Happy New Year!  It is rather uncommon that our contemporary calendar syncs up with the moon’s, but today it does.  Today we begin a new year with a new moon, which in and of itself seems promising.  Furthermore, it seems a perfect time to begin phase two of my personal Pilates project.

As promised a while back, the next phase of My Pilates Body Boost is finally in the works.  Because November and December are a challenging time of year to make such things happen (especially if you are a crafter buried under craft projects), and our family has been hit with a vicious and unrelenting viral attack, it can’t happen soon enough.  It turns out that I tend to do much better with a framework for my workouts and I’ve been missing that.  Given that there is such an easy breezy routine all in place, I was thinking that the reformer would be my next frontier in bringing my body back fully into the Pilates fold.  To my way of understanding the system of Pilates, the reformer and the mat have the most established sequences.  But as I lay in a meditative state one morning, I realized that I’m not quite ready for the full reformer.  And if I gave myself a couple months to really dig into the cadillac, perhaps I could get myself a little more ready.  (Yes, I realize that I could just go ahead and begin with the reformer and it would be absolutely great, but I’m looking to address longstanding patterns of tension and limitation in my body and so it makes sense for me to approach the complete reformer sequence in the best possible condition).  The main reason the cadillac is the place for me is because I’m looking for more space.  I addressed this topic recently and have been continuing to think on it in the studio and I do believe that I’m on the scent of something good.

Here are two more stories from my days of study that put me on this track in the first place.  While I was observing Pamela Pardi with one of her regular clients one day I ventured to ask him what he felt when doing the leg spring exercises.  His answer surprised me and opened up a whole new world to me:  stretch.  I had never felt such a thing while doing leg springs!  I set out to discover what I was missing.  That along with the idea that regular leg springs are key to keeping hips working well has done me a great deal of service over the years.  Thanks Pam!

During one of her visits to our bay, Kathi Ross-Nash chose to address a couple folks’ issues on the cadillac with a whole lot of opening up and lengthening out.  It was enlightening because rather than nitpick at all the little details of alignment that were apparent, both people had a list of body happenings, she let the exercises do the work, and toward a very good end too.

I realize that many of the stories that we’ve heard in Pilates are not historically accurate, and again express my gratitude to those who have enlightened us, but we all have a choice as to what to do with those stories.  To my mind, even the potentially inaccurate stories have little lessons in them, lessons that I value.  Here’s one such story.  According to what somebody told me, Joe and Clara had a client who had a fair number of concerns and who was so greatly helped by his work on the table that he proclaimed it “the Cadillac”, which in the heyday of Cadillac Motor Car Division was to say, the best apparatus ever.  Like that legendary fellow, today I’m placing my bets on the cadillac.  I’m giving myself till March 29th to see what this miraculous apparatus can do for me.  And like always, I’ll share the results with anybody who cares to have a look.

In the spirit of new beginnings, I’ve got a few more posts lined up for the next several days.  Each one has to do with resolutions, good intentions, positive changes, etc.  Perhaps it is my transformative Scorpio nature coupled with the fact that I’m a Pilates instructor, but I’m sort of a resolution buff.  So off we go into a new year rich with promise and possibility!