Pilates is a “Body Basic”
We all started life doing Pilates!
Practicing Pilates correctly lengthens the spine, reducing compression, pain, and stiffness. Strengthening core muscles (the ‘powerhouse’) protects our spine and makes everything else we do easier!
Pilates is an effective adjunct to other fitness activities, but is also wonderful for beginners and new moms, as it is a very safe system of exercise. Many sports professionals and teams now make Pilates exercises a part of their regular programs. My students include beginners, dancers, athletes, cancer survivors, and teens.
I learned about Pilates from a client. ”What have you been doing?” I asked. ”You look incredible!” She was thinner, fitter, and even looked taller, though she had not lost weight!
Twenty years earlier I had taken ballet 4-5 times a week. I loved how dancing made me feel – tall, ‘lifted’, graceful and strong. More recently, I had begun to feel compressed. While I was very strong, my stride was ‘down’ instead of ‘up’, and I sometimes felt (and looked) like a mix between a gorilla and a truck driver! I felt heavy and my energy was ‘down’. After one Pilates class, I felt the same balance and ‘liftedness’ that I had experienced dancing.
In 2004 I took the Stott Pilates mat instructor program in NYC, and in 2010 completed the dynamic Authentic Pilates comprehensive apparatus certification, specifically to teach others and share the many benefits of Pilates.
A Little About Joe
Joseph Pilates called his exercise form “the art of Controlology” and believed “physical fitness the first requisite of happiness”. A gymnast and innovator who created and practiced strengthening and conditioning programs while being held in a British internment camp during W.W.I, he then went on to develop programs to help his fellow German inmates recover from many debilitating health problems found in the camps. Because of his passion and success, he was eventually given the task of rehabilitating injured British soldiers.
After the war, he and his wife Clara continued to develop healing programs and eventually settled in New York City. And while he held a soft spot in his heart for the desk-bound office worker, in New York his training system also became popular with dancers who had become injured and wanted to regain strength while minimizing their risk of reinjury. Today, some form of Pilates’ exercises are practiced and taught in nearly every US city.
