Some weird news made Pilates headlines this week. MSNBC, Fox News and a number of other "news" aggregators picked up a story from the New England Journal of Medicine stating that a woman's breast implant had been "swallowed" by her body while she was doing Pilates.
The articles go on to say that the woman was performing a Valsalva maneuver where a deep breath is taken in and then the air is pushed out against a closed airway. This caused her pectoral muscle to contract and push the breast implant between her ribs. Apparently the woman's chest wall was weak where a recent surgery went through scar tissue from a previous mastectomy.
Clearly this was a traumatic event for this woman, and a bizarre event in general, but I feel compelled to point out that it really had nothing to do with the practice of Pilates. We do not do Valsalva maneuvers or anything like Valsalva maneuvers in Pilates. We do not hold our breath at all, much less against a closed airway. This woman may have been in a Pilates class but she was not doing Pilates.
Pilates is all about breathing fully. In fact, "breath" is one of the Pilates Principles, the foundations of Pilates movement. In one of Joseph Pilates students' favorite quotes from him, "in da air, out da air" (he was born in Germany), he is extolling people to take big inhales and release big exhales and to keep the flow going. He never advocated holding the breath and no Pilates teacher with any training would encourage that.
Learn more:
Breathing in Pilates
Pilates and Breast Cancer Recovery
Thank you so much for posting this!!
Thanks for clearing the air, i can’t stand misinformation.
I was very surprised to see the Valsalva Maneuver mentioned in a Pilates movement. Every properly certified instructor whether aerobic, yoga, aqua, pilates, weighted workout, or spinning, is instructed “to carefully observe student techniques and never to allow a student to use the Valsalva Maneuver. Holding the breath while exerting energy depletes the brain of blood flow and causes dizziness and/or possible fainting or blackouts. Thank you for explaining what a journalist obviously misunderstood and incorrectly reported as a technique normally used during Pilates workouts.
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