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You need to do breathing exercises if you:

• appear weak and ineffectual in class (you feel you have no presence)
• are just going through the motions without any real conviction coming from inside
• feel worn-out and tired, and need quick revitalization
• are strung-out and nervous: you need to calm down and focus
• are about to attempt a difficult movement in class, and can feel yourself tensing up

You’ll notice a tremendous difference in your dancing if you take even as little as five minutes to do some form of deep breathing exercise immediately before dance class (or performance). The breathing goes through your entire spinal column to pull together all the forces within yourself and focus everything toward dance.

I use many different breathing techniques, most of which I’ve learned from yoga and tai chi gung classes. But before I learned the value of all this breathing activity, I would never have made the time to do it. My life was always chaotic enough, I thought, without adding even more compulsory daily chores to the mix. So just try this first basic exercise, and see what it does for you. I go into additional techniques in depth in the Blue Diamond newsletter.

Basic Deep Breathing
1. Sit on the floor with your spine straight. This instruction always amuses me, because most people have no idea how to sit with a straight spine. Most of our spines are completely out of whack -- either swaybacked, or slumped over, and we feel that’s normal for us. The correct position feels strange, and completely ‘wrong.’ So this is why I recommend sitting with your tailbone flush against a wall, pulling up out of the hips (another instruction that took me years to understand, because when your hips are stiff, the idea of pulling up out of them makes no sense at all), and flattening your shoulder blades and shoulders against the wall. While doing this, don’t let your ribcage open up. In other words, try to keep the whole spine pressed against the wall.

2. Three-part inhalation. First, exhale completely, until there is absolutely nothing left to exhale. Pause, and begin your breath (through the nose only, and with the mouth closed but relaxed) from beneath your diaphragm, from way down low where the intestines are. Imagine that the breath is coming from the area right between your sit-bones, and then rising up in the following way. Start the breath, and then expand the lower abdomen. As that area fills, let the breath move into the diaphragm area and up to the sternum under the ribs. As the area up under the ribs fills, let the breath expand to the back of the ribcage on either side of the spine. The final part of the three-part breath is to let it expand to the top of the ribcage and all the way up to the base of the neck, again letting the breath expand to the back of the ribs as well. You’ll feel the breath expanding into the shoulder blades, and helping to release muscular tension there.

3. Three-part exhalation. Now reverse the process by exhaling from the top, then moving on to the middle, and finally the lower abdomen. Feel yourself completely let go and retract each area: the shoulder blades, collar bone, and upper ribs; the main ribcage area back and front; and the diaphragm, lower abdomen, and intestinal area (or, for women, the area where the ovaries are). Even though you’re ‘retracting’ or ‘emptying’ each area, resist the temptation to bend forward. Keep the entire spine -- up through the shoulders -- against the wall. This will help you to keep the proper spinal alignment in class at the barre. During the exhalation, feel that all the stiffness, lethargy, tension, and other ‘guck’ are exiting through the base of the spine and down through the sit-bones into the earth.

4. Repeat the process to fit the time you have. You can easily spend a half-hour on this, if you have time. However, even just a few repetitions -- even three minutes’ worth -- will give you enormous benefits.

5. Troubleshooting. I suggest beginning by taking a mental two counts for each part of the inhalation. For the exhalation, take as much time as you want into order to fully and completely exhale until there is absolutely nothing left in your lungs. As you start to do this exercise, you may notice that as you reach the top of the breath (when you are filling the upper chest cavity) you feel as if you are choking or being strangled. You may feel the breath has nowhere else to go. Just keep practicing the breathing, a little bit every day, and your capacity to breathe will expand greatly. As a help for that suffocating feeling, try closing off the back of the throat a little bit (don’t think about how to do it, just try it and you’ll get it) to regulate your inhalation so you don’t get stuck with no air left to breathe before you reach the third part of the breath.

What should you expect to feel?

• Lengthening and relaxation of the spine
• Relaxation throughout the body
• Infusion of energy and well-being
• Glow and beauty in the face, shining eyes
• Greater flexibility and focus in dance class
• Better focus and concentration in your other daily activities

Breathing and energy for the adult dance student
Stamina and inner strength