You’ll notice a tremendous difference in your dancing if you take even as little as five minutes to do some form of deep breathing exercise immediately before dance class (or performance). The breathing goes through your entire spinal column to pull together all the forces within yourself and focus everything toward dance.

Three-part inhalation. First, exhale completely, until there is absolutely nothing left to exhale. Pause, and begin your breath (through the nose only, and with the mouth closed but relaxed) from beneath your diaphragm. Start the breath, and then expand the lower abdomen. As that area fills, let the breath move into the diaphragm area and up to the sternum under the ribs. As the area up under the ribs fills, let the breath expand to the back of the ribcage on either side of the spine. The final part of the three-part breath is to let it expand to the top of the ribcage and all the way up to the base of the neck, again letting the breath expand to the back of the ribs as well. You’ll feel the breath expanding into the shoulder blades, and helping to release muscular tension there.

Three-part exhalation. Now reverse the process by exhaling from the top, then moving on to the middle, and finally the lower abdomen. Feel yourself completely let go and retract each area: the shoulder blades, collar bone, and upper ribs; the main ribcage area back and front; and the diaphragm, lower abdomen. Even though you’re ‘retracting’ or ‘emptying’ each area, resist the temptation to bend forward. Keep the entire spine -- up through the shoulders - straight. This will help you to keep the proper spinal alignment in class. During the exhalation, feel that all the stiffness, lethargy, and tension are exiting through the base of the spine.

It is important when dancing that you breathe through the mouth when executing movements. This is to avoid any stiffness in the jaw.