This post I have made for the world renowned Pilates Company "Balanced Body".

I started working with Breath and Movement more than 20 years back in the Pilates environment.

I really want every movement field and the Pilates, yoga etc, to listen up regarding how you guide, use and understand the breath - when you teach and instruct movement.

This post is for everybody who wants to understand more around Breathing, Diaphragm and the Core.

I am planning to arrange an online event around this understanding. If you are interested, please sign up for my newsletter, and I will let you know. 

This post has originally been published right here.

Breath and Core Connection

Breath is movement, and it creates that most important baseline being able to use your core. The first and outmost priority for your core is your breath. Even to hold yourself while sitting and standing, also in every movement during the day and while you do your Pilates.
 
Breathing is a movement inside of you that can be felt both inside and outside of you 24/7 all life. Freeing up the breath is the most important tool for selfcare and health both physically and mentally.
 
If the body has lost the ability to breathe freely and with too much resistance, physically as well as mentally, you will fight to breathe. Also, when you do your Pilates exercises.
 
This text is about the physical part of your breathing. The so-called biomechanics. A warm welcome into my world of teaching Pilates from the breath perspective, into how to engage the core as human design works, into the Pilates repertoire.  
 
My respect for Mr. Pilates himself is clear from my heart.
 
I do very much respect the traditional Pilates exercises and principles. Also, I will pick a little bit into your understanding of how you are guiding and working into your movements around the Breath and Core. This suits you as an instructor as well as a practitioner.
 
The Diaphragm Dictates Core Function

Let’s get practical, upon understanding some simple anatomy. We´ll explore how your core cooperates with the breath. And how the breath dictates core function. Unfortunately, not the opposite way around.
 
It is NOT the muscles that dictate core function, it is the diaphragm, and the ability to produce intraabdominal pressure, that dictates how the core function takes place. This is how we are all designed to function.
 
The first and very strong place that I met this way of understanding around the function of the core, was more than 15 years back in my meeting with the Franklin Method. And through the years, meeting many different aspects of breathing and movement, it all developed into a theoretical and practical understanding, setting the baseline for the way I teach the Pilates repertoire.
 
I never guide navel to spine. I never guide to squeeze the pelvic floor. I never guide to engage the core. I never tell people which muscles to turn on.
 
I teach how to breathe 3-dimensionally (from here called 3D) in every breath, no matter what you do, and which exercise you do. Keeping that 3-dimensional intrabdominal and thorax pressure, we ensure a strong and ready core.
 
And then I teach movements, not muscles, just breathing and movements.

Inhalation and exhalation create these pressure changes, and this engages all you need to use your core into whatever movement you do.
 
The importance of not being too tight in your tissues, your joints, fascial system etc. is of very big importance. Tightness blocks the movement of the breath. And you will not be able to breathe 3D, creating the pressure changes you need in every movement having a strong core.
 
What to do then? Well, it is working with the tight areas and learning how to integrate that into your body and breath again. A lot of the Pilates repertoire itself is crazy good working this way. Just making sure that the guiding of the breath is not as the traditional guiding into the ribs, the lateral breathing.
 
Instead, I guide the breath as a 3D movement, and yes! In every movement or static position, we do that. Even in a plank position we guide the 3D breath.

This video briefly introduces you to how I work around the breath and core relationship. Also you will have  an introduction to easy and practical understanding around the core and the breath while doing your exercises.
 
If this last bit is too much, too long, we can make another article from this? Otherwise I find it important here too…
 
Does the nose or mouth breathing engage the core?
 
Many Pilates people use breathing in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Just to make it clear from my place, there is no definitive right or wrong. But just to clear it up, we are designed to use the nose most of the time 24/7, this is how we are designed, and another long talk.
 
During movement and your Pilates exercises, I recommend using the nose exclusively most of the time. There are many benefits around that. That said, there are also therapeutic and other advantages of using in nose out mouth for specific reasons.
 
Using the nose most of the time during your Pilates exercises, you will engage the intraabdominal and thoracic pressure most effectively. Simply because nose breathing engages the Diaphragm better and stimulates those biomechanics around the breath. 
 
To breathe 3D through your nose, you cannot be too tight in your ribs, your back, your pelvis or in your abs in the front. Again, all dimensions of the breath need to be free and flexible being able to breathe and move with a strong core. It is also the basic for being able to breathe through your nose 24/7.
 
We should breathe and focus on our breath, not only in our abdomen, but in our whole ribcage – the whole spine, front back and sides and bottom top of our trunk. This we can do with all of the many different Pilates movements. Just adding the 3D breath.
 
The pre-requisite for this is to work on your 3Dbreath, and to make that work all the way from your pelvic floor toward the top of the spine.