Movement, Breath, and Structure

The Importance of Integrating Movement, Breath, and Structure: The Breath

by Jarlo Ilano, M.P.T.,C.S.T.

CST’s mantra of Integration of Movement, Breathing, and Structure holds the key to optimal physical performance.  Of these three key ideas, breathing arguably holds a special place.  How can the simple act of breathing mean so much?  We do it everyday, mostly with no thought, sometimes with great intensity, and rarely with as much reflection as we put into the question of “what’s for dinner?”  The fact that the breath is so omnipresent and can be both forgotten and uncontrollable in the same moments, are indications of its incredible role in our physical health and well being.  We “hold” and “lose” our breath, we have to “catch” it or “build” it, but what if we could just ALLOW it?  We could have it be in such sync with our activities, that we ARE our breath!  This is what I think Coach Sonnon means to Be Breathed.

The great somatic innovator Elsa Gindler was said to have concentrated so much on her breath, that she was able to heal her tuberculosis by resting her diseased lung and more fully utilizing her healthy lung!  Such a refined awareness of breath seems impossible, and it may be if we are unwilling to spend the hours upon hours of patient observation that she was able to devote to herself.  However, her example is a wonderful one to help us realize that our breath is more than just air moving in and out, seeming to speed up during our exertions, or as we are anxious. She demonstrated that breath is a part of our mastery.

We can begin in our mastery of breath by understanding the nature of allowing the relative intensity of effort to determine the depth and manner of our breathing.  Rather than having the breath’s cadence, tempo, and volume be apparently random, (as anyone who has hit the disheartening event of circulorespiratory distress can relate to!), we can strive to match our breathing to the task we are performing.  This does not mean we have a specific pattern of breathing to any particular movement.  It means that the breath adjusts and fine tunes according to the efforts required of us.

There are six levels of breath mastery, of which the first two are incidences of poor adaptations to strenuous effort;

• Resistance: accompanied by an unconscious inhalation and breath holding during a difficult and stressful effort, often seen in a new task.
• Force: a conscious, forced inhalation and breath holding upon expectation and performance of a known difficult task.
• Skill: Active exhale on perceived effort, and a passive inhalation when the task is finished.
• Expertise: Passive inhalation with body compression, and passive inhalation with structural expansion.
• Mastery: The combination of expertise, along with a deliberate pause after exhalation.
• Deepening mastery: A prolonging of mastery, with the extension of that pause, which can allow improved body movement during the period.

These manners of breath control indicate the level of mastery we have over our activities.  In going beyond resisting and forceful breath, we can move up the scale and allow our breath to be part of our movement, rather be subject to the side effects of circulorespiratory distress or the Valsalva maneuver.  Though a high level of effort may occur in a novel and perhaps stressful task, we can still perform at the level of skill, with a conscious attempt to exhale on effort and inhale upon relaxation.

This lead us to examine the nature of the depth of our breath during movement activities.  Of the four depths of breath, three are within our purview; the fourth Residual breath is the remaining volume of air in our lungs despite maximal exhalation.  Our Normal breath depth is the amount of air during non-stressful activities. Most of us can walk, drive, and sit with normal easy breathing.  Complementary breath depth is the volume of air beyond normal breath that moves during moderate efforts.  Lastly, Supplementary breath occurs at a volume above normal breath during intense, maximal efforts.

As we move up in intensity of effort, the body’s breath volume can change in order to maintain proper structure and movement for the task at hand.  As our mastery of the skill improves, the depth can lessen, and should lessen.