February 11, 2009
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'Gym' helps musicians breathe
Breathing Gym: A morning routine
If you stumbled into room W-114 in the School of Music Building Monday through Friday mornings, you might have a hard time figuring out just what was going on.
When he was 17, Sam Pilafian was privileged to have one lesson with Arnold Jacobs, principal tubist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1944 until 1988, who is known as the “dean of American tuba players.”
What Jacobs told the 5-foot-6-inch-Pilafian was to change his life – and lead to a revolution in the way wind instruments are played.
“He told me I had half the air I needed to be a professional tuba player,” Pilafian recalled.
Pilafian became obsessed with learning how to breathe better. “I studied martial arts, and anything and everything I could about breathing,” he said.
The result of his work over the years is “The Breathing Gym,” a system of stretching and air-flow exercises that promote maximum use of lung capacity.
Actually, Pilafian’s system, which he developed with Patrick Sheridan, a fellow tubist who is a visiting professor at ASU this year, is built on groundwork laid by Jacobs.
According to a Web bio of Jacobs, it was rumored that he had only one lung. But “he did in fact have both of his lungs. Due to childhood illness and adult-onset asthma, his lung capacity was significantly impaired,” the bio notes.
While it would appear that tuba players use much more air than those who play the smallest instruments – flute or piccolo, for example – that is not the case, Sheridan said. “All wind-instrument players need to develop their breathing to use between 25 and 95 percent of their lung capacity,” Sheridan said.
“Most people use 10 to 25 percent of their air for conversation and so forth. Even athletes only use 25 to 65 percent.”
Pilafian and Sheridan, who have known each other for many years, both use The Breathing Gym techniques in their teaching. Their book, “The Breathing Gym,” published in 2002, and 54-minute DVD (a new one came out Feb. 12) are used by numerous schools, from elementary level to university, around the world.
What difference does Breathing Gym training make for wind players, beyond allowing them to go longer without taking a breath?
Put two tubists on stage together, one with Breathing Gym experience and the other without, and the difference will be apparent from the first notes they play, Pilafian said.
“The notes played by the one with training are smoother, and there is more music coming out of the instrument. There is less huffing and puffing.”
Band teachers and professional musicians all over the world are beginning to incorporate The Breathing Gym into their classrooms and performances, putting ASU in “an enviable place” among universities with music schools, Pilafian said.
Since virtually every wind player who graduates from ASU has gym training, they are hot prospects on the teaching and performance job markets. “Our people are a cut above,” Pilafian said.
Christopher Hulett, who based his doctoral research at ASU on The Breathing Gym, and now is the band director at Scottsdale Community College, said the technique is “accessible event to students at the elementary level. “I’ve seen fourth graders really get into it.”
“A good band director,” he added, already uses breathing exercises, but The Breathing Gym uses imagery to give a feel for what theses exercises are trying to do.”
As music teachers began to learn about Pilafian and Sheridan’s book and DVD, the effects started to ripple out from ASU like a stone dropped in water.
The Breathing Gym even is gaining the attention of medical professionals. In 1978, Jacob made the first overture to medicine when he lectured at Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital about how playing wind instruments was therapeutic for children with asthma.
Now, researchers from the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center and the Indiana University School of Nursing have teamed up with Pilafian and Sheridan to study how exercises from The Breathing Gym can help menopausal and post-menopausal women manage and reduce hot flashes.
Cancer treatments often reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of traditional hot-flash treatments, noted Debra Burns and Janet Carpenter. “We hope to find effective non-drug treatments for hot flashes, particularly regimens that can coincide with radiation therapy and pharmaceutical cancer treatments,” Burns said.
Burns and Carpenter also have help from the National Cancer Institute, which awarded them a $1 million research grant for the study.
The connection between the cancer researchers and the music professors came about through Burns’s husband, who is a band teacher at Avon High School in Indianapolis.
“She was describing the nature of her research to her husband and he mentioned to her The Breathing Gym and the possibility of those exercises being used in the research,” Sheridan said. “Dr. Burns reviewed her husband's copy of The Breathing Gym and decided to utilize several exercises from it in IU's research.”
Sports will be the gym’s next frontier. Pilafian said golf and football coaches have also expressed interest in learning more about The Breathing Gym.
“It’s just getting bigger and bigger,” he added.
Judith Smith, jps@asu.edu" target="_blank
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