PRINCIPLE IN PRACTICE: BREATH

This month: BREATH

It all begins with breath. Joseph Pilates wrote, “Breathing is the first act of life, and the last. Our very life depends

on it.”

Joe placed enormous importance on full breathing and especially on fully emptying the lungs. The teachers who

carried his work forward did not all use breath in exactly the same way. That is part of what makes breath such a

rich principle to explore rather than simply another rule to follow.

PUT IT INTO PRACTICE

Choose an exercise you know well. Try it once exhaling with the effort. Then repeat it and inhale during the same

movement.

What changes? Support? Expansion? Ease? Power? Rhythm?

Traditional breath patterns can give an exercise structure and intention, but there is not always one right or wrong

way to breathe through every movement. Play with it. Ask what the breath is doing rather than whether you are

doing it “correctly.”

FOR TEACHERS

Before automatically cueing “inhale here, exhale there,” ask: What do I want this breath to create?

BEYOND PILATES

One breath can change how you enter a moment. Before responding in a difficult conversation, rushing into the

next task or reacting automatically, take one breath. The situation may not change, but how you meet it might.

THE GEM: Change the breath. Change the intention.