I think what may help more than worrying about whether you expand the ribcage vs. the abdomen is to focus on trying to feel the expansion all the way around - not just in front. If you feel a stretch in your lower back, you're breathing "into the right place". Depending on your anatomy, your lowest ribs may actually be at your waistline, and you could wear an elastic belt to help you feel that movement in your back more than you might otherwise. But it's also important not to overinhale (or hyperventilate) in an effort to expand your lungs more than you need to.
Remember that it's the LUNGS that are what expands. All movement below the lungs comes from the displacement of the organs below the diaphragm when the diaphragm lowers as you fill the lungs. Your lungs aren't anywhere near as far down as your lower back or your lower abdomen - so that expanded feeling you get in either place is a result of muscles stretching to accommodate the compressed organs below the diaphragm and the ribs widening at the bottom to accommodate the dropping and stretching of the diaphragm itself.
An exercise that might help you get the feeling of "filling the back" is this:
Stand about two feet from the back of a chair, and hold the top of the chair back. Now bend forward from your hips - i.e., using the joints at your hips to bend, not your waist (if it helps, imagine you've got a board like the "stomacher" in 16th-18th Century ladies' gowns worn by the aristocrats in Europe running from your upper chest to your lower abdomen, so you can't possibly bend at the waist). Anyway, bend at the hips so you're at about a 45 degree angle from the chair back and the floor. Now inhale, thinking about breathing "into your back". Then vocalise - sing a scale or an arpeggio, whatever. Do this several times, until it starts feeling "natural" to breath into your back. Then stand straight, and inhale, again attempting to achieve that "breathing into the back" feeling. All the while, do NOTHING about the stomach or sides of the ribs. Don't tense them, don't "tuck" the lower abdomen, don't squeeze in on the sides of the ribs. Just let them be completely slack and relaxed.
The thing about this approach is that if you truly relax all the muscles in the abdomen and the intercostals (between the ribs), then focus on breathing into the back, you will naturally also breathe into the ribs and the abdomen (or, more accurately, the displacement of the diaphragm will cause those muscles to stretch as well). I've just always found that the back muscles seem to be the last in the very rapid sequence of muscles to actually stretch when I inhale deeply, so that if I feel the stretch in my back, I realize that the stretch has also already happened in my ribs and abdomen.
As with all technical "advice", your mileage may vary. :)
Karen Mercedes http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html *************************************** What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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