Breath first: a short guide

Every exercise we teach starts with the breath, and it is the part most people quietly ignore for the first month. That is understandable. When you are trying to remember where your legs go, the instruction to exhale on the effort sounds like an optional extra. It is not. It is the thing that makes the rest of it work.

What we are asking for

Most of us breathe up and into the chest, especially when we are concentrating or stressed. The shoulders rise, the neck gets involved, and the ribs barely move. In Pilates we ask for the opposite: breathe wide and into the sides and back of the ribcage, so the ribs expand outwards like a set of bellows, and let the shoulders stay where they are.

This is often called lateral breathing. It sounds technical and it takes about two minutes to feel.

Try it now

Sit up, wherever you are reading this. Wrap your hands around your lower ribs, thumbs behind, fingers in front. Breathe in through your nose and try to push your hands apart sideways without lifting your shoulders. Then breathe out through your mouth, slowly, and feel your ribs come back down and knit together.

If your shoulders came up on the inhale, you are not doing it wrong, you are doing what almost everyone does. Try again with less air.

Why it matters on the machine

Three reasons, in order of usefulness.

• It switches on your deep abdominals. A full exhale draws the lower abdominals in and down. That is the support you are being asked for when a teacher says connect, and it is much easier to find on an out breath than by clenching.

• It keeps your ribs down. A lot of what looks like a strong back arch is really a ribcage that has floated up. Exhaling through the effort keeps the front of the ribs closed and your spine in a position it can actually work from.

• It stops you bracing. Hold your breath and everything tightens, including your neck and jaw. You will run out of steam by the third repetition and blame your fitness.

The rule of thumb

Exhale on the hard part. Pushing the carriage away, curling up, lifting a leg. Inhale on the return. There are exercises where we break that rule deliberately, and your teacher will tell you when. Until then it will serve you well.

Three common snags

• Taking in too much air. A huge inhale leaves you nothing to control. Smaller breath, longer exhale.

• Forcing the exhale. You are not blowing out candles. Let it be a long steady sigh rather than a push.

• Losing it entirely when the exercise gets hard. Everyone does this. When you notice, stop, take one breath, and start again. Noticing is the skill.

Three minutes, most days

Practise it away from class, where there is nothing else to think about. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your hands on your ribs. Ten slow breaths, counting four in and six out. Do that for a week and the class version stops being something you have to remember.

If you want it taught properly with hands on cues, Stretch and Restore is the class where we spend the most time on it.