Intercostals, Frame Rate and Amma
March 2, 2025
8 min read
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Newsletter
{Body}
Breathing with the ribcage
While your diaphragm technically pulls in the most amount of air, it’s not your only breathing muscle.
You also have “intercostal muscles”.
Inter = in-between. Costals = ribs. Intercostals = the muscles in-between your ribs.
You have two sets of intercostal muscles: the internal intercostal muscles and the external intercostal muscles. The former is on the inside, the latter is on the outside. See below.
When your external intercostal muscles do their job (i.e. when they contract), they lift and spread your entire ribcage. When your internal intercostal muscles do their job, you will forcefully exhale (think sneezing or coughing).
A great way to visualize how your intercostal muscles work is by imagining an accordion. There is nothing on the inside of the accordion that pushes out, right? Rather, an external force manually spreads the accordion, and (as a byproduct) pulls air into the instrument.
The same principal applies to you: there is nothing on the inside of your lungs pushing outwards to create your inhale. Instead, the surrounding muscles in your torso activate to do the work.
{Mind}
Frame rate of experience
When you watch a film with actors, you’re not watching an actual recording. You’re watching a number of individual frames speeding by so fast that the images blend into a seamless video.
Same with the screen you’re reading these words on. It appears to be one continuous visual, when, in reality, it’s merely a series of blinking pixels, flashing in and out so fast that your eyes cannot make out any individual frame.
And same with the building you’re in. It’s not really a singular “thing”. It’s made up of different sized-frames — wood beams, metal panels, plastic PVC pipes, panes of glass — that, when assembled correctly, convince you that the structure exists as a unified whole.
These observations are also true for your subjective experience.
The sound of the A/C is not one continuous hum, but rather billions of minuscule air pressure fluctuations occurring one after the other.†
The odor wafting from a fresh cookie is not one smell; it’s a series of individual molecules your neuroreceptors are rapidly processing and averaging out.
Thinking “my car needs an oil change” is not one thought, but trillions of conceptual building blocks arranged to appear as one thought.
This frame-by-frame reality exists beneath all perception, yet we rarely notice it. In the context of getting present (the spiritual antidote to all of your problems) it’s all about upping the “frame rate” of your experience.
In other words, becoming present with your breath is all about noticing more and more of its building blocks — subtler and subtler sensations that compose each inhale and exhale. Or being with feelings of sadness means seeing the emotion as a series of distinct emotional frames, and learning not to react to them as they arise in experience.
{Soul}
Love is like a river that flows past dense rocks. The water is unburdened by needing to alter its path. It simply moves as it must, around and through whatever stands before it. Eventually, whether tomorrow or in a million years, the water will have its way — the rock will be worn smooth, the passage cleared.
Love is like the rays of the sun, which shine upon all, regardless of their being "good" or "bad," "acceptable" or "unacceptable." The light falls equally on the saint and the sinner, asking nothing in return.
Do you see now? Where there is love, there is no effort, simply because love requires no force. Its nature is to expand and encompass. It does not dim itself in the face of resistance or denial. It waits with infinite patience until that which is under its gaze opens itself to love once again.
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