Thoughts...
Ribs - May '23
I've talked about breathing before in my Thoughts page (See December 21 and January 22) and I am sure I will again...
Our ribs protect our lungs, like a little cage and they have muscles in between that expand and contract as we breath in and out. Except like any muscle in the body, they can become tight, especially if we do not use them when we breath in and out or have got out of the habit of moving them. Stretching side ways and rotating can help these "intercostal' muscles move more easily and help you expand and contract your ribs and therefore your lungs, meaning you can breath more deeply.
Not sure if you are expanding the lungs fully or just the top and chest breathing only?
Why don't you track the front of the ribs down from the base of your breast bone now to your lower back. Feel how the ribs are lower at the back than the front? Now place the back of your hands under your shoulder blades with your palms facing out and notice if your ribs under the back of your hands expand at all. (If you have tight shoulders why not put a scarf around your ribs to feel if the ribs expand instead) Hopefully there is expansion ☺️ If not, observe, are your shoulders lifting to compensate? Are your ribs at the front flaring as your breath in? Is your pelvic tilting away from you too???
If you are flaring your ribs or lifting your shoulders, why not try blowing a hole through the computer screen. Breath out as long as possible and then some more. Feel the ribs contract around your spine. Then drop your jaw and allow the air to suck in through your mouth. You should notice a big difference. This is a good quick way to reset your diaphragm.
Another thing that can help is by starting to stack your ribs on top of your pelvic rather than flaring it forward. By improving our alignment we can help our diaphragm ( A bit like a piston or a coffee plunger) slide up and down inside of us. Remember the diaphragm lifts into the chest as we breath out, (pushing the air out) and lowers down into the belly as we breath in (sucking the air in) NB A lot of us think it should be the other way round so re read that!
If you'd like to watch a short film demonstrating the diaphragm release breath and looking at getting the ribs expanding when you breath in, click here ☺️
Still struggling with how you breath? Why not message me to arrange a 1:1 either online or in the beautiful garden studio here in Illogan.
Remember Joseph Pilates always maintained that Breathing was a core principle and it is as true today as it was back then!!
Health & wealth in stressful times - December 2022
As Christmas and the New Year draw close, thoughts of health and wealth are in the fore. How do we stay healthy during stressful times? How do we look after ourselves and those we hold dear when money is tight?
Breathing is one way. Sounds very basic but sitting and taking slow breaths in and out for a count of 5 or 6 can really help us to calm our nervous system down when we are stressed. Whilst doing certain stretches, I cue my clients to BREATH IN the colour of ‘oxygen and energy’, and BREATH OUT the colour of ‘tension and pain’, but you can use this in day to day life too, especially at stressful times!!
Being specific with these colours can really help. Recently whilst negotiating a particularly stressful time at 3am, I was reminded of a client who was detailing her colour of ‘oxygen and energy’ as the ‘colour of the sea when it is 1m deep over a white sandy beach with the sun shining through it’. Just wonderful the result within a few moments of visualising this colour and breathing in and out slowly. Why not try it out with your own specific colour and see what happens? The more we practice techniques like this, The easier it will be to do when we are particularly stressed!!
Health wise, eating at least 5 vegetables a day is good for us and I grow quite a bit of our own veg during the year, which not only saves a bit on the food bill, is very tasty, but means I also get exercise whilst working in the garden!! A win win!! But it’s never quite enough veg, so I forage for sea beat on my walks with Lola dog, or samphire during the summer, and recently have been picking nettle heads (living in Cornwall we are lucky enough to have these to forage in the Autumn!) which are a yummy alternative to spinach and kale.
NB recently I was reading an excellent article from Cytoplan's blog, which suggested washing our vegetables with a teaspoon of cider vinegar to get rid of pesticides when we cannot afford organic!
Gratitude has become my mantra in recent stressful times. And this being my focus, I consider myself very lucky to have fabulous clients who are committed to looking after themselves and a joy to work with. I have also realised just how lucky I am to have such good friends around me. As Titus Maccius Plautus said: "Where there are friends there is wealth." So if you are having a particularly stressful time right now, do try writing a list of all the people and things in your life you are grateful for... even down to the smallest. It can really help.
Exercise wise, walking is free and a good way to get out and about in nature.
Walking is one of my passions as my clients know full well and walking in good alignment helps us to use the correct muscles, facilitating pain free movement. We regularly look at ways to effectively walk in class, looking at how to get our buttocks working, contra-rotation, where our feet are placed, and how we move through our feet, as well as balance. All key areas that help us get the most from walking.
Getting the most out of our purchases is important too when money is tight, and for this reason, with every course of classes booked, we now offer additional access to all our pre recorded Pilates classes and short homework films. So you can do your class in the studio or online with me watching you, receiving feedback on your personal alignment and what would be good to focus on, and then repeat that class, or do one of the many short homework sequences that are just 10 minutes long, as many times as you like! Not only meaning value for money, but also helping you to move more than once a week, which helps our muscles to grow stronger, as when we move at least 3 times a week we start to see our muscles change. :)
If though you are having financial difficulties and cannot afford to book a course of classes at present, then please do take me up on my offer of ‘pay what you can’ places in my online classes. At present we have a mixed level class at 10am on a Tuesday morning and an Intermediate class at 18.45 on a Tuesday evening, and each of them have 3 pay what you can places, which can be literally mean paying anything from £0 up.... so if you or someone you know is struggling financially at the moment, don't feel you or they have to sacrifice their Pilates and working in good alignment, these places are there to be taken!!
NB I am considering staring a mixed level class at 17.30 too and will run this once 5 people have shown an interest – so do email if that is of interest to you.
Have a lovely Christmas and a Healthy and Happy 2023
Heidi xx
Balance June 2022
Do you find it tricky to stand on one leg for any length of time?
Well you are not alone, and it is very likely that you are out of alignment when you try and balance, and are making it hard for yourself. Many of us stand out of alignment in some way or other and this can become exaggerated when standing on one leg.
It could be you are flaring your ribs when lifting your knee, or shifting your pelvic forwards or leaning your shoulders back... Not such a problem when we are young and our bodies can contort to keep our balance, but as we get older, or, are not so supple due to injuries, it can start to cause real problems… and standing on one leg is uber important, not to just stand around on one leg, but for life functions such as walking or climbing stairs!!
I’ve been continuing my investigations, into how where our ribs sit in our body, can help or hinder us in our Pilates exercises and day to day life. I have been looking at how a lot of us who find balancing on one leg in standing difficult, tend to lean our shoulders back, flaring our ribs…. Our bodies are trying to counter-balance the weight of the leg lifting but instead of this helping us, it not only de-stabilises us, but can create tension in the lower back and lead to amongst other things, back pain.
We’ve been talking too (see below) about how we breath. And if we are not allowing the diaphragm to sink into our belly when we breath in, we can start to hinge in the spine, to lift the front of the chest up in-order to get enough oxygen into our lungs. But if this has become a habit, we are quite literally throwing our shoulders back and flaring our ribs every time we breath in, and, yes that’s right, de stabilising ourselves when we try to balance!!!
Other things we do which de-stabilise us, are bringing our knee in, or swinging our pelvic forwards, or some of us hitch our hips meaning we are in a side bend. All these things are our bodies way of trying to make it easier (our bodies’ cheats) but, they actually de-stabilise us and cause us more problems than they solve!
Alignment was one of the core principles of Joseph Pilates Contrology system and is still as important today as it was in the 40’s. If we exercise in alignment, we recruit the correct muscles, strengthening them, and it becomes easier to work in good alignment. And balancing on one leg becomes easier too. A win win
Solution to this? Well someone like me watching you and giving you cues to help get you in better alignment can really help.
So why not email me to book a 1:1 or come join an online or in studio class and start today!
How breathing can affect our pelvic and rib stability - January 2022
Have you ever noticed in your pilates class, when lying on your back and floating your knees up into table top, your weight rocks a little and you find it difficult to stabilise your pelvic?
Well you are not alone. I see a lot of clients, whose pelvic wants to move when they move their leg.
Stabilising the pelvic is sometimes not the key... a lot of the time it is to do with the position of the ribs as much as the pelvic position. These two large parts of the body are connected, and as such have an impact on each other. When looking to stabilise the pelvic with a client, I also look at what the rib cage is doing, what position it is in, and how we might get it into alignment, so that they can start to stabilise their pelvic more easily, getting some wonderful eureka moments.
Sometimes though, it isn't just that the ribs are lifted at the front, which is usually caused by tight hip flexors (something that can be resolved over time with a few simple exercises). I have been noticing more and more clients lift their chest to breath in, causing the spine to hinge, the ribs to flare at the front lifting the ribs off the mat, completely destabilising them. Thinking back to my breathing thoughts in December, and Yvonnne Morley voice coach's description of the west's obsession with a flat tummy, it makes sense that if we hold our abs in all the time, our diaphragm will have no where to go, and so the rest of the body compensates in order to get enough oxygen in.
This causes problems in so many ways though...
Our backs are permanently moving as we try to breath in and out, destabilising us and sometimes causing pain in the back; Our shoulders are so busy being involved in lifting the top of the lungs that they can become fatigued and tight; And our diaphragm which is connected to our pelvic floor (In fact mirrors the movement of the pelvic floor) will hold tension, and because it is not moving up and down as we breath, will not be getting any exercise, and will slowly start to atrophy and become weak (that is the diaphragm AND the pelvic floor - remember they mirror each other!!) Not to mention the lack of oxygen, as we're not filling our lungs fully, and the possible side effects of feeling anxious because of shallow breathing - see December's thoughts.
And what if we are not expanding the ribs as well? They can get stuck and cause us to struggle with rotation and spine flexibility: sideways, forwards and backwards movement can become more difficult... (This is a whole other conversation though which I might look at next time)
Solution?
As Yvonne Morley says: "Dare to let your belly go"! Allowing the belly to expand as the diaphragm lowers into the belly, and allowing the ribs to expand so our lungs inflate fully. As we allow these parts of the body to move, they become stronger and more fluid, and we become more mobile, muscles become less tight, AND we can start to stabilise the pelvic as we become more able to control where the ribs are!!
Jospeph Pilates always maintained that Breathing was a core principle, and even though thoughts on breathing have shifted over the years, it is still as true today, and that is why we spend so much time looking at breath in class.
Want to know more? Why not message me to arrange a 1:1 either online or in the beautiful garden studio here in illogan.
Breathing - December 2021
We have been looking a lot at breathing in class recently, and I have been considering just how many benefits there are to breathing effectively.
Not just increased oxygen to our muscles, but if we breath out on the effort of an exercise, or when we are lifting something, our transverse abdominals and our pelvic floor naturally engage and support us, meaning, we are less likely to injure ourselves.
We start to work WITH our bodies ☺️
There is evidence as well that slowing our breathing down and breathing more deeply can calm the Vagal nerve and so enable our Para Sympathetic System (Commonly know as the Rest & Digest system) to work more effectively.
Interestingly, how we breath, can not only affect our physical bodies and health, but also our emotions, according to Breathing Coach Rebecca Dennis, on Radio 4’s Woman's hour earlier this year.
I have seen this in my work as an actor. We use breathing as one of the tools available, to create a character’s emotional state. In it's most basic form, when we breath as actors, into our chest in short rapid shallow breaths, characters will feel and come across as anxious. If we slow our breathing down, and allow the whole lung to inflate, our characters start to feel and come across as more relaxed. There is a whole range of ways to breath to evoke emotion beyond this which I will not go into here... But it occurs to me, if an Actor can alter a character’s emotional state through use of breath, then why can’t we affect our own emotions through different breathing techniques?
I certainly find when I give myself time to exercise and breath deeply allowing my belly to inflate (controversial for a Pilates Instructor I know!) that I am less stressed and happier.
So how do we breath effectively?
Using our diaphragm, visualising it releasing down into the belly and allowing our belly to inflate, is one way. Allowing our ribs to expand 3 dimensionally is another way too.
However, there can be a lot of blocks to breathing effectively... one, according to Yvonne Morley Voice Coach, is that in the west we tend to be obsessed with having a flat belly, and so tend to keep our abs on all the time, not allowing our belly’s to inflate. But I see time and again in class, if we hold our abs in all the time, our chests and shoulders tend to have to lift to compensate, and this can lead to all sorts of other physical problems.
Luckily there are some amazing techniques out there for releasing the diaphragm and abs, so we can breath more effectively. In class and 1:1s we use techniques from the Franklin Method, as well as from Yvonne Morley, and Fascia release work from Liz Chandler, to name but a few, enabling us to start using the breath effectively when we are doing our Pilates, and so enhancing our physical and mental wellbeing <3
Motivation - October 2021
People often ask me what motivates me to do Pilates...
We are all motivated by different things, A trimer body; The endorphin rush that physical exercise can give us; Wanting to raise our stamina levels; Wanting to stay mobile; More limber...
Now my motivation to practice pilates is that it lowers my stress levels, it facilitates me to be able to do other things I love, keeping me performance fit for when the odd acting job comes up, and quite simply I really enjoy doing it... BUT my initial impetus was pain!
Initially it was an injury from a surf boat rowing competition - an oar in my back that caused nerve damage, and then another injury, jumping off a stage in the middle of a get in (Setting up the stage) whilst on a theatre tour, where I compressed a disc and ended up on morphine for a week!! I went to Chiropractors and Osteopaths all of which really helped in the short term, but I lived in fear of my back going into spasm again such was the intensity of the pain, and found I was unable to continue doing all the things I loved as they could trigger my back to spasm again.
Eventually I went for some Pilates 1:1s and found a way to start to move that didn't cause me pain. I found that by aligning my body, before I moved, I could actually prevent the pain and grow strong again. It was a revelation and put the control of my body back into my hands.
It's been a long old journey, as I found I was Hyper Mobile and so it was harder for me to work in alignment than a lot of other people, but with practice I started to improve and grow stronger, finding I could do contemporary dance again, surf again, and such was the success of my pilates practice on my body, that I started to love it and I decided to train to teach it.
I have been pain free in my back for over 15 years now, and have found over the years I have grown stronger and stronger, learning how to look after my body and work with it rather than fighting it. I still go to see a Chiropractor twice a year for maintenance but my Pilates practice keeps me strong and aligned. It does take work but the benefits are so worth while!
In my teaching at HD Pilates Cornwall, I want to share those skills I've learned because with a little practice each week, and someone watching you to give you feedback on how you might move in better alignment, we can all move towards pain free movement :)