Pilates Posterior Lateral Breathing Form

Video Transcript

"The breathing in Pilates is called, posterior lateral breathing. And, what it is, is if you place your hands around your rib cage, take a nice inhale, and, push the rib cage up against the hands, then exhale, and attempt to lace your fingers together, as if your rib cage was being corseted. Inhale again, expand, exhale, close down, let the fingers come together, and, if you just hold it there, and feel into your sides and the rest of your abs, you will notice that they are all tensed. The other thing you might notice is that if you put your two fingers, one on each side of the spine, as you inhale and exhale, close that rib cage down. Those same muscles begin to engage. This is most of the core in Pilates. So, once again, it's inhale, expand the rib cage, exhale, close it down. It does take some practice to get that kind of mobility in your rib cage. So, now I'm going to lay down and I'll show you what it looks like on the mat. So, I've got my fingertips here and I'm going to inhale, expand my rib cage. But, now I'm going to put one finger on my hip bone and clip my thumb right under my lower rib. My rib cage is popped. Now, I'm going to exhale, close the rib cage down, and set it closer to my hip bone. So, you can see how the space between my fingers has decreased. So, just notice, I'm going to inhale and that space lengthens. Exhale, close the rib cage down and flatten my back on the mat. Now, what I haven't done is that by doing anything with my pelvis, so, none of that is happening. It's completely pushing my rib cage down on the mat. This is beginner work in an abdominal series. It's not easy, after you've done it about three times, you might be tired. But you're trying to push your back up against the mat, just the rib cage. If you have a large arch in your back, you may want to put a towel there, or even a pencil, so that you have a guide of something to press into. And, you want that flat back in whatever you're doing."