The Love Your Body Philosophy

Every day we are bombarded with marketing designed to convince us to punish, ignore, and eventually hate our bodies. Yet which of your other relationships have benefited from this same approach?

Joseph Pilates created a system of movement that invigorates and awakens our bodies rather than exhausting and draining it. In Pilates, we have the opportunity to get to know our bodies.

“How does my body move? What happens when I try to lift my leg? What about if I focus my attention on these specific muscles to do it? Woah - I didn’t even know I HAD muscles there!!”

How we have this conversation can uncover the nature of our relationship with ourselves. Are we curious, asking questions with child-like wonder, accepting the answers we are given? Or are we critical, judgmental, comparing ourselves to the person next to us, or to a younger version of ourselves? Similarly, how do we react to the physical stresses we put ourselves through against weighted springs or the weight of our own bodies? Is it similar to how we react to the daily stresses we experience?

The Pilates Method allows us to develop a self-awareness that can be carried beyond our workout and into our daily lives. Joseph Pilates was cognizant of the need to move and breathe as our culture became more sedentary and more emotionally stressed back in the 1940’s; imagine how much more we need it now! In a world of computers attached to our wrists and screens in every direction we look, do we leave time in our day to move in the ways our body was designed to move?

Furthermore, can our minds stay present and focused for an hour of movement? The rest of our day may be packed with various tasks and job requirements, but Pilates can be our break from it all, our sanctuary of sorts, where we have the opportunity to rebalance our minds, bodies, and spirits.

Loving your body is about nurturing it the way you would any other long-term relationship; with communication, commitment, patience, kindness, and fun. Essentially, we are building trust with our bodies. Sometimes with injuries or as we age, we may feel that trust break down; Pilates gives us the opportunity to reestablish that trust.