Movements Afoot’s Blog

By Amy Matthews, Certified Laban Movement Analyst, BodyMind Centering and Yoga teacher

Breath is an amazingly powerful tool for increasing the effectiveness of our fitness training and enhancing our movement skills. An appropriate and efficient breath pattern supports core strength, stabilizes the spine and creates freedom in the limbs – and when we hold our breath, we make ourselves work much harder than we need to, and create situations where we are more likely to overwork and injure ourselves.

Paying attention to the breath is an excellent way to gauge the appropriate level of exertion, and to tune in to what’s going on in your body. Sometimes we hold our breath to avoid feeling pain or to hide from an experience – and when we’re avoiding a sensation, we’ll be less able to attend to the rest of the experience (such as sensing form or timing or alignment).

On the other hand, changing a habitual breathing pattern can be one of the most profoundly unsettling things you can ask of yourself, or someone else. When we change our breath we are affecting ourselves in the most fundamental ways we can imagine – many of our breath patterns were developed as very young children, and in one way or another had to do with survival on some level.

It’s impossible to say that there is one ‘right way’ to breathe – it depends on the situation, the position of the body, the action being performed and the person performing it (with all the experiences that the person brings to that moment).

When we work with someone to help them find a ‘better’ way to breathe, we need to take into account the anatomy and kinesiology of the ribcage, spine and accessory structures that affect breathing (which could be just about anything in the body!). At the same time, we need to be sensitive to the effects of the breath on the body and on the psychological states and emotions of the mind and spirit.

With knowledge, skill and sensitivity, we can use various movements and exercises to help people have different experiences of their breath, and increase the number of options they have about how to breathe.

ByAmy Matthews, CMA