Benefits of Pilates: Mind, Body & “Soul”

Most people know that if you are in active – imagine ten days in bed or a limb in a plaster-cast, muscles become weaker and loss mass.  Fewer people realise that not only do the muscles atrophy, but the nerves that stimulate them also atrophy.  Activity makes the muscle – nerve connections stronger.  Literally we become better wired.

There’s a phrase that I’ve heard several neuro-scientists repeat: “we are plastic until the end”.  In other words, it’s never too late to learn new skills.  And it’s never too late to reverse the process of nervous atrophy with Pilates.  Why Pilates?  Because Pilates is full body exercise.

In Pilates practice, you need to learn proper technique in order to coordinate muscle groups to produce smooth, continuous movements.  Pilates requires mental effort and concentration to retrain your body to internalise and then adopt these patterns of movement that we learn through our Pilates practice in our daily lives.

You have to concentrate as you’ll be mastering new skills and there are few repetitions.  In fact there is no repetition in Pilates.  Repetition implies mindlessly doing the same thing each time.  Pilates is not like that.  Instead, each “execution” of an exercise should be an improvement over the previous.

You need to  concentrate and learn to coordinate breath with movement as you reconnect parts of your body that have become disconnected over time.

Pilates done properly requires you to memorise series of sequential exercises.  You’ll need to anticipate as well as coordinate energy, weight change, placement of your body and creating shapes.  Working towards precise physical movement in the Pillates system helps develop practical (not esoteric) mind-body coordination and responsiveness. Joe emphasized the practice of clearly defines, accurate and precise physical movement for each exercise: “… beginning with the introductory lessons, each succeeding exercise should be mastered before preceding progressively with the following exercises.

Moving from one exercise to the next in a seamless sequential flow is difficult to achieve.  But striving towards this ideal over develops the endurance needed to get through a long sequence of exercises. 

By emphasising fewer repetitions of each exercise, we improve our work both in the quality of each movement itself and the transitions between exercises.  The transitions themselves should be considered exercises because they require similar amounts of concentration and coordination.

You need to anticipate your next movements. Therefore, in our practice we need to step out of our comfort zone both mentally and physically.  Pilates was never intended to be easy.  The choreography can be precise and demanding. 

The body must be pushed – but not to exhastion.  Joe Pilates was a very demanding teacher, insisting that students followed his instructions to the letter, attended the studio three or four times a week and completed homework assignments.

You learn what you find easy and what you would prefer to avoid.  Pilates requires technique and awareness and some knowledge.  Without these things, your doing some movements on a mat or on equipment, but you’re not doing Pilates.

The history of Pilates gives us a glimpse into how people of other cultures and epochs thought and what the circumstances of their lives was.