Be You, Be an Influencer & Do Pilates!
It's a family affair. Little Ewan being the mini photographer while Heather Holden is behind the big camera capturing Ria in action teaching at our first birthday.
"I learned...every part of the body; I would move each part as I memorized it. As a child, I would lie in the woods for hours, hiding and watching the animals move, how the mother taught the young."
Joseph Pialtes
I believe Joseph Pilates had a deep kinesthetic understanding of movement and the bodies connective tissue that we know as fascia. He explored how his body moved himself and understood through experience what science can now back up. He played, he got outdoors, he breathed deeply, loved and lived!
Joseph Pilates inherently understood on a deep kinesthetic level fascia, anatomy and movement, something we are lacking today. I often have to teach people how to step inside themself and feel their body before I can teach them the wonderful Pilates method to help them. This is due to the developments in technology, high paced lifestyles, stress and other lifestyle changes. So many people have lost their kinesthetic sense, body awareness, movement confidence and competence and self observational and feeling skills. Once people have learned this kinesthetic awareness they can then learn Pilates. This is a profound learning for me! I have always danced and moved and loved to explore and play. It wasn’t until I had major abdominal surgery that I stepped out of my body and my feeling of myself in my body that I truly understood how kinesthetically aware I was!
The animal kingdom teaches its young and the heard they observe, listen and learn and repeat what they see. Joseph Pilates states in this quote that he observed how the mother taught the young. He also in many other quotes talks of the importance and need for his method to be taught in schools and in all institutions as a means of injury prevention and rehabilitation.
Looking at the world we live in and where Pilates can feature in it now I believe we can use this and many of Joseph Pilates inspirational quotes as support.
We have a chance to be the change like Joseph Pilates, whether we have children or not we are all influencers and we can all move more, eat well, get outdoors and breathe. By doing so we set an example and others will follow.
Here are my top five tips of how you can learn more about how your body moves and influence others while you are at it.
Take your Pilates Mat to work. Find a quiet spot in your lunch break in a meeting room or in some green space outside. Lie down and breathe. Then let your breathe move you perhaps just by moving your spine in bridging or exploring the range of movement in your joints.
Watch your cat or dog or child moving and copy them! The more you copy the more they will move. It’s no different really than throwing a ball for your dog to play with or playing a game with your child.
Get yourself an accessible Anatomy book or look up skeletons on Google to develop your understanding. If we know where our bones actually are we have a better chance of moving them in more efficient ways. Look at the shapes of the bones and that will give you a clue of how they move!
Walk somewhere, anywhere, just walk with your eyes open so you can see other people moving, observe nature how the trees move how plants find life in the tiniest of cracks. Eyes open!
Massage. We use spiky balls at the start of most classes to massage our feet and we teach foot massage techniques too. You can extend that into your calf area or your forearm where we tend to hold a lot of tension. Gently massage and feel the tension, thickness, motion and fluidity of your skin and all the layers.
Of course you can also be an influencer by sharing your love for Pilates with friends, family and colleagues you could even buy them Pilates for Christmas. Share our facebook and Instagram pages, like and share our posts, check in when your at class or selfie yourself at class or doing some Pilates homework.
@clairepilates
Resources:
Return to Life by Joseph Pialtes
Your Health by Joseph Pilates
Anatomy Trains by Thomas W Myers
Movement Matters by Katy Bowman
Anatomy Of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain
B.Y.O.M Extra Thick Pilates Mats
