Lift Girl Home

FIRST THINGS FIRST – THE BREATHING

ONLINE PILATES MAT CLASSES BY THE LIFT GIRL www.liftgirlpilates.com

People often say FIRST THINGS FIRST when they want to get suuumpthing off their chest. People start sentences with the phrase… which means sometimes good news and sometimes bad news. If something is bothering me, before I can even think about moving on with life, I have to talk about it. To clear the air, wipe the slate clean, clarify matters, and state what’s on my mind.

Have you ever noticed that once the topic is discussed and the air is cleared, everyone can return to what he was doing before and move on to the next task at hand?

The Pilates Breathing exercise is a FIRST THINGS FIRST kinda thang. If people are unable to breathe properly while they’re in motion, they are less likely to receive the benefits of Pilates altogether…period. In fact, I was told that Joseph Pilates never let his students progress any further until they mastered the Breathing exercise. He felt it was that important, and so do I.

I won’t allow my clients to move past the fundamental exercises if they haven’t yet learned how to breathe properly. I mean, what’s the point? If you’re not breathing properly, you’re merely moving through space.  That’s fine, but it’s not Pilates. Pilates is more about excellence, and I prefer excellence over fine. Why not shoot for the stars, right?

Joseph Pilates said it brilliantly.  “Breathing is the first act of life, and the last. Our very life depends upon it. One often wonders how so many millions continue to live as long as they do under this tremendous handicap to longevity. Therefore, ABOVE ALL, learn how to breathe correctly!”

One of my very first clients came up to me once and said, “I’ve been doing Pilates for a long time, but I have yet to work up a sweat or get my heart rate going. I want to be challenged more. I hope you’ll teach me more advanced exercises.”

This was valuable information for me. My first thought was, I wonder if she’s breathing properly or even at all throughout her exercises.  I believe one has to FEEL the exercises and not just DO the exercises. To FEEL the exercise you have to BREATHE the exercises, and breathe them right!  It’s the only way.

We started my client’s lesson with the breathing exercise, and guess what? I was right.  She had no idea how to breathe properly!  “Expanding her lungs in all directions 360 degrees around” ( a cue I often use to this day) was foreign to her; so we practiced it for nearly half the lesson. We did five fundamental basic exercises after that, and she was sweating profusely at the end!

Yes, she was hooked.  Not on me, but on BREATHING!  (Not to mention Pilates!)  She finally discovered that the FIRST THINGS FIRST exercise is what she had been missing all along. This client has good intuition, and I’m grateful for the skills she has deep within her. They brought her to me. She knew there was something missing and followed her gut to learn what it was.  She found it in her breathing. It was there all along, but no one had ever taught her how to do it properly before. Had she only known…

(Big SIGH.)  Oh, well, she knows now, and she can do any exercise you throw at her.

FIRST THINGS FIRST… Learn how to breathe properly. Now THAT’S Pilates!

Bye for now!