Breathing Lessons

Classes in breathwork touting benefits ranging from increased vitality to mental clarity are a hot draw from coast to coast. Could controlled breathing take your Pilates practice to the next level?

- Joanna Powell

FOR YE ARS , A SHLE Y DELEON WA S DE ATHLY AFRAID OF FLYING. As the plane taxied for takeoff, her heart would rev. She’d clench her eyes and shrink into a ball of anxiety. But that’s in the past. These days, five deep breaths calm her panic and allow her to return to her normal self.

Likewise, on cardio runs around NYC, where she’s a Pilates instructor and owner of the Ashley DeLeon Pilates studio, the new mom has seen her stamina increase. She credits the changes to one tweak in her wellness routine: breathwork. “Once I started practiced breathing,” she says, “I could run longer, become less winded and feel less exhausted afterward.”

BREATHING? WE GOT THAT.

To the uninitiated, the concept may sound ridiculous. Learning to breathe? Please! “When I first started to teach breathing, people would cock their heads and say, ‘Um, well, actually, breathing is one of the things I do well,’” recalls Belisa Vranich, PsyD, a clinical psychologist, breath coach and author of Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve Your Mental and Physical Health (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2016). “I got a lot of sarcasm.”

But the truth is, most of us are getting our air intake all wrong. Many people are “lazy breathers,” says Dr. Vranich, “taking short, shallow breaths from the chest, filling only the very top portions of the lungs with air. Then they do not exhale fully, and with most breaths, 30 percent of stale air stays in the body.”

“I never realized how little I inhaled,” DeLeon, who learned controlled breathing from Dr. Vranich, recalls of her own respiratory challenges. “I was chronically exhaling, operating on the bare minimum.”

WOO-WOO NO MORE