Breathe with the Springs

Hi. I'm Danica Kellum De Rolo, and welcome to Breathe with Springs, where we're gonna get into the how and the when of breathing in Pilates because above all else, learn how to breathe correctly in the work. It's what Joseph wanted us to do. So let's get into it. When we talk about the muscularity of breathing, we're really looking at the reciprocal action of the diaphragm as it inhales and expands and the pelvic floor as it lowers. On the exhale, it is a piston action of the pelvic floor, transverse abdominis and diaphragm, therefore retracting back up so that we can exhale the air out. That is the muscularity of how we breathe in the work. But when we talk about the wind, that's when things can get a little tricky.

In conventional movement science, we are taught to exhale into the load as the load increases to help stabilize the spine and increase the support of the abdominals. However, when we're working on the reformer, we're not working on a traditional weight lifting machine. What we're really trying to do is reform our integration and conversation with gravity. In traditional Pilates, we therefore inhale into the opening of the spring as the carriage is pressing out and exhale with the carriage closing, mimicking the idea of the spring closing and the exhale pushing up and out to expel the air. Therefore, we're working that muscular system of breathing. So we're going to start with footwork And every now and then, we will change the breathing so that you can see how it affects the body.

So I'm on a heavy spring. It's up to you what you like to use for your footwork. But I choose to have it as a fully loaded carriage. So we'll come on to the reformer, place our feet in a Pilates v with a mild external rotation and slide down into the blocks. If you prefer to be in parallel, go for it.

So if we take the conventional movement science approach and exhale into the spring, we will get more abdominal contraction and an ease of finding that contraction for the mover. So if I inhale and exhale, it is much easier for me to feel how the abdominals contract to push the air out. However, the question is, When do we inhale? If I exhale on the way out, it would imply that I should inhale on the way in. However, it just doesn't feel organic, at least not to my body. So if we revert to the traditional breathing, to inhale into the movement of the carriage, inhale up, standing tall into gravity, exhale, find the contraction and the movement to push the air out, It allows me to stay into the shoulder blocks and resist the spring as we all love to cue. Inhale, stretch up, exhale come in stay tall. And we're gonna do a few more inhale and exhale come in.

Now for learning purposes, change the breathing again back to that conventional movement science way of inhaled with the carriage quiet, and exhale into the load. Notice the difference that you feel in terms of your body being able to find opposition in space, where I'm pressing into the foot bar as well as standing tall into the shoulder blocks the whole time. It's much harder to feel that opposition when breathing, exhaling, into the load of the spring. So settle that and now let's go into tendon stretch back into the traditional breath. Inhaling up tall.

Now as I exhale and lower the heels, the heels pressing away, in opposition to the exhale pushing up and out. Inhale to lift, exhale lower. Inhale up. And exhale lower, making sure that there's actual muscular movement on the exhale to expel the air, inhaling into the back of the ribcage, and exhaling. One more, inhaling up, and exhale as we come in.

Now for learning purposes, let's reverse the breathing, exhale on the way out, inhale as you lower. And exhale on the way up. For me, this gives so much more of a one direction work, and I'm not finding that opposition that makes me feel longer and taller which is the real reason we all love Pilates in the first place. Bend on in. Now, regardless of where you put your feet in your footwork, play with how that breathing changes how you feel with the spring.

Now, let's move on to working arms, upper body, and into our 100. So we're gonna come up and we're gonna drop some spring. I prefer a medium to heavy spring for arm work, so that you can really actually feel the springs. Let's also lower the foot bar so that we have to keep our knees to our chest ourselves. Coming back down, Take a hold of your loops or your handles, and let's go ahead and bring knees all the way into chest.

Alright? So here we are. Let's start with arms stretched up, which already may engage your spring depending on how short your ropes or your leather are. If I inhale into the moving of the carriage, I really have to work to keep my arms pulled into me with lat activation along the sides of my ribs. It is much easier to exhale as we pull the arms and the load of the spring. So here we go. Exhale, pull the arms down, inhale down here.

And now let's take an exhale on the way up, finding how the lower abdominals need to find that work to help the hip flexors hold the knees in, as well as push the air out. Inhale up here, and exhale pull the arms down. You can really feel that activation of upper and lower abs exhaling into the load of the spring, inhale at the bottom, and then exhale continue to reach out into the loops so you feel the entirety of the moving of the carriage. Now, if we want to revert to the traditional breathing, it's an inhale to press the arms down and exhale to bring them up. Inhale down.

Fight with those laps to keep those arms closed. Exhale. Pushing the air out, finding that zip up of the abs that helps us again keep that opposition, inhaling down, and exhaling back up. To work the lats a little bit more, we're going to take an opening, inhale the arms down, exhale to be here. Now, turn from the shoulder into the wrist to find palms facing each other. Inhale as the arms open out to the sides, towards t.

And feel how the exhale works so organically as we pull the arms back in. Pushing the air out and keeping us connected to center. Inhale, open and exhale. The challenge you might come across is using too much of your pectorals to help with the exhale and ending in this caved chest when really we wanna stay in our active neutral flat black of a spine. Inhaling open, and exhale close.

Now, let's reverse that breathing again for our learning purposes. If we inhale here, we run into that same fight with keeping the lats engaged, exhale as we open It is much harder to keep the length in my spine. I really feel the springs wanna pull me down towards the foot bar. So when I inhale and pull the arms back in, I have that much more work to do to find where my spine is still tall towards the shoulder blocks. One more, exhaling as we open.

Notice how easy it is to get pulled down towards the foot bar. How much harder it is to find that opposition back at the top. Choose the breathing that works best for your body, but also provides a good challenge. We're gonna go ahead and move it into a full circle, inhaling as we open around exhaling, pulling into center. Inhale up and open. Exhale, especially if you just felt that you were finding compression and falling out of the shoulder blocks Go back into the breathing that helps you find that opposition.

As I come down into the bottom this time, I'm gonna go ahead and add those upper abs to come up into the 100. Send the legs out to a comfortable height 90 or 45. And start the breathing of inhale two, three, four, five, and exhale. Breathing in and exhale. Should you want to lower the legs? I suggest doing it on an exhale.

So that the weight of the legs getting longer challenges your exhale to find opposition into the anchoring of the back of the ribs, which I'll be it are still moving. Anchored, butt moving, the inhale should expand the back of the ribs. The exhale should move the abdomen, move those abdominals. One more time. And exhale. Bend the knees.

Come on down. If we take the pumping out of the 100 and only focus on the breathing, It makes it even more valid for the core integration with the springs. Sometimes the pumping is just showing off and what we really need is to focus on that how and when of the breath. So now we're gonna reset our loops, and we're gonna move on to everyone's favorite stomach massage. You'll need to bring your foot bar back up I prefer to add on the same spring that you did your footwork on, and also make sure you set your bar to the same level.

That was a little bit high that time. I'm gonna add back on springs because we drop them for our arm work. We also need to add a black neoprene pad for traction, and everyone has a different way to set the pad. It doesn't really matter. Again, it's just for traction. So we're gonna put it down. And we come back onto the reformer, onto the black pad, and immediately as soon as we bring our feet up onto the bar, we're gonna be pushed into a posterior tilt and lumbar flexion.

The breathing is so important here because we are in loaded lumbar flexion, which if anyone has a soft tissue issue in their lumbar, this exercise can be a little precarious. But it's the breathing that really saves you. We bring the hands to the front of the carriage, and as soon as we bring the feet up, here we are in that lumbar flexion, in that posterior tilt. This is where If we try to exhale into the load, we potentially will be putting more compression into someone who might have a little compromise and it won't be the best choice. So we're gonna show that real quick.

Inhale And as I exhale and contract into the load of the spring, it's just a natural response to want to get smaller, to deflate. But that's not really what we want in this exercise. We want a feeling of being able to rise up out and around so that our sits bones tailbone can keep that curl to the heels. Yes, we are in lumbar flexion. Yes, we are loaded.

But we need to be working inside the shape to make more space. Therefore, the traditional breathing of inhaling on the way out is really where the magic of the stomach massage lies. Inhale. We can add the lower lift of the tendon stretch, exhale as you come in. If we inhale, we can find the back of the ribs pulling wide and up and open making more room for the exhale as we come in. One more inhale.

I'll add the lower lift, exhale in. Now that you've done both, really feel for yourself how if you exhale on the way out, It is much harder to fight not only the pull of the spring, but the external force and weight of gravity. I'm much more likely to give into that force exhaling into the spring. And then I'm not getting the massage, which is really about the picking up of the breath and opening of the back, making room for the movement of the abdominals on the exhale to come in, thereby massaging more length and weight of the spine up out of the hip flexors. Now we're gonna go through, take a spring off, Take the arms back on top of the shoulder blocks. Now, not only is this a big stretch for the shoulders, and if it's too much, bring the hands down.

If you need more room for someone who has very broad shoulders, take a foam roller and place it to let their arms go wider because what we don't want is the shoulder tightness to completely collapse the chest and upper back, making breath hard. So To see the breathing, I'm gonna keep my hands down. It's an inhale up and out, and you can see that essence of chest expansion, which we'll be doing in just a moment, exhale as you come in. Inhale, I can find the strength in my arms, putting more strength in my back, but I can feel my back moving when I breathe. I exhale to come in.

To reverse the breathing, you'll once again see very clearly how compressive it gets. If I inhale with the carriage closed and exhale and press out, yes, I feel my abdominals, but I immediately want to really give in to that contraction And now I'm actually coming into more flexion of my spine, where where they want is more thoracic extension and lift when the arms are back. The three positions of stomach massage not only challenge how we are working in our hips, but they challenge how we're lifting that spine up away from the hips. Again, to find that opposition and the two way stretch. I'm going to come through the legs, take off one more spring, now I'm down to two, and when we do the final position of your stomach massage, arms reach, we no longer have the arms to pull, we no longer have them to push, They're sending energy of the weight of the arms up and out. If I exhale here, it becomes very difficult to come up under that weight of the arms and therefore reach through them, exhaling in. Inhale big and tall and wide in the ribs, exhale scoop and push the air up and out.

Breathing and exhale. If we add the rotation, inhale on the way out with the spring. All rotation exercises are actually breathing exercises. It is a natural compression of one side of the body when we rotate. So, therefore, in the traditional, we try to inhale against that natural compression.

Inhale, open, tall, exhale come back in one more, inhale, and exhale. There's no way that you're not gonna feel it in your hip flexors. Stomach massage is an exercise purposefully to strengthen your hip flexors. However, if we want to find that opposition, the traditional breathing really, really works for that exercise. Try it for yourself, teach it to your clients, and I'm sure you'll see it.

Let's move on to elephant. Once we stand up on the carriage, we're going to have much more of an opening of the curve of our spine. Very similar to what we were just had in stomach massage round, but more open. So we'll take our black pet off, and we'll stay on these same two red springs. We're gonna place a hand, an opposite foot, keep that carriage closed, plant the feet.

Now, if you need to move your feet forward, do so. Sometimes, I even will stand feet together, Pilates v, and the center of the carriage. That's where I'm gonna actually show it today, because this really helps wrap the legs together into center and find a unified pressing down into the union of the heels down. When the legs are apart, it's just a little bit more difficult to find that. And we wanna focus on, once again, where do we initiate that inhale?

If we initiate that inhale in our abdomen and in our chest, it's gonna not work as well because we're immediately gonna start feeling that falling down into gravity. Instead of inhaling with the chest, inhale with the upper back, back ribs, widening, lifting up into the weight of gravity. At the same time, we curl tail down into that unity of this Pilates v. So now you can see more of that same spinal flexion curve that we had in stomach massage arms round. When I inhale and open the springs, I can now really work the exhale contract contract contract to pull in. Inhale.

Opening the back of the ribs just like we're opening the spring. Inhale. And yes, traditionally, the exhale is percussive, where you have three distinct places of closing the carriage before you close the spring fully. Inhale, and exhale. So that contraction and percussive breath is what pulls the spring in.

One more and exhale. To reverse the breathing, It just doesn't feel as organic to be truthful. If I inhale here with the carriage closed and exhale as I press out into the load, I'm so much more likely to end up initiating and pressing from my low back and then coming out of that spinal flexion because I'm working so hard to push exhale and push into the spring. It really me means I have to change my back. Going back to that traditional breath, inhale, into the back of the ribs, exhale, pull in, in, in.

This transfers also into your kneeling knee stretches, which is really just elephant on your knees. So coming down to knees, feet going back into the shoulder blocks, and you really want a nice bend at your first second, third metatarsal down into the carriage, as well as back into the heel. You really want that connection to initiate to be able to feel the springs underneath of you. Going back into your round. However, now, because we've condensed the shape coming down onto the knees, We send the weight of this curve back a little bit farther towards our heels. I'm not a fan of completely sitting on the heels because that can kind of strain your knees. So have a little bit of lift, which engages all of your hammy and glute, because as we press out, we are going into hip extension.

But when I inhale, the work of my upper back and rib cage should keep me connected into my arms and into the bar. As I press out with an inhale, exhale come in. It's not a big movement. It really doesn't need to be. Inhale, press out. And exhale come in.

If we wanna take more of the advanced tempo, we actually accent the exhale and the closing of the spring. Which makes you have to fire the pelvic floor and lower abs and that transverses a little bit faster with a little bit more accent so that we can call on that when we need it. Because we are not always going to breathe at the same even tempo throughout our day to day. Sometimes we really need to be able to harness the power of our exhale quickly. Now if we do take the carriage out farther in our knee stretches, I actually like to take that into the transition into down stretch.

If I press on an inhale and take the knees a little bit past my hips, I can now find some extension through the spine, and we haven't done any swan, so don't make it too much, wherever you feel comfortable. And as I exhale, we're gonna pull in and up to close the spring. Xhaling. Up we go. Lifting the sternum up to the wall in front of you, pushing down in the arms and back in the legs. If I exhale back into the spring, I am immediately gonna feel drop.

Here's what I mean. Inhale with the carriage closed. Exhale. As soon as I go, I can feel myself drop out of my shoulder girdle and shoulder strength, and I feel like I am sitting in my lumbar. I also have no hamstring or glued on, and I'm just being honest.

As I come back up, I'm gonna reset all of that because that was a lot of drop for me in space. And that is not the point of the down stretch. You don't actually want to fall down. You want to be able to stay up. It's just the anchoring down and back through the knees and feet.

Up I go. If I use my inhale to press out, It is much more opposition moving forward and up versus the feeling of dropping down and back. Inhale as the carriage goes out, which now my exhale can really gather from the bottom, all the way up to that diaphragm to push the air up and out, inhaling, and exhale. One more, inhale. It also reduces the feeling of load down into my knees because I'm much more lifted with my waist versus pushing back and down with my waist to move the spring. Now in down stretch is a place I also like to add rotation as well.

So if we're here, inhale and press out, as you come in, exhale, close the spring, now take a lift of one arm, inhale as it comes up, opening that side of the rib cage, exhale as it comes back through center and back to the bar. Carriage stays nice and quiet. Inhale, lift. Opening that side of the ribcage. Exhale bring it back to the bar. One more each side. Inhale.

It is really a challenge to keep the carriage closed because if I decide to drop, the carriage is gonna move. Inhale, keep that lift to keep the carriage closed and coming back in. And if you really feel it in, your body, come onto your fingertips, take an inhale, and an exhale that follows that trajectory of your spine. If you've gotten a good amount of extension, come back into a little rounded spine, a little knee stretch curve just so that you can give your spine that oppositional stretch. But in those exercises, really pay attention to where your inhale is guided. Because when we're in spinal flexion, it's much easier to inhale into our back, upper back, and ribs. However, when we're in extension, it's much easier to inhale in the chest.

That's important when you're working in your long box and doing anything where you're really going between spinal flexion and extension. We're gonna continue with mermaid. There are many, many variations of mermaid out there in the world today, where traditionally, which is not my favorite, by the way, you have both shins against the shoulder blocks. This does not work for me as I don't have cartilage in my knees. So the closest I can get to this has a little splay of the bottom leg out, where I still have one shin connected.

If this gets into your glute medius too much, a little bit too much in your hip flexors, then we can go fully to the Z sit, or also known as your cleopatra sit. Okay? I'm gonna come back to the in between, if I had to say. We're gonna drop it down to one spring and make it a good heavy spring. You wanna feel the reformer want to close so that you have to push out into it. Hand on the bar, opposite arm lifted by the ear.

The initiation on an inhale sends my rib cage up and towards the bar as my hips and lower body push into the shoulder block. Now there's a whole conversation about this shoulder and this lack connection in your side body. But if you find your inhale moving in this side body connection, it's much easier to find the placement. Exhale as you come up so that it can help pull your core together to be able to lift the arm off the foot bar. A big inhale out to the sides, finish it with an exhale curve over, pull a little bit farther.

Let this inhale rebound you up through space, picking up that top rib cage and bottom arm, exhale to the bar. Inhale as you press the carriage out, feeling this movement, feeling the stretch of the top ribs as well, and then on the exhale contracting pushing air up and out Staying up to lift that hand off the bar, you should be out of breath, inhale again. Exhale to go over. Now that is a nice easy tempo to go for your mermaid. However, what if we did one breath?

Inhale to press out, exhale to come up, and over. Inhale up. And out, exhaling, tall, lift, come over. One last one, and now we're going to add a little bit of a rotation variation. Twist towards the floor, place hands on the footbar, moving them open so that you have space.

I'm pressing through my tail, sit bones, and into that connection of the shin into the shoulder blocks. And as I press out, it allows me to open the front of my chest and get a nice stretch through the front of my shoulders as I'm putting a lot of load and work into my upper back. I'm gonna take an inhale here, and then exhale as I bend the elbows, closing the carriage, inhale, grow through space towards the foot bar, towards the shoulder blocks, go in two directions. Exhale back in. One more, big inhale.

And this is where you will really feel what I was saying about how twisting is naturally compressive. So if we inhale We can fight that compression and get more eccentric contraction through the obliques and the muscles of the back. To come up, you'll move your hand over, come back up through the side, and I always love to finish mermaid with an extra bit of side stretch with an extra little bit of rotation to really feel both sides of the back come around. And of course, since we did one side, we have to do the other, where you'll be able to see more of how the ribs actually move. And I'm just gonna take the legs over, find the connection into the shoulder blocks, start with a nice lift, feel that inhale, widen and pick up the ribs, I'm gonna exhale in place, hand down.

Inhale as I press out. Exhale as I come up. Inhale back to lift the arm and exhaling over. One more of that easy tempo, inhaling as I press out, exhaling to come up, inhale up and over, and exhale to finish. Now let's take the tempo up so we can get the moving inside. And we go inhale out exhale, pull the carriage closed, pull the waist tall and over, and inhale, and exhale.

And if your lung capacity isn't there yet, continue with the breathing I first showed until you do increase your lung capacity. Twisting now, moving the hand over, stretching out into the spring as I push into the shoulder blocks. This is such a nice stretch for my tight side. Inhale, exhale as you bend in. Inhale as you press out.

Really contracting and spiraling from the waist as you come in. And if you have enough flexibility in your upper back, you can add a little bit of a swan sphinx feeling at the top, giving a little bit of extension. Again, that's up to you. Closing the spring, moving the hand over to come up, take an extra stretch over, and finish with that lovely rotation, which I call threading the needle to come around and really get that nice stretch on both sides. Now, let's talk about a series of exercises that I see done very often, and I'm always wondering, where are they breathing? It's chest expansion, thigh stretch, and arm circles.

This little chunk of choreography where we're kneeling facing the shoulder blocks and then kneeling facing the foot bar. The breathing has everything to do with your stability the higher up you come off the carriage. And if you're not stable kneeling, then standing is going to be very difficult. We're gonna lower the foot bar. And it'll be on two springs, a medium to light resistance.

Now, here's the disclaimer about when you're kneeling. It might seem like it's all about your arms. It's really about your connection to the carriage. So when I come on for chest expansion, I wanna come kneeling, and I want to hook my feet on the back of the carriage. For some people, not a lot, but some people can come all the way to the actual front of their ankle and feel secure.

I'm not one of those people. I have to come at a loop of my toes around the edge. And then that is pulling me into dorsal flexion and the ankle reaching my heels back, but it gives me an immediate response to wanna engage my hamstrings and glutes to really open the front of the hips. This is what's going to keep me connected to the carriage. It is very, very advanced to keep your feet pointed and not have that security of the latch of your feet.

Because then you're basically saying, I can turn all this on without any help. This is why we see so many people fall in their kneeling work because they're not actually rooted and connected to what's closest to the springs, which is not my arms, it's my legs. So I'm gonna take the loops, right, and we're gonna work look at chest expansion. We know that my triceps are gonna work to pull these arms back and to pull on the springs. However, chest expansion really starts with the inhale. Even before I pull the carriage, I wanna see and feel an inhale that opens the collarbone, opens the rib cage, and makes me have to stand down into my connection to the carriage more.

The inhale should not be stagnant. It should not not expand my chest. So I initiate with the breath and then add the arms. Inhale, pull, hold, turn the head to the other side, center arms return. Now if you do the head turn, you might wanna move a little bit quicker so that you can find the exhale on the return on the carriage.

Inhale, look, look, center, exhale and return. One more, inhale and pull, expand the chest, turn the head, look back center, and exhale. Now If I work and exhale into the load, you're immediately gonna see how difficult it is to keep the actual expansion of my chest. If I inhale with the carriage closed, And I begin my exhale, the contraction of my abdominals is actually pushing me into a little bit of hip flexion, and I start sitting back and down towards my heels. If I go any farther, I'm gonna end up literally sitting and falling out of the exercise, and that is not what we want.

So I'm going to reset, show it one more time. Inhale with the carriage and springs quiet, Exhale contract and pull. Do you see how much more likely it is for you to pull down to pull back? Because we're not expanding the chest. Returning to that traditional breath of inhale, pull the head turns, and exhale. Now as I move forward for thigh stretch, I highly recommend you add a spring for more support.

If you don't have enough spring, your hamstrings are not gonna get the stimulus to engage, and you're gonna actually miss the whole point of the exercise, the actual thigh stretch. Now we come forward to the blocks. And again, I'm pushing down, but now I have this anchor of the blocks for me to actually go into. I'm gonna choke up on the loops a little bit. And as I go back into thigh stretch, I'm gonna inhale so that I can lift into the back of the ribs and height make room in my waist and low back as I go back.

Exhale, press down through the shins, come back forward. And even if your carriage closes, make sure that you actually return all the way up on top of your knees. Now it doesn't take much for this to be a very different exercise if I exhale going back into the load of the spring. Exhale. And again, I can feel myself really wanting to sit down on my heels and coming back forward, inhale back up.

Both are still a thigh stretch. However, I want a feeling of opposition and getting lighter in my thigh stretch as I go back. Versus getting heavier as I go back. And when we inhale into the load, we put so much focus on what's going on in our abdominals It immediately wants to start pulling us into spinal flexion and letting us sit down. In which case you should just go back and do your kneeling knee stretches because that's what that was.

One more time. We're gonna inhale, lift As we pull, there's also the push into the knees, into the shins, exhale, and it's as if the scoop reaches in and picks my weight back up on top. Inhale, I'm pulling diagonally long away from my kneecaps versus down to the spring well, down to my heels. Press to come back up, and most people still have that little bit extra to come back forward. Let's take the loops into one hand and step off for arm circles. You're going to want to reduce your spring.

I'm gonna come down to just one medium spring. And then you'll take the loops behind you one in each hand while you face the foot bar, making sure to not cross your ropes as I just did. Now, it's very important that we do not pull on the carriage as we are trying to mount the carriage. We want the carriage to stay stable and quiet anytime you're mounting or dismounting. So with that, I have to have a little bit of opening in that chest expansion so that I can keep the loops behind me as I come kneeling, feet in line to the shoulder blocks, knees in line with feet, pressing down into the toes and back in the heels.

Rather than pulling on the ropes or the leather, press the hips forward in your thigh stretch, feel that essence of chest expansion. And then as you exhale, engage the spring, bringing your hands just in front of or next to your thighs. As I inhale going up into the tangent of the spring, up into gravity, I'm pressing back and down with my legs Exhale around, keep the arms in front or next to, but not behind. Inhaling up, exhale circle around. Now it should not be a surprise that exhaling into the load of the spring is gonna have some of the same results that it did in the chest expansion and thigh stretch.

If I exhale as the arms go up, It is so much harder to stay out of spinal flexion, to stay out of this idea of sitting down on my heels, and I really cannot take my arms any higher. I really can't because everything feels energetically like it's getting pulled, down, and back versus what I really want to be able to push up and out. So here I go again, inhale back up into that length and around. If I wanna reverse the circle, exhale as the arms come back and forward. Again, you'll feel it immediately how hard it is to keep the opposition in space if you exhale into the load of the spring. We're gonna reset our loops, bring our foot bar back up and reload those heavy springs for running and pelvic lift. Now these two exercises are where I see clients wanna check out the most.

They know that it's the end of their workout. Maybe. Right? So what we are really working is an even breath that centers and calms down their nervous system so that if we're gonna do any standing finishes, we're nice and calm. We inhale up and exhale. Two, three, four, breathing in.

Three, four, and exhale. Two, three, four, that nice moving of the back ribs, that exhale contraction to be up and out of while the arches of my feet are really working to keep that buoyant lift against the reach of the heel. So again, I'm in the opposition. I'm in that two way stretch, but it's just a nice way to calm and center the body, especially again, if we're gonna do any standing finishes, inhale lift both heels, and exhale to come in. Pelvic lift or bottom lift, heels to the corners of the foot bar.

If you want a little bit more challenge for your foot, Come on to the arches around the corner. This will really challenge the ability for your feet to stay connected to the foot bar. And, yes, we're gonna get a little bit of gluten hammy action lifted up. However, let's make it about the drive of the inhale. Connecting into the back of the ribs, into the mat, into the shoulders, exhale, zipping up as I press the footbar away. And the inhale really initiates the moving of the springs. The exhale works to keep me where I am in space.

Inhale, nice and tall, exhale back in. One more. And exhale. Now if I exhale on the way out, you're immediately gonna see how hard it is to stay out of an overly tilted posterior pelvis. And it actually starts to shorten my waist.

Let's inhale out and exhale back in. And now I'll show you the other one. Inhale. And this is just not the position that we want where we're short. And, yes, I do feel my hamstrings and my glutes, but I've really, really taken away the feeling of the opposition working for me in that exercise. The breathing in Pilates is a skill. You have to train it.

You have to practice it. Most people are gonna come to us, and they're going to have that exhale into the load of spring. As it is used in so many other modalities of fitness. Don't worry about when. Focus more on the how. Teach that, and their body will figure it out.