Unless you are in a yoga class, breathing is not a conscious effort. Often, when we partake in physical activity, we hold our breath. Exercises like Pilates and yoga promote mindful breathing. Other workouts of today focus on quick and explosive movements while traditional body conditioning highlights form and control. I am a proponent that there is room for both, but please note, strength is developed through the groundwork of breath.
How Breath Influenced Pilates
As a child, Joseph Pilates suffered from asthma. To assist his condition, Pilates worked on breathing techniques. In the original Contrology methods, Joseph Pilates has strict breath practice. Pilates, in his book, Pilates Return to Life Through Contrology, says, “Above all, learn how to breathe correctly”. To understand breathing, think back to elementary school science and imagine your lungs are a balloon.
On an inhale, the diaphragm lowers to create space for the ribcage to expand and the lungs to fill with air. Therefore, your balloon inflates. On an exhale, the diaphragm lifts to push air out of the lungs, and the ribcage returns to its place which deflates your balloon.
Now that we understand breathing, let us discuss Pilates’ “correct breathing”. An inhale is a preparatory breath and an exhale initiates movement. Then, like our image of the balloon, the exhale contracts the surrounding muscles in the abdominals. Since Pilates recognizes form and control, our exhale places us into the correct position for movement to begin.
Let’s Take It Into Practice
Find yourself either seated or standing with the spine erect.
Take a deep inhale and notice your sides and chest get bigger.
Exhale and see how the release of air places and tightens your core.
It is simple, but now you are mindful breathing!
Form and Control
Unlike quick and explosive movement, breath in Pilates is a mindful practice that creates a framework for form and control. Joseph Pilates believes that “The Pilates method teaches you to be in control of your body and not at its mercy”. This means you determine the outcome of your exercise and reduce pain or the chance of injury. He even suggests that “A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of doing sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion”. The best way to develop strength is to slow down and breathe.
Adding Breath Work to Your Workout
As we begin to understand breathing, we must understand how to apply it. Whether at a Pilates session or the gym, think “inhale prepare, exhale move”. For someone that enjoys going to the gym almost as much as getting onto the Pilates reformer, I also abide by this writing. I make an effort to slow down and breathe through my workout. For example, if I am squatting, I take my position, align my body, inhale to prepare, exhale to squat, and so on. It works my muscles and keeps me in control of the exercise.
Now that I have made my opinion and preference about slow movement clear, let me add that quick and explosive exercise, if fun for you, should be practiced! I encourage Pilates as a supplemental form of training. Likewise, Joseph Pilates intended it “to give you suppleness, natural grace, and skill that will be unmistakably reflected in the way you walk, in the way you play, and in the way you work”. Let breath set the groundwork of ease in all that you do.
By: Annie Maxwell
Joseph Pilates Quotes: