Who is Regulating the Regulator?

I am not the only person with radical views about breathing.

G.I. Gurdjieff was an esoteric spiritual teacher with immense influence. In a lecture given in Chicago on March 26th, 1924, he remarked:

“It is a thousand times better not to interfere with our machine, to leave it in bad condition rather than correct it without knowledge… Artificial breathing is the cause of many illnesses… If anyone here is experimenting with breathing, it is better to stop while there is still time.” *

Breathing is an important regulator – I don’t dispute that.

In both Pilates and Yoga, breathing is practised in very specific ways while doing an exercise or asana. It is also used to change states. When in panic, people are often advised, “Start breathing slowly”, as this aids them in calming down. Breathing is also very popular in meditation as a way of focusing your mind.

Gurdjieff didn’t say “don’t focus on breathing” – he said you need knowledge to correct it. That is the question being posed in this Letter:

Who is regulating the regulator?

I will answer that question through the retelling of Alexander’s story…

***

F.M. Alexander started with both breathing and voice problems, seeking to find the knowledge to remedy his hoarseness. Friends had reported to FM that while he was performing as an actor, they could hear him gasping for air. He was devastated to learn this, as he had previously prided himself on breathing quietly. Therefore, he was determined to find out why and soon discovered that every time he gasped for air, he was also pulling back his head.

Not only that, but his torso, arms and legs all affected the way he used his head. Breathing was not just about the lungs and ribcage – it was about his whole Self.

Although Alexander originally became renowned as “The Breathing Man” back in the 1890s in Australia, by the time he arrived in London in 1904, he was no longer talking about breathing. Instead, he started to speak about “The Use of the Self” which ended up being the title of his 3rd book.

Alexander had concluded that the regulator of breathing was his Postural Movement System (PMS). ※

***

In PILANDES – as you study PMS – you discover how breathing is regulated by your postural movements. Rather than regulating your breaths, your attention is better directed towards your PMS, i.e. ensuring that your overall coordination optimally supports your Pilates exercise, including how air is utilised.

My guess is that the “knowledge” that Gurdjieff insisted you need comes down to an understanding of how breathing is regulated by your Postural Movement System. Therefore, the PILANDES approach to breathing involves this method of indirect regulation.

One of my teachers, Walter Carrington, was once heard to remark that the mark of a good Alexander lesson was when breathing was completely changed, without breathing ever being mentioned during the lesson. You might find the same thing happening in my PILANDES workshops…

In my PILANDES sessions, postural cueing takes precedence over regulation of breath.

NEXT: Turning on Muscle Tone - Part I

Stay tuned.

* Gurdjieff, G.I. Views from the Real World. E.P. Dutton, 1973, p. 153.

※ “Postural Movement System” is my term, not Alexander’s. Neuroscience describes the components – the orderly recruitment of motor units by size, the righting reflexes that maintain postural tone, anticipatory postural adjustments and the specialised brainstem tracts driving a subcortical tonal system that continuously supports and calibrates voluntary movement – but scatters these findings across separate literatures and rarely names them as part of a single, unified system. I have gathered them all under one heading – PMS – and linked that concept to what Alexander referred to as “the postural mechanisms”, governed by his discovery of “the primary control” of the human organism.

2026 Workshops

LONDON:
August 8 – PILANDES
August 23 – Trauma-Informed AT

NEW YORK:
October 24 – PILANDES
October 25 – Trauma-Informed AT

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