24/7 Dance Studio Blog

This week in Learn Your LIMBS: mobility for proper breathing! Okay, I know. You’re rolling your eyes. Obviously you know how to breathe. But did you know your breathing can affect your ability to lift your leg, hold your balance, reduce tension in your upper body, and more?

Have you ever been told to “engage your core” and sucked your belly in, causing your ribs to flare, your shoulders to lift, and actually found it harder to breathe? Instead, let’s see how breathing really works. Your diaphragm is the most important breathing muscle. It attaches from your sternum all the way down into your hip flexors. When you breathe in, the diaphragm moves down. When you breathe out, it moves back up.

Properly using your diaphragm muscle is the difference between upper chest breathing and belly breathing, which also can mean the difference between low and high stamina, restricted and mobile shoulders, wobbly and strong balance positions.

Not to dive too deep into this, but muscles between your ribcage, neck, chest, and torso are all important breathing muscles too: external inercostals, sternocleidomastoid, pec major, obliques, transversus abdominis…. Take a peek at where these muscles are in your body, and picture how tensing these muscles with poor breathing technique can affect how you hold your upper body in dance. Swipe through to see some breath-focused exercises to focus on applying proper breathing technique to your dancing.

You want the audience to see (what looks like) effortless grace rather than tension and gasping for breath, even during an intense petit allegro, right?!

– Bria Comer, PTA, C-PS, Instructor

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