Pilates breathing technique, beyond the count

Most of us learned the Pilates breathing technique as a count, inhale to prepare and exhale to move, and then kept saying it in our own classes. It's a perfectly good start. It's also where a surprising amount of teaching just parks itself for years. Holly Swanson's Day 2 workshop at PLTS+ Collective was called Beyond the Inhale/Exhale: Breath Mechanics & Posture, and the name was a pretty clear hint about where she was heading.

Why breath and posture end up in one room

Ribs move on every breath and they're attached to the spine, so posture and breathing are tangled up with each other whether we cue them separately or not. It shows up in class constantly. One client holds their breath through anything hard. Another hikes both shoulders on every inhale. And then there's the client who does exactly what you said and looks stiffer for it.

Holly's session puts breath mechanics and posture in the same ninety minutes, so you can look at those three clients as one question.

Who's teaching

Holly has taught Pilates since 2002. She owns Core Chicago Pilates, which she grew to several locations, co-founded The LAB, a 500-hour teacher training program, and co-founded a practice that pairs physical therapy with Pilates. She was on the PLTS+ schedule twice: The Pilates Career Center on Saturday morning, and this one first thing Sunday. She was also on the program for Business + Anatomy, the virtual follow-up a month later.

Bring a real client with you

Not literally. But ninety minutes go a lot further if you walk in with one specific person in mind, the one whose breathing you've never quite cracked. Some questions to chew on beforehand. When does a breath cue help a crowded group class, and when is it just one more sentence? What do you do when someone's breathing gets worse the more you cue it? Does a breath cue change between a private and a packed Saturday class? And what does good posture even mean for the body on that mat, as opposed to the poster in the hallway?

If cueing itself is the snag, have a look at our guide on how to cue Pilates.

How it sat in the weekend

On Saturday afternoon Dr. Morgan Rodriguez taught a workshop on neck and shoulder pain in Pilates, built around thoracic mobility and shoulder mechanics. Holly's session opened Sunday, built around breath mechanics and posture, and the ribs that move on every breath hang off that same upper back. Straight afterward, at 10:45, there was a mat class called Putting It All Together, which was a lovely chance to feel the ideas in your own ribs before you tried them on anyone else.

And if you write your own classes, think about where breath actually sits in the sequence. Our guide on how to plan a Pilates class gets into that.

When and where

It ran Sunday, November 8, 2026, 9:00 to 10:30 AM Central, at 1809 Pearl St, Austin, TX 78701. The other workshops are on the PLTS+ Collective page.