Pilates is hard, there's no doubt about it. Anyone who has tried it will tell you, here is a very steep learning curve and things often seem impossible to achieve especially in the early days of your Pilates practice. BUT... please, please persevere. As my Dad always said, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Good advice for most things in life but especially useful when learning Pilates. The scooping, the imprinting, the breathing! Its all so different and so weird and so new. Its going to take quite a while to "get it", but get it you will and when you do, you better believe you will become empowered. You will feel invincible. You will feel powerful. You will feel as if you can do anything....simply because you have learned Pilates.
Many years ago I had the pleasure to work with a beautiful client who had one very bad demon in her closet - she was a smoker. She never mentioned it during lesson and yet I knew she continued to smoke because I could smell it on her. Like everyone else she struggled to learn many of the Pilates moves when she first began working with me, but surely and slowly things changed and she began to excel. I think it was right around the time that she mastered the Teaser on the Reformer that I asked her if she felt proud of her accomplishment. She of course said yes, but went on to explain, with a huge grin on her face that she had successfully quit smoking recently. As much as this accomplishment required hugs and congratulations it was even more special because this particular client did it without even trying. She just said to herself one day, "I don't need those cigarettes anymore". And she has not gone back since. If that's not an example of how Pilates can empower you, I don't know what is.
Its the same thing with male clients who often come to Pilates with a little skepticism and even a slight grudge since their wife is most often the one to push them into trying Pilates. After just a few sessions I have seen time and time again how Pilates empowers them. Men show their empowerment in a different ways than women but its nonetheless impressive. Sometimes its not about succeeding at a particular Pilates exercise but more about improving in something outside of the studio that brings the male client back for more... and usually with a huge smile on their face. Maybe their golf game improved. Maybe their backache went away. Maybe they got the six pack they always dreamed of. As weird and foreign as Pilates can seem to most men when they begin on the journey, before long they embrace it and become empowered in all areas of their life.
My interpretation of this phenomenon is that Pilates actually changes us on a very deep cellular level both mentally and physically. The mind body challenge of Pilates can actually reconnect neuromuscular pathways in our brains and then facilitate new movement patterns in our body, thereby creating new brainwaves. Its a big circle of improvement through the mind having to focus on lots of new things (beginning of our Pilates journey) to our body actually learning to do these new things our brain is asking us to do (several weeks into Pilates) and then when we actually "get" it these mind body neuromuscular patterns become a new norm for us and that's when we become empowered.
My favorite example of how profound Pilates can be is the case of a 14 years boy with cerebral palsy whose mother enrolled her youngest son because she truly believed he had more physical potential than the medical professionals wanted to believe. When he came to me, this poor boy had been subjected to Achilles cutting (to try to lengthen his Achilles), painful Botox injections in his hamstrings(to try and get his legs to straighten) and was told by doctors and therapists that his legs were too tight and the muscles too tonic for him ever to get off crutches and walk normally. Well, suffice it to say after just 4 lessons, this boys legs were straight and his crutches were used only if he was going to be walking quite a distance. He wasn't tight in the hamstrings, he was ridiculously weak in the quads. His lower back was on the verge of spasming constantly and after a few additional weeks of core training he was standing up straight as any normal teenager would. His demeanor went from I cant do anything" to I am a Pilates champion". His awesomeness came out of the disabled shell of the boy I first met. He excelled at school and went on to get multiple scholarships to colleges all because of Pilates. How empowering is that?
I will go one step further and add to this by saying that through each of my clients success (and there have been many) I have become empowered myself. Not just with what Pilates can for people but with what the human spirit can accomplish with just a little focus. You know, focus on scooping and imprinting.
Way to go everyone who has made strides, either big or little, through Pilates. Keep up the great work and you will truly see that it is ALL worth it!!
