When breathing facilitates movement
Joseph Pilates
The philosophy of the training method proposed by Joseph Pilates is based on the “Body & Mind” concept; it is a comprehensive system of exercises built on 6 principles: Center—in English: CORE—concentration, control, precision, flow, and breathing. By applying these principles to a physical training routine, the nervous, myofascial, and skeletal systems have shown effective results in mobility and endurance, using isometric and isotonic contractions (concentric and eccentric), breathing, and with an emphasis on neuromuscular and fascial stimulation, with positive effects on cardiorespiratory capacity (Tarnas et al., 2024).
One of the ways to measure improvements in cardiorespiratory capacity is maximum oxygen consumption, which should increase, and this is achieved through vigorous exercise. Based on the principles of the Pilates method, positive effects have been described in the muscular strength used for breathing, balance, quality of life, and overall physical performance in healthy people or people with an illness, thanks to neuromuscular stimulation (Fernández-Rodríguez et al., 2019).
For its part, from neuroscience and psychology, changes in the respiratory system can help improve different alterations in digestion, the heart, mood, and addictive behaviors. Although breathing is an unconscious, automatic activity, we can take control when intensity changes, for example during exercise; or through the training achieved with meditation to integrate, to connect the body and mind. Moods such as fear and anxiety increase the respiratory rate, increasing oxygen uptake and increasing the availability of energy for alertness and survival, but in a dysregulated way (Weng et al., 2021); in contrast, in exercise where there is control and concentration, everything is beneficial, not only is more oxygen captured, but the amount of available energy from the body’s fat reserves also increases.
The ability to perceive and monitor subtle changes in bodily signals is known as interoception or proprioception; we are constantly receiving signals from the muscles, the skin, and the joints. Losing this brain capacity is a symptom of psychological dysfunction. For example, for an eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, treatment includes improving the ability to perceive and recognize the bodily sensations of one’s emotions (Moccia et al., 2025).
Sweetening, YES… How much? Your body gives you the signal
After each large meal or one rich in calories and nutrients, the digestive system sends signals such as the feeling of fullness; others, like what many people describe as not being able to stop drinking liquid with every bite of solid food because they “feel stuck,” or even feeling “overwhelmed” by a very sweet dessert that causes satiety, are bodily expressions that are difficult to measure, but it is possible to recover the ability to feel them through the practice of conscious breathing. In Pilates practice, it is very common to feel that a muscle “burns” or, as a common expression says, that it is pushed so hard it reaches “failure”; it should be the same with sweetness, and the result is control over the amount of sugar the body needs to meet its need and increase the availability of caloric energy to move.
And the fact is that eating or exercising changes the regular, unconscious frequency of the way we breathe, because in both cases we need more oxygen, which is key to the work of the systems involved in digestion, just as it is to the work performed by muscles under the stimulus of load, strength, and power.
How much and how to eat is the result of complex cognitive, emotional, and energetic interactions; this balance is achieved as we train the conscious relationship between body and mind.
The consumption of sugar or oxygen, “energies for movement,” are hedonic experiences, the first associated with the sense of taste, the second with the happiness of feeling that we are aging beautifully, of preserving the ability to move freely and without pain as the years go by. For its part, learning to use sugar or to breathe involves the desire, craving, impulse to approach a reward.
All nutrients, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates influence oxygen metabolism; for this reason, exercising breathing to achieve the optimal volume of oxygen is an efficient strategy to reduce the speed at which we oxidize (McKeown, 2015), the speed at which we age. The scientific literature is not conclusive about the importance of physical activity in weight loss and improvement in body composition, especially if an imbalance is generated between the low calories of a restrictive diet and the increase in energy expenditure through physical exercise, particularly in people with excess weight (Rayes et al., 2019). But there is abundant evidence regarding physical training and how it changes the automatic way we breathe and how the metabolic response is modulated in daily life.
Breathing, not to survive, but to connect
The benefits of the Pilates method are explained by 3 possible effects: 1. It strengthens the lumbopelvic region. 2. It increases flexibility and 3. Breathing with the ribs (Fernández-Rodríguez et al., 2019). It seems obvious, but perhaps it is not; the first induces more efficient movements with the arms and legs while increasing strength in the muscles with which we expel the air we have already used, CO2. Flexibility can be explained as an improvement in the mobility of muscles we stop using as we adopt poor posture, from remaining seated for so long, or from adapting to pain or muscle weakness. Regarding breathing, the technique helps increase lung capacity and the movement of the muscles that move the ribs, improving the flow of oxygen in the blood and all muscles.
In conclusion, breathing is a natural process without which we could not live; however, we also know that it is a vital mechanism that becomes sensitized and intensifies under different situations, and that we can improve perception through physical training. According to Nazareth Castellanos, recent studies have shown that the electrophysiological activity of the brain, perception, motor actions, and learning depend on the different phases of the respiratory cycle: inhaling, exhaling, or apnea (#Neuroscience @nazareth.castellanos. The bridge where butterflies live) (Nakamura, N. H.; Oku, Y.; Fukunaga, M., 2024).
You understood it all if your breathing is no longer so automatic….. / and your way of sweetening is mindful.
