Breathing, or the way you breathe is an important part of the development of your Pilates practice. As a Pilates teacher I meet lots of clients, all at different stages of their Pilates journey. When your journey starts, your focus is on core activation and generally just getting through a lesson trying to understand and translate the instructions from your teacher into movement. Once your core strength begins to develop and all your concentration is not used up in surviving your Pilates class, it is time to start thinking about your breathing. In Pilates we use a technique called lateral breathing. When you take in a breath to power movement we ask that you breathe into your ribs raising your chest up and out. But why? To take a large breath in you can either breathe into your tummy, or breathe into your ribs expanding them up and out. It is very difficult (possibly impossible) to breathe into your tummy and engage your core muscles at the same time, therefore we use latera