My Story Page 65: Thoracic Diaphragm

I will replace the word solar plexus with the thoracic diaphragm - its more concrete counterpart in the body.

In the anatomy of mammals, it is a sheet of muscle extending across the bottom of the ribcage. It separates the thoracic cavity from the abdominal cavity and performs an important function in respiration.

It is crucial in respiration: in order to draw air into the lungs, it contracts, thus enlarging the thoracic cavity and reducing intra-thoracic pressure (the external intercostal muscles also participate in this enlargement). When it relaxes, air is exhaled by elastic recoil of the lung and the tissues lining the thoracic cavity in conjunction with the abdominal muscle which act as the antagonist pair to it’s contraction Antagonist (muscle).

I had directed my friend to raise her diaphragm at its center.

Why had I done so?

I had found in my own body that all through my life till my 53 years of age, I had kept this muscle dropped down habitually at its center as well as in its total width.

This maneuver of the muscle throws it in its contracted state, which is used for drawing air into the lungs.

It is not its relaxed state of being. It also tends to curl up our backbone at its lower end.

But why did it happen so to the entire humanity that it curled up its back through contracting this muscle not as an exception but as a rule?

The abdominal cavity got pressed up, keeping the thoracic cavity enlarged.

It all happened when we stood on our twos as a species that was previously resting on its fours. The diaphragm took pressure and went contracted in order to cope up with the balancing act of the new posture acquired.

It was a transitional period during which the human body started learning a new biological intelligence that would make it stand on its twos in the most natural way.

But the transition is not yet over; and the human body is still in the process of learning the right way to stand on its twos.

Of course it paid a heavy price for this learning, and it is still going on paying the same with its stressed mind, contracted body, disturbed hormonal activity, reduced immunity, falling prey to chronic illnesses, generation of debilitating emotions rendering an energy-less existence, insensitivity, self-centeredness leading to a selfish and a violent behavior, and a blurred vision either as nearsightedness or old age sight.

When will the transition be over?

It won’t, on its own!

The moment humanity stood on its twos, it was endowed with an extra gray matter at its behest. From that moment on, whatever evolution was to be there, would be a conscious one and no more an automaton.

Hence the ball now is in our court. It’s we only who has to kick it the way it rightly should be; or else we go on paying the heavy price we have been paying for the past thousands of years.

The ball is in our court now, and we have to develop the intelligence that our body will learn from our brain.

The first kick starts at the level of thoracic diaphragm now.

And my friend had her 72 hours over by now. Her lower back had stopped paining and she was ready to plunge into the next maneuver.