Breath | For Pilates and Life
Breath! We love it in Pilates and in life. Why? It’s the foundation of all movement and one of the 8 Pilates Principles.
Breath and Pilates: Breath is cued in Pilates to help facilitate both movement and stabilization. You’ll most often hear breath cued to prepare for movement on the INHALE and engage and move on the EXHALE. This is because using your exhale breath helps stabilize the spine and engage the deep core.
Quick Anatomy Lesson: Your diaphragm moves up and down in coordination with your breath in order to make space for the lungs. When you exhale, your diaphragm goes up, which helps push air out and increases the capacity for your transverse abs (TVA) and pelvic floor to fully contract. Your TVA are the corseting abs that wrap around your waist. When they contract, your trunk narrows, so when you exhale, your abs naturally engage. Visual Here
How Do You Engage Your Abs and Still Breathe? As your Pilates practice gets stronger, you’ll be able to maintain a deep core contraction of your TVA during both the inhale and exhale, while still finding some dynamic movement for the lungs and diaphragm. Beginners can often get hyper-focused on the breathing, and either forget to breath or start to bear-down or poof-out the abdomen in an effort to facilitate the transverse ab contraction.
I like to have folks focus on their exhales for a while in order to find ease with breath and movement and that is what we’ll dive into here and through our movement practice this month.
To find your Pilates Breath (consistent TVA activation):
Place hands on ribcage, fingertips at front ribs and thumbs at back ribs.
Try “sending” your inhale breath into your back ribs by breathing into thumbs and palms.
Exhale and imagine zipping up a tight pair of pants while moving your front ribs closer together.
Repeat, maintaining a narrowing through front ribs and expansion into back ribs. Can you keep tone under your fingertips and abs the whole time? That’s the goal!
Increase challenge by adding this breath to simple movements like cat/cow or bridging. Inhale to lengthen and exhale to move. (eg: inhale in cow, exhale in cat; inhale hips on floor, exhale lift hips in bridge)
*Notice if you feel more stable when moving with your exhale.
Finally, give your body a chance to make space and recover after your workout. Finish every session with a few deep, belly breaths so you can let your abs stretch and release the deep core, pelvic floor, and any tension that may have crept into your neck and shoulders .
