What to know about the Pilates breath and why we cue it.
It seems like such a simple concept doesn’t it? We have to breathe to stay alive, so what more can there possibly be to say on the subject?
Well, quite a lot actually! The way you breathe during a Pilates session can add a whole new element to what you need to think about and focus on.
If you’ve been to a Pilates class before then I’m sure you will have heard the instructor cueing you as to when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Now the question is, do you listen to the cue and follow it or does it just end up confusing you and leading to you not breathing at all?!
It is important to breathe well for our movement but at the end of the day, do people know why they are being told to breathe in a certain way?
Breaking down the principles of Pilates can make things a lot simpler to understand and breathing is one of the key principles that are considered.
Breathing and Movement
Breathing correctly can help your range of movement and help you to use the correct muscles during your Pilates 121, duet session or Pilates class. The right breath pattern will allow your belly to work properly and encourage deep belly breathing rather than shallow chest breathing.
Often we feel tight in our upper or thoracic spine and this is due to breathing too much into our chest and not allowing our ribcage to expand.
If you take a shallow breath in then your lungs can’t expand, your diaphragm will not rise and fall properly and your thoracic spine will become blocked and feel stiff. Have a go at a few shallow breaths and see how it makes you feel? Then try taking a deep Pilates breath into your ribcage and compare the 2 ways of breathing.
The idea is not to stress about how you breathe, but remember to breathe in softly through your nose and let your belly rise at the same time. As you breathe out, imagine you are blowing out candles through a relaxed mouth and bringing your awareness to your abdominals to gently draw your belly slightly in.
Reducing tension in your body
Your diaphragm plays a huge part in the way you breathe and correctly inhaling and exhaling helps to reduce tension in your body. It is so important to allow your belly to inflate slightly when you breathe in to avoid gaining a ‘pressure belly’
This can occur when you are not breathing wide into your ribcage but you are holding your abdominals tight and the pressure of your breath as you inhale is forced down into your lower abdominals and your pelvic floor.
At the same time, you are sucking in your belly to try and flatten your abs and a pressure war builds up, creating a dome like shape in your deep abdominals.
Try to breathe wide in to your ribcage as you inhale and practise this by placing your hands around your ribcage with your middle fingers touching if possible. As you inhale you want to feel your fingers separate as your ribs expand to the side. As you exhale, feel your ribcage narrow again and your fingers come back together.
How does your spine move when you breathe?
This may seem rather an odd area to explore. However, it is important to remember that when you breathe and you move your ribs your spine moves along with them.
An inhale will expand your ribs to the side and lift your chest up at the same time. As your ribs expand there is an automatic straightening of your spine and as you exhale, your ribs soften down and move down slightly. Your spine will have a slight forward flexion as you exhale.
Start to focus on breathing and moving at the same time to firstly avoid tension in your body and to aid your natural spinal movement guided by your breath.
You may have heard of ‘ribcage closure’. Essentially this means the action of taking your arms overhead when you are either standing or lying and keeping your ribs softly rolling down or ‘closed’. By doing this you are preventing your ribs popping forward (or up) and stopping your spine from unnecessarily over-extending.
Move at the same speed as your breath
How many of us hold our breath when we are moving because we are confused about when we are supposed to breathe in and when to breathe out?
It’s important to get the move and your technique correct before you worry overly about when to breathe. Just breathe! And, breathe normally.
So many times we slow our breathing to match that of our movement when perhaps we need to speed our movement up to match our breath!
Remember the phrase to ‘breathe out on the effort’ in other words, breathe out on the harder part of the movement. That way, you are using your breathing to create flowing and controlled movements rather than creating tension in your muscles and often your lower back.
Breathing and your pelvic floor
Now this is a subject which lends itself to a whole blog of its own (watch this space, there will be one coming!).
For now, the essentials to consider are that your pelvic floor muscles, deep abdominals, internal and external obliques, diaphragm, rectus abdominus and your back muscles are all part of your ‘core’ When you breathe correctly, you let your pelvic floor lengthen and then shorten allowing it to move efficiently. This will help to avoid excessive downward pressure and overtraining which can lead to pelvic floor dysfunction.
Feeling more confident?
Hopefully breaking down the reasons behind why we breathe has shed some light on why, as Pilates teachers, we have an uncontrollable need to talk about breathing all the time! It is not to confuse you or sound like we are being all anatomically flashy, it’s to help you to get the best experience out of your session that you possibly can.
Still a little unsure?
However, if you still forget to breathe and are not completely clear about which part of a move is seen as the hardest, then get in touch and we can work through it on a 1-2-1 basis (or as a duet if you’d prefer to come along with a friend). That way, you will have the chance to really feel the concept of diaphragmatic breathing, ribcage closure and how your spine responds to your inhale and exhale.
