The best way to improve your Pilates workout is to stick to 4 main principles of the method that are concentration, control, breathing and centering.
Concentration or focus is the first principle of Pilates. A competent instructor is indispensable to helping the participant focus in on the key ingredients of the mind-body method of Pilates. It should be a potent collaboration… The instructor needs to know what to focus in on otherwise everyone is lost!
Corrections are essential to evolve in the Pilates method and is proof that your teacher is not only filled with energy and enthusiasm, but with knowledge and empathy as well, e.g., capable of teaching to your level and giving you the right instruction at the right time. These corrections of a specific, personal nature are especially neglected in larger overcrowded group classes.
The focus of the instructor is not only to help hone our strengths, but also by working on our weaknesses that teaches the valuable skill of resolve, essential to personal development.
Please note, a calm environment (vs hectic and overcrowded) is conducive to bringing our focus inward – undistracted – to our bodies and breath. This brings us to what is closely and intimately ours: our bodies and our experience of it. Pilates is meant to develop this essential focus.
Control is another defining characteristic of Pilates, otherwise the class maybe called Pilates, but isn’t. Throwing yourself haphazardly around breaks the calm concentration necessary to follow the body. Pilates needs this calm focus to understand the subtleties of the body in action. Accompanying your body attentively in this way allows meditation to filter in.
Mindful attention sharpens bodily movement which, in turn, sharpens the mind.
Further along the path of control, precision is required to appreciate the finer mechanics of movement which involves sensory feedback; we need to be in a state of not only action, but receptivity in action. Together, control and precision bring clarity. We do not just do the movements, we accompany them mindfully! This heightened clarity in turn helps to improve control and precision…
Controlled, precise movement also establish flow and rhythm, not only of movement, but in breathing as well. The mind follows this fluidity and stays with the exercise, moment by moment, undistracted. Once again, it’s reciprocal: Movement quality brings breathing quality and breathing quality brings movement quality.
Breathing is a subtle flow and rhythm in itself, complementing and heightening a meditative or mindful aspect of Pilates to flourish.
Breathing is a big part of the content, the substance, of Pilates as well. In Pilates the dynamic of breathing can relax and energize us at the same time. In general, exhales bring calm (empties stress out) while inhales energize. The rhythm of breathing and movement go and in hand. For example, extending a movement helps to extend the flow of breath and vice versa.
Centering is another essential ingredient in Pilates as it enables an awareness of the whole of the body at once, in action and in stillness. The body is an anchor, a home for the mind! Concentration, or focus, allows us to be aware of one part of the body more fully, meditation is when we have a heightened sense of awareness of all the parts of the body at the same time. Every exercise has a specific way of working the body, so that, combined, the exercises as a sequence brings the whole of the body into focus.
Awareness of the body invites meditation.
The better awareness of our body we have, the deeper we can follow its movements in continuity and this becomes meditative, deeply rich and soothing.
Moving in itself, in class and outside of it, becomes more pleasurable and empowering. Moving from the center, or core, improves the coordination of the body as a whole – holistically.
The 4 principles of concentration, control, breathing and centering bring a sense of calm that comes with working with the body rather than just “telling it what to do”. There is no need to strain or fight ourselves by treating the body as an object to be dominated. In Pilates, the body needs to be a subject profoundly experienced.