Several years ago, there was an article in the LA Times called "“MIND-BODY BENEFITS YOGA AND PILATES FULFILL DIFFERENT WELLNESS GOALS” (March 10, 2005 Los Angeles Times by Jeannine Stein - Please click here to read this article). In this article, the author clearly was not informed about the true benefits of Pilates Technique. Mary Bowen, A Pilates Elder, wrote a wonderful response to the LA Times Article. Mary Began her studies with Joseph Pilates in 1959, and studied with Joe, Clara and their assistant Hanna for 6 years. She has been a Jungian psychoanalyst since 1970, and has taught Pilates since 1975. We at Pilates Technique Certification wanted to share with everyone this great article that truly captures the essence of the Pilates Method. Below is Mary Bowen's response to the LA Times Article.
"As an elder of the Pilates community who has lived the Pilates Method for 46 years, taking weekly lessons for all of that time, and teaching it for 30 years, I feel I must reply to this article. I find this article to be a dumbing down and bastardizing of what the Pilates Method was created to be (and has been experienced to be by myself and many, many others) by the founders Joseph and Clara Pilates. I will respond point by point.
( First, the article states that Pilates is without a spiritual component or holistic approach and is simply a strength and conditioning system done with mat work and apparatus). Pilates without a spiritual component? Pilates has been practically messianic in its spirit and still is for those who understand it. Joe was trying to change the world! We, his followers, were referred to as his disciples. That's how avid the spirit of the method has been. As I have experienced the Pilates Method, as I practice, teach and observe it, there is always a spiritual uplift and buoyancy that comes from the work. Moreover, spirit is everywhere, isn't it? The body is a house of spirit. Joseph and Clara Pilates knew and lived that.
(Pilates without a holistic approach)? Is there any method comparable that addresses the whole body at every moment in every movement whether in the studio or out of it. Pilates is not only exercises. Pilates presents a conscious way of being in your body for your whole life in everything you do.
The Pilates Method is a philosophy of movement. It is a commitment to total body health and breath, whether exercising in a Pilates studio, walking, sitting, eating, feeding your pets, cleaning out kitty litter, working, performing, skiing, shopping, swimming, shoveling snow, typing, climbing stairs, gardening, riding horses or bikes, watching TV, making love, getting in and out of or rolling over in bed, sitting on or standing at the toilet or any other activities of life. Pilates principles impact everything you do.
(Further the article gives only to yoga an emphasis on good nutrition and inward focus - which I will speak about later - and to Pilates simply a series of regimented exercises that focus on using the core muscles). Not to diminish the importance of the exercises, Joseph and Clara Pilates always had a holistic and nutritional approach to living. They did not profess to be experts in nutrition but it was included in their overall idea of total health. In his book "Return to Life" Joe meant that his method was just that - for your whole life. In this book Joe expressed his holistic approach - although the word holistic was not in use at that time. He called his method Contrology.
(According to Ralph La Forge, spokesman for the American College of Sports Medicine and exercise physiologist, Pilates is not for "lifestyle management - not for overall health and lifestyle goals – i.e someone who has had their first heart attack or has high blood pressure or diabetes." For this he would choose yoga). Pilates not for lifestyle management? Not for overall health and lifestyle goals? What does he think Pilates is about? Unfortunately, Pilates is being taught around the world now by people who don't understand the scope and meaning of what the Pilates Method is. It is being seen just as a series of "regimented" exercises. Once again, Pilates is a total commitment to total body health and breath for your whole life in everything you do. As a Pilates person you learn to manage yourself. You learn how to handle your body and what to do with it. You learn how to correct and heal your own body. Pilates is an education for you and your body.
(Ralph La Forge again: Pilates will not help manage chronic symptoms or improve the quality of one's life)! Quite the contrary, the Pilates Method can transform your life and has done so over and over. You are never done with improving with it. You partner better with Pilates the more you mature. We grow into Pilates as we grow deeper into ourselves. Pilates is thus a function of aging, not just an ego effort using intelligence to grow strength and flexibility, although it does do that. You are more when you age, not less. You have more wisdom, fall prey to less bullshit, have more integration and capacity to focus on essence. You do and live Pilates better.
Far from not being helpful for chronic symptoms, Pilates is packed with particular exercises for chronic joint problems, chronic muscular tension patterns, on and on. Pilates is rehabilitative for all states of injury from broken bones to breathing incapacity to brain damage. Pilates can be creatively adapted to each individual's needs and condition. The Pilates Method is not fixed. It principles apply to everything in one's life. Each of us is different and individual as will be our application and internalization of the Pilates Method. A Pilates person is not homogenized or cloned.
Again, in answer to La Forge, the idea of Pilates not being for rehabilitation is preposterous. Pilates has been a major source of rehabilitation, honored as such by many physicians for decades. A large part of what a Pilates teacher does is rehabilitative. Often my lessons are focused entirely on rehabilitation depending upon the condition the client is in and what is needed. This is not to diminish the importance of the whole repertoire of Pilates exercises. It is to demonstrate the scope of the method, the freedom to move within the method beyond the series of exercises on mat and apparatus. None of this is understood in this article. Long term rehabilitation over years is common with Pilates, not what the writer sees as simply "helping people bounce back from injuries." Many clients and teachers are working with a special problem for their whole lives with Pilates. Pilates is not a quick fix!
This article is continually exasperating to an evolved professional Pilates person. Do these people think they know and are doing Pilates? They must be speaking at the level at which they practice Pilates. We know no more than we are and no more than we do. If you go to these people be aware of what you are getting - a watered down, dumbed down, collectivized, regimented, mass market semblance of Pilates. Not Pilates.
(Now for Leigh Crews, a Georgia based yoga instructor & former Reebok program developer: She sees Pilates as done in sets and reps, ordered and structured, built around teachers sounding out numbers). This is not Pilates. This was not the intention of the creators, not what any of us do who have lived Pilates for years. This is more like aerobics or some dance classes. This is supermarket, mass market Pilates. Pilates watered down again. Pilates is being kidnapped because it is so excellent. The name is used, many of the forms are used and then anything goes!
(For Leigh Crews there is no free form in Pilates, no freedom for either client or teacher to go one's own way in any sequence or order). In her Pilates there is no room for experimentation or creativity. This is not Pilates.
Joe was not rigid. In the 6 years that I was at his studio, I often created exercises and variations in his presence which he always allowed. He affirmed a creative approach to his principles. Some Pilates participants seem to have forgotten this. Joe's reminder to me was "Just be sure that you are always aware of the whole body at all times no matter what you do." The Pilates Method is about wholeness. The writer of this article should have consulted deeper sources of Pilates experience.
If Joe and Clara were alive today they'd be aghast at the myriad of mat classes being taught by inexperienced teachers and the collectivized group reformer classes. These diminish what Pilates essentially was and still is. Pilates is primarily and exquisitely one to one, in depth, geared to each individual's needs and condition, taking in the whole person, supporting as deep a journey into the body, mind and spirit as each person (teacher and client) is capable of experiencing with room for experimentation, imagination, fantasy, endless inner dialogue and whatever comes up in teaching and learning. There is plenty of room for creative expression. Pilates as an education is even more so now as biomechanical knowledge has joined and integrated with it.
(Music for yoga, not for Pilates. Vocal sounding for yoga, not for Pilates. Talk for yoga, not for Pilates. Meditation for yoga, not for Pilates). I can knock down these four silly duck pins easily. Many Pilates studios are full of music, for calmness, relaxation, inspiration to move and for a sense of privacy in a very busy studio. It's a personal choice. In my studio in Northampton, Mass. clients choose their own music out of a range of discs. As long as the rest of us go along with the choice, that's fine. And often silence is chosen in order to find one's own inner music and rhythm.
Vocal sounding not for Pilates? Vocal sounding is often encouraged in Pilates as a way to enter and connect with the body. As a way to engage and experience the core - to access deeper breathing and to release chronic tension patterns. I use sound at some point in every lesson.
Pilates not verbal? Try telling that to most Pilates teachers. The voice will give out in a Pilates teacher sooner than the body. There is endless talking and explanation. Some lessons require so much verbal instruction that one could ask "where is the movement?" There is an enormous amount of teaching one does that requires verbal explanation in Pilates.
No meditation in Pilates? Meditation is a way to access the mind/body connection. I have clients who go into deep meditation in every exercise. I myself in the early years of learning Pilates went into deep introversion in order to connect with my body. "She's like a horse with blinders," I overheard someone say about me. It was an enormously deep inner journey for me, as it is for all intuitive types.
Which brings me now (if I still have you with me) to what I consider the worst blasphemy and myopia in this article.
Leigh Crews again:
‘Yoga is a journey of self and experimentation, not Pilates.’
Elizabeth Larkham:
(Pilates teacher and spokesperson for the American Council on Exercises)
‘Yoga for the contemplative, inwardly focused person, Pilates for the outward, externally stimulated person’
In other words introverts will do yoga; extraverts will do Pilates. In the first place each of us is both. One or the other predominates in the first half of life, receding as the other comes forward in the 2nd half of life. But let's just look at "Pilates not about inner focus?" This is just plain crazy!
While speaking at annual Pilates Method Alliance conferences and while giving smaller workshops around the country, it has been interesting for me to find that the largest number of Pilates teachers are intuitives. I would have expected that there would be more sensates, people comfortably in their bodies. Quite the opposite I found to be true.
For an intuitive to reach and connect with the body at all requires an inner journey to the deepest recesses of the unconscious itself. That is where the body lies in the intuitive. You can't go any deeper than that in inner focus - than to the farthest reaches of your psyche. If a teacher (
Why would so many Pilates teachers be intuitives? Choose to be? Because the journey into the body for them is the way to their own development. If you've gone that far down and come back up with something, you have a gift to share. The intuitive will always keep meditating, digging in all sorts of ways for more and more grounding. You won't make a good Pilates teacher if you aren't in it because you need to be doing it for yourself as well as to help others. Doing and teaching Pilates keeps you in your own body and improving every year.
But Pilates is not only for the intuitives. Pilates encourages a journey into the self no matter what type one is. Typology and Pilates is a subject close to my heart which I often speak on and am known for. The sensates, seemingly fine in their bodies, find completion in the body with Pilates. The sensate's deepest journey is into intuition (sensates and intuitives are exact opposites). I find that often the newest most original innovations and variations in the Pilates Method come from the sensate type teachers. Seering intuitions - brand new - never thought of before. Our creativity will always come from the deepest part of our psyches.
So to disagree once more with the article - Pilates is all about moving from the inner. It is not about superficial outer moves.
(Lastly, Joy Reed, speaks of a client who does yoga to be calm and Pilates to be stronger). Fine. That is her experience. Either can calm you down - either can increase your strength. Anyone who enters a Pilates studio of high professional standard, who is filled to the brim with problems and pressures on entry will leave refreshed, always feeling better, emptied of outer world problems, enlivened and more integrated with the body.
There are many roads to Rome. My advice is to take on whatever you choose - it can be yoga, it can be Pilates or other systems - and follow it to the end as far as you can go with the method and with yourself. Pilates can take you as far and as deep as any - in an outer or in an inner journey. Let's not ‘lose in translation’ what Joseph and Clara Pilates created - what I have experienced for myself and do more so all of the time - that a commitment to the Pilates Method is a commitment to one's total health, to one's total self.
This is the essence to be found with the Pilates Method. To call it regimented exercises on mat or apparatus without need or call for inner focus and all the other inaccuracies of this article which I have addressed is an abysmal watering down and loss of the great opportunity for growth and fulfillment given to us by Joseph and Clara Pilates who lived their lives for it.
I hope this lengthy response will be read and possibly printed. I hope that it will allow in some light and consciousness about a brilliant method for partnering with your body throughout your entire life, whether you are so called normal, injured, fat or thin, coordinated or uncoordinated. The Pilates Method has been around and growing in depth since the l920's when Joseph and Clara arrived in America. For over 80 years the Pilates Method has been and will continue to be a great teacher in anyone's life."
-- Mary Bowen, www.pilates-MaryBowen.com, email- This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.