Breathing

“Take a big breath!” “Squeeze every ounce of air out of your lungs, as though you are wringing out a towel!”

“Inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth!”

“Keep breathing!”

With all this breath talk constantly, you might find yourself thinking, “well, how should I breathe?”

Despite its profound importance, we know little about how our body and mind regulate breath. We take breathing for granted, and only become aware of it when we feel out of control of our body and mind’s ability to handle stress.

When things settle down again, our breath is once again in the background, and out of our awareness. We forget that the vital link between the psyche (mind) and soma (body) is the energy of breath.

Our breath is one of the life-sustaining motions in our vast repertoire of movements. The intricacies of breath allow new movement and sensation to arise.

Respiration has a cellular effect; life giving substances enter, and the rib cage expands, the spinal curves accommodate this motion, the diaphragms elevate and descend, and the internal organs are massaged.

Breath will mobilize tissue, blood, lymph, change heart rate, alter the tone of our nervous system, changing our emotional state, and effect countless other physiological functions.

The average person uses chest muscles rather than their diaphragm when they breathe, and such breathing is usually shallow, rapid, and irregular. As a consequence, the lower lobes of the lungs, which receive an abundant supply of blood, are not adequately ventilated, so the gas exchange which takes place between the air in the lungs and the blood is inadequate.

BREATHING IS IMPORTANT – we teach, we cue, we remind, we coordinate your movements with the breath in Pilates and Yoga – and it just makes you glad and grateful to be alive.

Come and do Yoga, Meditation and/or Pilates with us!