On Thursday this week, we say Hello to February! 

I know! It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Some don’t care for February — it is after all, still cold, still quite dark, still wintry, and it can be quite miserable…

But that’s not how I think of February. I reckon that once we get to February it is then just a few weeks to the new life, new shoots, new growth, new warmth of Spring. True, February starts cold, but often — and hopefully again this year — we do get some warmer, brighter days when we can get outside in the garden or for some nice walks, and start to get some sun on our faces again. I love it!

Fingers crossed 🤞 in a few weeks everything will seem much improved as the Winter recedes and the Spring rushes towards us.
 

All Face-to-Face Classes are running as planned this week, with no exceptions.

Online Classes are all running as planned too.

Featured routine online this week is a workout focusing on your Gluteals — the link is timetabled as usual on the members' jtp.zone website.

This week I am starting to focus on one specific exercise and will progress it over the new few weeks. 

Side Lying Leg Kick

We will start at a basic level, as demonstrated here. Side lying work gives us time to exercise the hips and specifically the lateral sling of muscles, so when practising think all about the outer thigh, the gluteals, the obliques that sit in the waist. 

As the exercise develops, the work moves higher up through the body, the latissimus dorsi, the shoulder girdle and trapezius. It challenges posture, stability and mobility, and that's why I love side lying work. I only demonstrate on one side of the body,  so don’t be a wonky donkey — make sure you do both sides. 

Work appropriately for your body, and keep away from pain. There are alternatives for those of you who struggle to lie on your side, and although I don’t talk about them in this video, I will introduce different start positions in this series of videos about the side lying kick week-by-week.  

Any questions please just message me.

In my Pilates and Your Whole Self programme that I ran in the 6 weeks leading up to Christmas, we did an exercise based on a way of journaling called free writing. 

The aim of this kind of journaling is to break the deadlock when we might feel stuck with our thoughts. 

Maybe it's a decision you are trying to make, or perhaps some thoughts are affecting your emotional health, or perhaps someone has said something to you and you aren’t quite sure about the meaning behind it so you can’t stop thinking about it. It could be anything: the difficulty being that you can’t get it out of your head, and every thought you have brings you back to it. You can’t let go, and you can’t move on, and you can’t make a decision and this is preventing you from moving forwards. 

A free writing exercise is as simple as taking some time and just sitting and writing about whatever it is that is clogging up your thoughts and feelings. There is no need for censorship or worry about grammar or spelling. It's just what it says on the can: free writing. Just let your thoughts pour out of you on to the paper — I guarantee once you start you will soon be flowing and filling the paper. 

Once you feel you have finished, then read through what you've written and potentially highlight some of the things you feel you could change in order to move forward/ Or highlight the things that you realise — once you see them in black and white — actually don’t seem so important. Just reading through what you've written can help you to understand what the problem is, and why it is keeping you stuck. Then you can think how you could work on those things to help yourself let go.

I have often done this exercise myself when I’ve been experiencing this feeling of being stuck and not being able to move forwards, and it always helps me, so I hope it can help you. 

If you’d like more information about this and my Pilates and Your Whole Self programme, get in touch to discover more.

Have a great week everyone. Keep moving, keep looking and feeling good.

With love,

Jane xx