I am often asked by people who are thinking of joining our Pilates classes, is Pilates like Yoga? And to answer this correctly — there are a few crossovers between Pilates and Yoga, because Joseph Pilates took lots of different areas from many programmes of health and fitness to develop his own exercise programme, which started out as Contrology and then later became known as Pilates. 

 

I am sure practitioners of Yoga would be able to explain what they see as the main differences, but — from my perspective — Pilates is about exercise and movement, working to improve the function of the way our bodies operate on a daily basis. We can apply the principles to many activities ranging from getting out of the bath, to being part of a training programme for elite swimmers, but always the aim is for getting rid of restrictions of movement. On the other hand, Yoga is often associated with meditation and being still, and I do not teach Pilates with this in mind. 

 

However, I would say due to the fact that Pilates exercises are performed with control, precision, and focus this mind/body connection does bring a meditative aspect to our practise.

 

I am often told from my evening classes that they always sleep better on the nights they do their Pilates session, they leave feeling relaxed and light hearted, which implies there has been a meditational benefit to the class.

 

At the Mindful Movement class I organised in October last year, we really focused on this aspect of Pilates and I was approached at the end of the session to say how much they had loved it. We concentrated on the mind/body connections, we slowed the movement down so that everyone had the opportunity to recognise where and what they were feeling. We thought about breath and the power of using the breath with our movement. It was a meditational session and some recognised that this was precisely what had happened to them during the class. They had switched off their brain from anything else going on in their lives, they had relaxed their physical self, they had slowed their life down, and invited peace and quiet into their life, albeit for one hour on a saturday morning. 

 

So while there are differences between Yoga and Pilates, we can still achieve the benefits associated with meditation by practising on our mind/body connections. By being present in the class, allowing our focus to be on our intrinsic self, we can achieve a stillness and a silence to the daily chatter and noise.

 

Practise this week’s Exercise Of The Week to help achieve some peace and quiet this week.