IADMS Miami 2000   [back to the Category]

Training breathing mechanics for better trunk and spinal mobility   [read the french version]

Author :   Juan Carlos Fernandez, PT & al.

Friday 2 November 2001
1:15 – 1:35 pm Room 1

Training breathing mechanics for better trunk and spinal mobility

Juan Carlos Fernandez, PT, Jordi Perez, PT, Carlos Puertolas, MD, Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, CEPA Oriol Martorell; Barcelona, Spain

The purpose of this presentation is to expose one of the works our students carry out in classes of physical and technical conditioning, or in individual postural rehabilitation sessions.
We realized that, besides working breathing exercises towards good ventilation and breathing-movement co-ordination, the capacity of thoracic movement was not being used and mastered enough.
On the other hand, we observed that when stretching and flexibility exercises for most of the musculo-skeletal parts of the dancer’s body were taken into account, poor intercostal stretching was performed; with the consequent lacking of full thoracic and spinal mobility, or even the apparition of movement restrictions areas.
This work is based on the control and use (conscious and voluntary) of different kinds of breathing mechanics related to the body’s mobility.
In this kind of approach, the objective is not to search for a good ventilation, or breathing-movement co-ordination (even if it’s always present), but to use the expandability or shortness of the intercostal spaces, for the spine to benefit from a bigger degree of freedom in the three movement planes.
The students get some basic anatomical and biomechanical concepts about breathing (the depth of concepts will depend on the student’s level), and carry out exercises dedicated to kinesthetic perception improvement of costal mobility, and the consequences that this produces over the other muscle-skeletal structures of the trunk.
With the help of parallel exercises of tonic-corporal control, stretching and flexibility etc. the students go on experiencing global, unilateral, unidirectional, etc. breathing movements that will lead to the perception and recognition of the corporal reactions that these breathing movements produces.
This experimentation and training will lead the student toward the capacity for voluntarily using and dominating breathing mechanics as a kinesiological tool.
This work allows the use of the direct or indirect costal mobility to improve and to facilitate a good spinal flexibility, to carry out rehabilitation works, and to provide resources for the use of breathing mechanics to improve quality in artistic-dynamic objectives of dance movements.