Breathing Symposium

Last week was our first symposium.  These will be weekly and cover one topic for an hour.  Last week we discussed breathing.  It may sound sooo simple, but correct breathing is soooo hard to do.  As I mentioned before, I am the worst at breathing.  I think that it is from all the sports that I did where I would hold my breath until I got to first base or until I finished the lap!  Anyways, during this hour session we did a lot of breathing techniques and let me tell you, when we finished, I felt dizzy because so many cells had been energized that technically never get energized because I breathe shallow.  It is what Joseph Pilates called "The internal shower". It did feel like an internal shower!  Anyways, just an update and I am looking forward to today, will post info later on what we discuss.

My shoulder is still bothering me.  I think that it is a muscle tear or it is out of place?  Not sure, but it doesn't help that I often wake up at night and I am laying in some weird position that I know is not good for it.  This happened back in high school when I was over-using it by pitching and cheerleading.  The cure? Rest!  Which I am not good at, I am hard-headed and tried to do a push up today with it.  DUH, I know that I should not have done that, but I did, and not just 1, I did like 15.  Anyways, so I am still icing it and rubbing it with IcyHot.  We will see how it goes, I am doing Chair today so that involves a lot of shoulders and legs, so I am going to try the best that I can and "keep the shoulders in their houses" That is one of the favorite sayings in pilates-it keeps you from shrugging your shoulders up close to your ears and keeps them in their comfort zone where there is no added stress.  

The above picture is the Chair apparatus.  It is one of the most difficult pieces of equipment, in my opinion...  Mat is by far the hardest though!