One of my clients was recently visiting his daughter who’s studying in London and he came back over the moon about Stonehenge.
“There’s lots of ‘explanations’ as to how they moved rocks weighing over 70 tons,” Jeff said, “but they don’t explain how they actually accomplished that feat of engineering.”
That’s kinda how I feel about the work of Joseph Pilates. How did he accomplish his feat of engineering in designing 19 pieces of equipment designed to bring the body into balance?
There’s lots of conjecture, for sure, but they barely scratch the surface of his understanding.
Joe worked with Eve Gentry, for example, after she went through a radical mastectomy which in those days was very invasive. Joe worked her back to full functionality and she went on to teach for many years.
Joe knew movement principles, and some of the most important include:
Lumbo-pelvic stability: Just like it sounds, securing the base of the spine and pelvis, ensures efficient movement patterns.
Breath: Most of us don’t breathe correctly, add in a mask and you’re severely limiting oxygen intake. Joe wanted us to squeeze every atom of air out from our lungs to be able to take more in.
Spinal elongation: “Lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, the spine,” you just can’t do it enough. Life has lots of compression forces and when you lift and lengthen the spine, you stay resilient.
Joe started off using box springs to create his designs, and today, Pilates is a $13 Billion dollar industry.
The reason why? Pilates works.
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