The future of fitness is Embodied

A beautiful orchestration of events happened this week. 

A new round of the 5-week intro series started, and as I was preparing for the first class of the series, I started to think about the beginning of my Pilates journey, and what I might say now to a past me if I were starting Pilates all over again. 

As I was thinking, it brought me back to a conversation I had with a client earlier in the week.  After her session, she had made a simple and thoughtful remark about how the Pilates we were doing had so much more depth to it.  I asked her to tell me more. She talked about how much more mindful she is and how moving slower helped her to really feel the spine and her body as a whole while she was doing her exercises. 

I just thought this was so fascinating.  

I never say to go slow, but I do notice that especially when starting out the pace can be slower.  Reflecting on that I noticed how much as an instructor, I value depth over speed.  

It is so easy to get overwhelmed when you are starting out.  So many moving parts.  Your body AND the apparatus.  The exercises and Pilates jargon.  The last thing you want to forget is your control or coordination, but in reality, it’s often the first thing that checks out.  

And that’s the thing.  We absolutely live in a world where we can create an email that we send to someone somewhere across the world and get a  immediate reply (Amazing!). Our world moves at a lightning pace now days,  and we’ve come to expect that as the standard for how things happen. 

When it comes to the body, body doesn’t move at that pace.  It moves nowhere as fast as our mind.  I realized that when you start to let your body lead, things just get slower. 

Especially when learning a new thing.  When you start Pilates, you are learning a new way of moving.  It’s an entirely different kind of fitness.  

The other thing that makes Pilates challenging is that it requires you to pay attention to your body.  What is moving, what isn’t.  How does something feel?  The exercises should feel good in your body (subjective), but if you aren’t used to paying attention to all the feedback you’re getting from your body, how can you even tell what feeling good is?    

How many times have we deliberately checked out of our bodies because we didn’t like what we were feeling?  For some, we might prefer to silence the messages our body sends.  Like, maybe if we shut it all down, no news is good news?  It makes so much sense that sometimes we don’t want to get the messages body sends out about feeling tired. Feeling overwhelmed.  Feeling achy or sore.  Sometimes feeling the magnitude of what’s really happening on the inside is just. too. much. 

The body is always seeking to communicate with you, and the body is also designed to send messages of ease, peace, delight and pleasure.  

Think of the signals body sends as a water hose, with just an on, or an off, but all the water is one temperature. To turn off the signals of pain, you also turn off the signals of peace. You cannot selectively tune out the messages body gives. When you turn down the faucet to avoid signals of pain, body adapts and decreases messages as a whole.  Your range of sensation diminishes -as a way to decrease pain, but receptors for pleasure drop too. From this, signals of delight, pleasure and joy become less and less available.  

When sensation decreases, body awareness drops too.  You may be more prone to accidents or stress related injury.  Decreased body awareness opens the gateway to chronic musculoskeletal pathology, and phantom aches that come up later from something you were doing earlier, but now you don't know what it was that did it.

Understanding your body’s signals and being in tune with the way your way body communicates is a big part to sticking with a fitness plan.  How many times have you started a new exercise program to only stop a few weeks in because of injury or existing conditions being aggravated? When you are connected to your body, you can better detect when the reps of something might be too much, or that the weight is too heave, or the positioning doesn’t suit you.   Body awareness is a major factor in reducing and avoiding injury.  

How do you cultivate relationship to body?  It is an ongoing practice.

A  dialog you learn to have with self and body when you notice something in the body isn’t settling right. 

If you have been ignoring your body for any length of time, rebuilding your relationship with body is really similar to how you would rebuild any relationship.  

Body might let out all its been holding in.  There could be moments of discomfort, and you may hear things you don’t want to hear.  But if you value the relationship (and a relationship with body is something I highly recommend), it’s important to listen to what it wants to say.  Things come to light, and  things get aired.  Somedays there are ups and somedays downs.  You may not what to hear what body is communicating, like all long term relationships, you get to decide again and again how the relationship goes. 

And there are nuances with a relationship with body. Body communicates in ways we may consider strange, it’s like a new kind of language, so it may take time to figure it out.  However, with patience and sincerity, you can create a strong connection.  

Let me say, a connection like that is golden.  That connection tells you when you need extra rest.  It can keep you from over doing a work out and causing injury.  It can even help you decide what foods work best for you.  There are so many ways that a healthy relationship with body can improve your life. 

I am such a strong supporter of a strong body connection.  It’s one of the ways that helps me to stay centered in my busy life.   

Body changes over time.  Life changes over time. But body is always here for you.  In fact it is one of those things that will be with you everyday until the very end.  Body doesn’t have a choice to stick with you, and you're stuck with them too. So I invite you to connect with your one precious body.  It does so much for you. Your body is so resilient and so incredible.  

If you are interested in exploring your connection with body, and curious about what the heck this has to do with Pilates, here is a synopsis of my approach and how we can weave this connection into your practice.  

My embodied way of doing Pilates:  The biggest embodiment tools I use in session are awareness, movement and breath.  I use these tools to facilitate an environment where it is ok to explore what your ability to do an exercise is, and to get curious about where your limits are.  I encourage you to notice the patterns body makes as it moves.  When you move, we pay attention to what’s moving, and what’s not.  We think about the “when” and the “where” of a movement when your spine might be loosing its length (for example).  You get to be your own detective!  

Having the space to feel how your body is moving as you are moving and to pay attention to the quality of your movement can be so helpful.  I work to keep your session as plain language as possible so that it’s as easy for the beginner to understand. 

And at the end of the day…. Pilates AND Embodiment is an experiential thing!  Sometimes you just have to experience it directly to understand.  I can describe it, and write about it. You can see it all over the internet, but it will never be the same as the personal experience you have when you do it.  

So…. Session 1 of the newest Intro series was a beginning for the brave beautiful clients who signed up,  and yes, some of what I shared was woven in.  I feel such honor in getting to share Pilates with clients, and I am also now offering Embodiment specific one-on-one sessions.   

If you would like to learn more about that, please send me an email.  hello@beeauthenticpilates.com , and be on the look out for the next post talking more about this in more detail.