I can’t find any images of concentric jellyfish, so you will have to use your imagination a bit. But, the human diaphragm looks and acts much like one of these guys. Imagine your body being made of several jellyfish nesting together like Russian dolls, one inside another, with a common center. To help differentiate the layers, use the breathing, inhaling to inflate the outer and exhaling to shrink the next one in. then in hale into the inner one and exhale from the third one in, and so on. As the each outer one expands and can sustain its size, the inner ones become easier to feel. Feel the expanding and condensing radially and notice which segments are stuck. If a jellyfish layer has a stuck place, you will often be able to feel both an inability to expand in that segment and a sense of being stuck onto other layers, like layers of clothing that have inadvertently been sewn together somewhere. Keep the top of the jellyfish lifting up and maximize the mobility of the peripheral, circular ‘wings’. You can play with a viloma-like breath where you pause between each segment and you expand and condense the individual layers.

After the diaphragm opens more, you can experiment with the each of the ribs, especially the ones above the diaphragm. These ribs tend to be less mobile, but respond very well to the jellyfish image. Let each rib be a jellyfish and breath rhythmically up and down the ribs. Keep the center lifted at all times by the abdominal pressure  within the lower jellyfish, not by using the spinal muscles.

Find the jellyfish everywhere within. Surprise yourself. Feel the fluid, oceanic freedom and effortlessness of the inner movements as they liberate the outer body from its holding patterns and unnecessary tension. Feel whole, awake and alive!