1. Breathing

We breathe all day long without really giving it any thought, but becoming more conscious of our breath helps to avoid tension in the neck and shoulders, and aids with focus and relaxation, which is why we start by checking in with our breath and our body – and aim(!) to continue this during class… Lying supine (on your back) with legs long or knees bent, place one hand on your chest and one on your tummy and, taking a couple of smooth natural breaths, just notice where you feel the breath….are you inhaling through the nose or the mouth, which hand is rising/falling more with the flow of the breath, and are you exhaling through the nose or mouth?

Then scan down from your head to your toes – is there any tension or discomfort in the body? Take a moment to relax your neck and shoulders, feel your ribcage and sacrum heavy on the mat.

In Pilates, we want to breathe in through the nose, and out through the mouth with pursed lips like blowing through a straw or blowing out candles – this helps to engage the deep abdominal muscles.

Placing your hands on the sides of your ribcage, thumbs to back, fingers to front facing inwards towards each other, collarbone wide, as we inhale through the nose we want to ensure it is a nice deep breath down into the lower lobes of the lungs to promote efficient gaseous exchange, and really expand into the ribcage – particularly the sides and back – as these tend to be under-utilised areas. As we exhale through pursed lips we want to imagine we are clearing out any stale air in our lungs. Taking a full 3D breath in, feel the ribcage opening upwards and outwards into your hands – like fish gills, which promotes spinal extension movements, and then exhale, letting it all go and feel the ribs closing downwards and inwards which promotes spinal flexion movements.

As our deep abdominals assist with respiration, exhaling deeply like this helps to activate these muscles – the transversus abdominis, and pelvic floor which we will come to now….

The pelvic floor muscles form a diamond shape sheet or hammock between the pubic bone at the front, tailbone (coccyx) at the back and the two ‘sit-bones’ (ischium) each side. We only want a gentle engagement of these muscles, so on your next exhale, gently lift, drawing up the centre of the diamond – like drawing a tissue out of a box, or drawing the two sit bones together, and then inhale to release, and repeat a couple more times.

Engaging the pelvic floor also helps to fire up the transversus abdominis (TVA) so… Place your fingertips just inside your hip bones and on your next exhale through pursed lips, perform another gentle contraction of the pelvic floor and at the same time, you should feel the abdominals tighten gently under your fingertips. This is your transversus abdominis activating – these muscles connect into fascia tissue that runs down the centre of our torso (front and back) and act like a corset wrapping horizontally around the torso between the lower ribs and pelvis, so we want to engage both the pelvic floor and TVA together before we start any movements, as this helps stabilise the entire lumbo-pelvic (lower back) region, which brings us on to basic principle 2 – Pelvic Placement