Hi, and welcome to the Balance Body Podcast series.
I'm Amy Taylor Alpers from the Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado.
We're talking about breathing and Pilates, and we're looking at exercises on all different
pieces of equipment, some using a spring, some not using a spring, to see how the exercises
are specifically designed to empower the breath mechanism to increase the expansive strength
of the chest, the ribcage in the lungs, and the incredible powerful contractal power of
the abdominals around the lumbar spine.
So we're going to look at three different mat exercises here that sort of move their
way into another concept, which we haven't looked at yet, which is going to be some rotation,
some twisting.
Okay, so we're going to start with spine stretch.
So the feet go on the boxes.
Nice flexion.
Now let's start with the arms, yes, at 90 degrees, and we get a nice powerful flexion
because that helps to bring the power back into the body.
So we do a huge inhale, and then we just start a deep contraction, and the movement helps
to push the air out.
So you're just like an inflatable pillow, and then you fill, and we're going to fill
back up through the spine, and then we're going to exhale, deep squeeze, deep squeeze
into the body all the way down if you can.
And then we come back up through the kidneys, through the lungs, inhale, stretching open.
That's your inhale, and then your deep exhale, relaxing shoulders, opening up the whole back
so much of the lung capacity is in the back, and we tend to be tight there.
Inhale, fill that.
One more time.
Again, you want to exhale every last atom of air from your lungs until there is empty
as a vacuum.
You squeeze, you squeeze, you squeeze the air out, squeeze the air out, and then all you
do is rise again and let the air refill you.
Now we're going to take it into the saw, which adds the twist to the movement.
So we inhale twist, and then the twisting now really helps to wring the body out of
that air.
Inhale you fill again, exhale you deep squeeze and twist.
Come back up through that back, and exhale this arm will go high, this head will go down.
And that helps again to increase that upper body strength that we need for the breath
as well.
Inhale, and exhale, curl back in so you really get every aspect of the lungs.
Inhale, little softer in the arms so that doesn't take too much tension.
And exhale, feel like you're curling back into yourself so you can really get a powerful
twist, and that's also something that these feet help do, come back into that.
Feel like that, very nice.
And that's enough, and we're going to do the hip circles next, which take that twisting
motion into a more difficult, slightly bigger exercise.
Requires a little more range maybe in your hips, in your thighs.
So if the hips are a little too tight, I ask people to maybe bend the knees a little bit
so that we're not distracted from our point, literally.
Our point is the breath mechanism, not the quads.
We're going to inhale, and exhale, deep squeeze, chest up and open as much as you can.
So this exhale really starts to challenge you because you are also fighting any upper
body strength that's too tight for your breath, right, so trying to keep those elbows straight
as much as you can, and just exhale, exhale, that's better, April, really tall through
the chest.
We're seeing our shoulder bridge kick moment right here, and one last one, inhale, soften
the legs just enough so we can really get a powerful exhale, but keep the chest, keep
the chest, keep the chest, and bend the knees and rest.
So that's an exercise you see as we grow through the process of what we call uniformly developing
the body, trying to rid it of tensions that actually impede the breath mechanism.
So tight quads, overworked, heavy quads, tight neck and shoulders, so many of us have that,
get very much in the way of strengthening through the core, which is what we really need
for our powerful, powerful exhale, our ultimate goal, a powerful, powerful exhale, which is
also your strength and stability for your spine and also your massage and support for
your organs.
So that exhale is really our goal, no matter which direction we're looking at it from,
whether it's just the breath, or whether it's the strength we need for our spines, or whether
it's that central connection that allows us to release tension in other places, really
focusing, focusing on getting that exhale so powerful because it cleans up a lot of
other issues, and it gives us our ultimate goal, which is oxygen, oxygen, oxygen, and
just making it shower through the whole body over and over and over again for the health
that Pilates can bring to us.
Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you on the next podcast.
