Hello everyone! I have been teaching mat classes for almost a year now and have an elder female client who has been coming for a few months now. She benefits a lot from our group classes but has difficulty breathing and connecting the breath with movement. I have encouraged her to keep on breathing which ever way she feels the best as long she doesn't hold it. Also I have tried to help her hands on to direct the breath to the right place and explaining verbally what actually happens in her body as she does so. I have had clients with these kind of difficulties before but this time I am running out of tools to help her. What direction should I take or should I just continue with these actions and trust that she will find her way?

Very much appreciate this forum and website and keep on coming back to learn more and to find new aspects.

hello Julia,
I teach mat classes for a few years now so i jump in the conversation hoping this will maybe help..
In my experience, breathing can take longer to teach for some people...
I sometimes teach breathing in private class for most of the time, focusing on breathing in different positions, and ask questions about how the person feel the breathing depending on how she is positioned (i e : on the knees, on the back etc..)
I would teach her to breath and focus on that on various exercices that she can easily do so its also easier for her to just breathe and concentrate on the exercice.
I hope this helps, im from switzerland and myabe my english isnt clear but anyway..keep enjoying

Hi Alex,
Good idea, a few private sessions with her could give us more time to interact and dive into the exercises more deeply and try different positions as well.
Thank you for your answer!!

When a client has a hard time with connecting breath to movement, I have found it helpful to approach breathing as "shape change" from the Yoga Anatomy book. Practicing a belly breath with quiet ribs, then a rib cage breath with a quite abdomen. I have found that it helps to do both at the beginning of class to clarify the difference, then of course focus on the rib cage breath during movement and the belly breath when resting. I have also found it helpful to have clients only focus on the exhale and let the inhale just happen as most clients who get their breathing reversed are never fully exhaling.

Hi Alex,
Could you try teaching her the mechanics of breathing first by using the Recoil Breath so that she can feel her stomach expand with the inhalation, and focus on the drawing in on exhalation, this would really help if she has a reversed breathing pattern. Then cue maintaining the awareness of the centre activation on the following breaths. Good luck!

I would suggest standing arm sweeps. Stand in postural alignment, palms forward. Sweep the arms up to the ceiling on the inhale. Rotate the palms outward and sweep the arms back down to the hips on the exhale. Sweeping the arms up to the ceiling lifts the ribs off the waist and stretches the intercostal muscles expanding the ribs allowing the lungs to fill completely. Standing facilitates keeping the belly in. Sweeping the arms down brings the ribs down squeezing the air out of the lungs. It's a simple movement and easy to coordinate with the breath. You can add a count, e.g., 6 up/6 down, increasing to 8, 10 or more to increase lung capacity. Hope this helps.

Thank you all for the great advice. Can't wait to get on the mat and try out these ideas! :)

Love the all the contribution here! Thanks everyone!

Oooo Len that is a fantastic idea!