Joseph Pilates, this is the person who developed CONTROLOGY, complete coordination of the mind, body and spirit. We now use his last name PILATES to talk about the exercises and terminology he used. Contrology/Pilates develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind and elevates the spirit. Joe Pilates started putting his ideas of Contrology into practice after WW1 broke out. He was imprisoned along with many other German national at that time. Not only was this going on but the terrible influenza epidemic of 1918 swept the world killing millions. Here we are over 100 years later dealing with COVID, another terrible epidemic.
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4 Ideas we can be using Pilates to be more happy and healthier.
- Mindfulness; Definition: mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we are doing and feeling. Pilates speaks in term of present time consciousness of ourselves and the world around us as we work through any movement of an exercise. Pilates has been known to quite meditative as we draw the mind and body together.
- Resourcefulness; using what we have at the moment and turning it into good. Joe made the best of his situation to keep himself healthy while sharing his ideas with others. He built Pilates equipment like the first ladder barrel out of a beer keg and majic circle out of the metal ring around the barrel. Its amazing what we can find around our homes like towels to use to find resistance, balls to roll on, chairs to use for balance instead of a ballet barre. Dont give up look around.
- Healing yourself first; goes with loving yourself. What can i do to better myself to encourage mankind. Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses. Joe Pilates seemed to be aware of this at a very young age. Being frail and sickly with ricketts, asthma etc. he began to study and apply his findings to himself first. He began to see a difference in himself as he applied his method, so he shared with all of us. He started his method of Contrology while being imprisoned and it began to work on other imprisoned fellowmen.
- Using Pilates Method and Exercises Always start at the beginning.
What is the beginning? This is always a time worth remininding all of us, that Pilates is a form of low-impact exercises that aims to strengthen muscles while improving postural alignment and flexibility. You can do Pilates with or without equipment (as shown in picture of a mat and Pilates reformer). Its all good and we take it a step at a time. As a classically trained Pilates instructor you will expect the moves to involve a slow, precise set of movements targeting alignment and breath control. If you do want to progress to the reformer (picture of wooden frame housing the /carraige/springs & strapes) you will have the skills your mind and body have learned from mat series. Its here we begin to build our beginning.
Example:
First Exercise learned called HUNDRED. In this beginning exercise we use benefit of gravity to ground and align the body, we learn what it means to pull abdominals in and up while moving and breathing deeply into the lungs. It never stops here it only gets better as we dig deep into the core of the human body.
Go to balancenstrength.com to learn more.
