WEEKLY STATS  Weight: 153.5   Waist:  33.5″  Hips:  40.75″  Thighs:  22.25″

Week Twelve officially ended yesterday.  While I have kept up with my Pilates Body Boost, it doesn’t exactly feel like it because it’s been so long since we took our regular round of photos and since I recorded my workouts on my tabulation sheet.  It’s funny what I feel is missing because of those tasks.  While the actions of the project are still in practice, I don’t feel the same sense of engagement.  Or maybe it’s because the results of my efforts are not what I expected.  Basically, I’m still the same size, even a little bigger right now thanks to the upheaval of travel.  Although each and every benefit of my project has been noted and celebrated, I was really hoping to fit in the majority of my pants again.  And so far, that isn’t happening.  So I’m having to face some music which is bringing up a fair amount of personal reflection.

When I am feeling most despondent, I think some pretty self-defeating thoughts.  Here are some of them, with the internal dialogue that brings me back to sensibility.

“what does it say about me that I cannot control my weight and my physical form given my career choice?”  Perhaps that I’m a normal version of the middle class, small business owner – mom?  Perhaps that I’m not excessively-controlling when it comes to what I eat?  Perhaps that my weight is not my top priority?  Perhaps that my physical form is an ever-changing expression of the multi-faceted me?  Perhaps that I’ve got my priorities focused on the substance, rather than the form, of my life?  But all that still isn’t enough to soothe my bruised ego.  After two years of wearing clothing that was more than less supposed to be a stopgap, I’m ready for a little boost in the form of some more flattering outfits.  Perspective is important:  this is largely a superficial problem.  My frustrations have initiated enough serious inquiry which consistently brings me to a good conclusion:  I like my life.  I like what I’m doing.  (I certainly suffer from impatience when outcomes do not materialize as soon as I’d like – but that is a different topic).  So if all the important stuff is in place, then perhaps I need to dedicate a wee bit more attention to style.  It is amazing what strategic apparel choices do for my sense of attractiveness and yet I tend to opt for frump.  So I’ve got a plan.  I whipped up a shirt on Thursday that I’ve decided will be my new go-to.  It’s flattering, comfortable, easy for nursing, and comes together in an hour or less.  I copied Anthony Lilore‘s flawless design off the one actual top that I snagged before he and Celeste stopped offering them.  Now I just have to make about ten…that should do it.  Maybe some with sleeves.  Maybe a tunic or two as well.

The thing is that I’m still dressing like somebody with a perfectly flat stomach.  And that’s just silly because I do not (and never really did) have a flat stomach.  Outside of the context of my profession and the clothing that I wear mostly as a result of it, I’m content with my physical shape.  It’s largely the clothing that’s the problem.  I know that I’m not the only one who is done with hip huggers and tight tees!  And while on the one hand, I do take clothing as a legitimate and worthwhile measure of my weight and whatever that may say about my health, I am comfortably in the range of healthy.  And given the appropriate clothing, or none at all, I’m not an unattractive weight either.  So much of my current frustration is based on two outlying years in my late twenties when I was really skinny.  Why was I so skinny then?  I thought that it was the Pilates but I guess that I’ll never know.  But those years were a departure from my norm and much to my frustration, I’ve been thinking of them as my personal standard.  Had I a different personality, a different value set, a different way of living my life, I could probably figure out how to get back to that shape.  Bu the whole point of this project was to arrive at my personal ideal, within the context of my life.  So I’m doing some adjusting to the stuff that is adjustable because it seems that my body is staying put right where it is.  Ultra high rise pants, here I come!

There is another part of my profession that has influenced by self-perception as it comes to weight and that is the relationships that my clients have to their bodies.  Given that I’m a fitness instructor, I’ve worked with a fair number of folks who are hyper vigilant about controlling their weight.  These folks seem to rely heavily on the calories-in-calories-out philosophy, which doesn’t work for me (literally and philosophically).  While I do see portion control as a reasonable strategy, I’m unwilling to reduce what I eat to the point of deprivation just so my pants fit.  And while I can certainly understand that it makes sense to eat at a level corresponding to our physical output, I know that other factors cause us to carry extra pounds around (in my case, hormonal shifts have been the main cause, but I’ve known plenty of people whose drug therapies dramatically and irreversibly altered their body chemistry resulting in significant weight gain).  I’ve also worked with a fair number of people who have been frustrated by their lack of control over their weight.  Somewhere in my mind I decided that I’d rather be the person who was in control rather than the person who one day woke up surprised at the extra twenty pounds they were lugging around.  Giving in to the truth of my size and my disinclination to control it to the extent that would yield the results I’ve been hoping for feels like a submission that I may regret years down the line.  But it also feels like the sensible thing to do.  I have exhausted all options.  I’m not interested in continuing to hit my head against bricks.  Here’s what I will continue to do.  I will continue to be careful about how much I eat.  i will continue to strive to make healthier choices which translates to more vegetables, always more vegetables!  I will keep track of my weight for the sake of keeping tabs on the pounds that creep on one year at a time.  And most of all, I will maintain a vigorous Pilates practice because it supports me in all the right ways.  I really like having a standard that I hold myself to.  It’s so easy to forego a workout here and there, but having the framework of this project has helped me honor my commitment to my health amidst the busy days of our lives and I’ve seen the benefits over and over again.

“My stress levels must be so high that my body is not functioning properly.”  This is a depressing notion, but probably fairly accurate.  It has been a tough couple years for me.  All the more reason to maintain my Pilates practice.  I shudder to think where I’d be without that!  Probably the best antidote to these thoughts is to get out of my own head either by moving my body, or by interacting with the world at large.  In doing that I see that every person I know is facing their own challenges.  Somehow this is normalizing.  It’s rather shameful to admit, but knowing that I’m not alone in having challenges is a comfort.  And it’s a large part of why I share what I do here.  I figure that if I’m having these thoughts, others are too and they might be relieved to know that.

“My body is reflecting the unhealthy choice of nursing for two years and counting.”  These kinds of thoughts are so dangerous because they do the real damage inside my head.  When I put it in writing it seems pretty obvious that the idea itself is unverifiable.  And yet so many of our choices around our bodies are made by the incomplete information that gives way to such notions.  I do not tend to be a thorough researcher.  I tend to be the sort of person who looks for bits of information that seem sensible and then I marinate on them, I draw secondary conclusions, I make connections.  (Yes, I realize that in the process of absolving myself of any responsibility for erroneous information, I may have just undermined my credibility here.  I believe that full disclosure is best.)  My point is that the supporting information for this idea has come from a piece of advice that came from my gifted and rather eccentric acupuncturist.  I did not ask her follow up questions when she told me that it is not correct, nor healthy to nurse a baby past six months.  I should have.  But my doubt in her assertion held my tongue.  So, festering around in my head is the idea that I’m somehow doing something unhealthy by continuing to produce milk while my body is back onto the task of procreation.  And I’ve been feeling bad about myself on some level because of it.  My point in sharing this is to air out the cobwebs of one unproductive thought, and to illustrate that sometimes it is a good exercise to shine the light into all the nooks and crannies of our mental processes so that we can really address what is driving our self perceptions.

Before I was a mom I thought of childbearing as a sacrifice.  Now I realize that it is so much more than that.  It is a gift.  And a major life change.  I don’t think that it’s possible to become a mom and to remain the same.  What changes is unique to each relationship, but the circumstances, the priorities, and the day to day reality all are subject to the change.  Right now, I’m processing this reality with respect to my body, but in truth I’ve been engaged in some form of integration since I became pregnant.  Life in general could be described as a gradual but constant process of transformation, but being a parent seems to amplify that experience for me.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it is so significant that it bears mention because so much of my life right now is about being a mom.  Clearly my body reflects this reality.  I could approach my figure with a controlling spirit, but if there’s one thing that relating to my son and husband has taught me it’s that control is a myth.  Engagement, self-awareness, and authenticity, those approaches to being are supportive in building strong familial bonds.  If I apply the same approach to my relationship to myself and my body, then I’m laying a solid foundation for those relationships outside myself as well.

Thanks for reading.  I’m glad to be on this journey.  I’m glad to have a space to share it and to keep me on track.  Health and wellness are such personal realities.  In sharing our personal stories we realize how much we have in common and supply ourselves with the fortitude to face our most difficult challenges.

I’ve primarily taught alone in a little private studio for eight years.  (This has shaped my teaching practice in some ways for the good and in some ways for the not so good.  But I’ve come to understand that there is no point in chiding myself for reality, so I’ll just leave it at that.)  One thing that I have consistently done during that time is invite other instructors to teach my clients.  We all learn something in the process and I am always grateful for the sharing that happens.  On one occasion, an instructor – I honestly do not remember who – told a client – exactly who, I also forget – that we always keep our eyes open in Pilates.  This client told me about the correction and I’ve been pondering it ever since.  I’d never made a big deal about the eyes open thing, because I didn’t understand the purpose behind the rule.  I love teaching because in practice, the things that we don’t really know or understand all eventually rise to the surface.  If we are diligent, we go ahead and figure those things out as they come up.  Or sometimes we just quietly think about them for a few years….eventually though, the opportunity to really become informed presents itself.

A while back I asked my body worker what she thought about it since eyes open and eyes shut is part of how she checks in with my body at the beginning of every session.  She said something to the effect that we experience our bodies differently based on whether we are looking outward with eyes open or inward with eyes shut.  That got me thinking about how Pilates gives us an opportunity to inhabit our bodies fully while being present to the world around us.  Which is no small feat.  Indeed, it is a very human challenge, bridging this gap between heaven and earth as we do in every living moment.  Now that I teach in a primarily group format, my clients are constantly having to practice self-awareness while interacting with the entirety of the studio (babies, toddlers, equipment, other students, nannies, husbands and all).  For some this may seem less than ideal because it is so important to focus very carefully on their bodies, especially in the case of injuries.  While I can understand that point completely, I actually think that having a place to practice holding one’s own in a somewhat complicated, but controlled environment is a really great and unique opportunity.

As I said it’s a great challenge of our life in the United States: to care for ourselves in the face of a busy and stimulating world.  While it’s one thing to go inward and cultivate a sense of self in stillness and tranquility, it’s another thing all together to do the same while moving through a bustling environment.  To me this yet another demonstration of what sets Pilates apart from other forms of exercise.  Pilates is intelligent exercise for people living in a contemporary urban environment.  Pilates is designed to help us balance out the complications of such a lifestyle.  And it does so beautifully.

What with My Pilates Boost in full swing amidst the bustle of our little family’s days sometimes just doing the exercises feels like a real accomplishment for me, especially given the complicating factor of cross country travel – only now do I feel my normal daily rhythms taking hold again.  When my workout serves me more as a respite than anything else, I might allow myself to close my eyes here and there.  But recently I’ve been catching myself and watching carefully the resulting change in my experience.  On a subtle level I have detected a change when I keep my eyes open.  It reminds me of my beloved dance teacher who would often have us all move around the room making eye contact and tracking the spaces in between the other dancers.  It all seemed rather artsy to me at the time.  But then as now, I do detect a slight enhancement of the movement experience.  Sort of like all the colors brightening a bit in a digital photo editor.

And of course, The Fajardo Method of Holistic Biomechanics ™ has an answer for me.  Did you know that our eyes connect to each and every one of our internal organs via connective tissue?  They do!  This means that on a subtle level when we use our eyes to look around we are stimulating our viscera.  Our organs are in constant motion and they are naturally disposed to be involved in every movement that our bodies make.  Consciously looking with our eyes is a basic way that we initiate movement from the very depths of our bodies.  Isn’t that cool?!  I tell you, this body sleuthing stuff is loads of fun!

There are other ways that Pilates stimulates all levels of our bodies for a truly integrated exercise experience.  But these days I’m enjoying this subtle way in which Pilates enriches our human experience.  Now, I know a couple very good reasons to keep my eyes wide open while I practice my Pilates.

We are back in home!  Travel from coast to coast was no small feat for our family of three, we had our share of moments.  (Given that we just spent time in the woods with two lovely families, one with four kids and the other with six, it seems pitiful to even comment on our trials with one kid, but I suppose for each the challenge according to their number of offspring.)  Upon leaving squam, we agreed:  we actually had a vacation.  The last time that we agreed on that point was in 2009 before we were married.  Our primary mission was accomplished and with that I traveled home a bit lighter.  But returning to life, with all its in-progress-challenges, well that’s a series of other stories to unfold over an unknown length of time.

As I anticipated, all sorts of thoughts inhabited my mind while we were away.  Given our absurd amount of stuff (we could barely carry it all – there really were some airport scenes that were movie-comedy-worthy), we left my laptop at home.  This proved to be something of a disappointment for both us adults at some point during our journey, but that’s the fun of an adventure, having to make do with the unfamiliar.  The upshot is that I have A LOT to share this week, and maybe next depending on how re-entry goes.

I really did try to follow my own instinct and Elizabeth’s advice with regard to arriving at squam with a clean slate of expectations.  But I was (too) eager to share.  I’ve got two years of ideas under my belt and some of them just seem too good to keep to myself.  I would not be true to myself if I did not say that I experienced some disappointment with respect to my expectations.  Damn expectations, they are pretty much designed to be that way aren’t they?!  But at every turn, squam provided me with the salve that only a friendly face and an open ear can provide.  Ultimately, I know that I will find my way, I just don’t have it mapped out.

Here’s the essay that I wrote to organize my thoughts for the Pilates talk that I set out to give on Saturday morning, I’d always planned on posting it here since I figured that I’d probably go off on tangents and it can be equally useful to read ideas as it can be to hear them spoken.

I dedicated this talk to Romana Kryzanowska since it occurred within twenty-four hours of her memorial service in New York city – so close, yet still so far from where I was on the globe. 

Have you ever witnessed the surprising strength of a person under the age of three?  

Now that I have spent every day of the past two plus years with such a person I have a deeper understanding of that strength.  I’m come to see that very small people can be very strong when they align their will with the physical force of their bodies.  In my work as a Pilates instructor I see adults who perform in sharp contrast to that perfect and holistic alignment.  In those simple terms, it is easy to see how much we each stand to benefit from practicing Pilates.

At it’s most fundamental level, Pilates is designed to bring us back into alignment.  Physical alignment.  Mental alignment.  Spiritual alignment.  That all adds up to and alignment of our entire selves.  I have come to think of Pilates training in two categories, there are the moves themselves which are very thoroughly researched and well designed, by Joseph Pilates the originator of the method.  The idea is to move the body with a constant balance of stretch and strength.  In each move, the entire body is called to participate.  In the system of Pilates, we perform movements varied on a few themes in all manner of relationship to force, support, and gravity.  Through the varied practice of the basic concepts, we quickly learn a new and improved way of moving, thinking, and being.  Secondly, there are the concepts underlying the moves.  This is the control piece of the Pilates definition.  It is also the mental piece.  The spiritual piece is perhaps a bit more elusive in definition.  It comes as a direct consequence of the physical and mental practices and their unification.  I think that it’s safe to say that the spiritual aspect of Pilates is what keeps people coming back.  Aside from feeling good on the physical level and stimulating and interesting on the mental level, Pilates tends to leave us feeling uplifted and inspired.

Once the various pieces of ourselves begin to come back into alignment, we often experience a new sense of confidence and enthusiasm for what is possible.  At this point we are well on our way to reclaiming that pure unification of will and physical strength that so typifies the very young.  Now, for a moment, imagine having a clear sense of your desires and a confidence that they will come to fruition.  That right there is what so many of us are looking for in this complicated contemporary life of ours.

I came to Pilates in a rather indirect way.  I completed a locally based certification program that was very removed from the way that Joe Pilates taught the work.  Sadly, this is more common than not at this point in the history of Pilates.  For reasons of which I am not aware, Pilates has been consistently pirated for the past four decades.  By pirated I mean that people have broken away from their teachers and begun putting their own spin on the work.  Because of the infinite variations that exist in our experiences, this can very quickly give way to many disparate things being called by the same name.  Now to be fair, keeping true to the original is a nearly impossible task and what’s more, it’s not that the innovations of all these people leads to bad stuff, it’s just not really Pilates as Joe Pilates designed it to be.  Now that I have had the benefit of being trained by the very person who Joe Pilates put in charge of keeping his method alive, and now that I have had the benefit of learning from many others who have worked closely with her and who feel a very strong degree of motivation to keep the work alive, I have come to realize that staying true to the original while honoring our experiences in present time is a daily challenge.  Not surprisingly, it is a job that requires the unification of will and physical strength.  In order to do the work, we must keep our minds alert, and our bodies sensing.  We must come to understand the physical sensations of properly executing a Pilates workout, we must understand what creates those sensations, and we must share that knowledge.

While it is important to find a teacher who will guide you correctly into the Pilates method, it is equally important to train yourself to be a good learner.  Pilates moves are great, but they are only a small piece of the work.  The concepts are the real heart of the method, and while a teacher can talk till they are blue in the face, only the learner can actually embody the concepts of Pilates.  To my mind, that makes Pilates special.  I see Pilates as part of a transition in our human consciousness.  If we look back to the the period around the turn of the 20th century, with a particular attention on what was happening in physical practices, we find three luminaries:  Frederick Matthias Alexander, Joseph Pilates, and Moshe Feldenkrais.  I like to think of those three as pioneers of a new movement in western culture.  I have a sense of what I call collective consciousness, I am not particularly thorough in my understanding of the term, rather I’ve sort of developed my own definition.  Basically, I think of those three, but I know that there must have been many others who were beginning to understand all sorts of interesting and beneficial things about our bodies and how they work.  They each managed to create a system based on their discoveries in their lifetimes and to share their systems with enough people so that today we can learn and benefit from what they figured out on their own.  Surrounding these individuals, there were most assuredly others who were working on similar types of discoveries and methods and as time passed and we entered the twentieth century more and more people made discoveries and created methodologies of sharing those discoveries and their benefits with others.

Fast forward to the present day and we each have many more ways to learn about our bodies and to support optimal functioning than our counterparts of the late 1800s.  We are indeed living in a time of discovery and development, and the terrain is our own bodies.  For my part, I find this all very exciting and I am passionate about infusing others with my excitement and helping them to live more fully in their bodies.

I am here at this gathering because aside from loving my work with the body.  I also love to cook healthy food from scratch, and make things.  I am the sort of person who used to fantasize about making all my own plates.  I’ve had my own business since I just before my 28th birthday.  Up until then I’d been working in some capacity as a teacher while always studying movement since I graduated from college.  In short, my interests in the human body left me precious little time for craft and cooking and kept me in the city where teachers were abundant.  I’m in a way pulled in two directions by these two loves.  The desire to create my world through craft and the desire to create my life through mastery of my body.  That is not to mention the necessity of earning money.  In my twenties, it became clear that I could earn a decent living as a Pilates instructor and when I became a business owner I had the opportunity to channel a good deal of my creative impulses into the work of building an enterprise.  Overall, it is fulfilling work for me and I continue to be driven by passion.

When I tapped into the world of taproot, I felt a sense of belonging there.  But by the time I’d arrived, I’ve established myself in my own work and because of that, I came as a creator in the broader sense of the word.  My daily work is in tending to my body, tending to my son, and tending to the bodies of my clients.  I still craft and cook, but the most of my creative impulses go into my Pilates practice, personal and professional.  This has led me to an interpretation of what folks like me are doing in the arena of our bodies.  We are helping us all to live more fully in our bodies and in doing so we are making our unique contributions to our collective advancement.  Because of who I am and because of my two loves, I see a relationship between the two.  I see that making something that we will use and cherish with our own two hands gives us a sense of empowerment and presence in this world of ours.  I see that understanding our bodies and having control to move with grace and power has a similar effect.  I see how both are rooted in being ourselves.  I see how both give us a sense of influence on the world around us.

We all see the world through the lens of our passion and in so doing are able to draw connections between what may seem to others to be disparate things.  When I first entered the blogosphere I was amazed at how many blogs there were about food.  After some reflection, I arrived at my first conclusion about why this is so (I’ve since deepened my understanding), we each eat every day.  Food is one of our basic commonalities.  If I follow that line of logic, then our bodies are clearly another shared experience.  But at this point in history, our bodies are still easily objectified or ignored.  We have a harder time embracing talk or thought about our bodies than we do about projects that we do with them.  I think that this indicates room for improvement and healing.  I think that this indicates that these days, our bodies are one of the frontiers of our collective advancement.  The groundwork has been laid by generations of study and development.  Now it is just a matter of each of us delving into the work at hand.  Given my experience in this arena, I am comfortable in making a guarantee that only benefits await us on the journey deeper into ourselves.

Pilates has become rather elitist and sometimes I’ve struggled to reconcile my inner hippie with my chosen profession.  It seems to me that this was important in that it needed to be carefully passed from person to person.  This is a costly enterprise.  But now with the internet and increasing advances in technology, it is more possible to share the work with a broader audience.  This is an exciting time in the development of the Pilates method.  I am eager to share the work.  Now that I am a mom and I understand what a day in the life of a mom is like, I am that much more inspired to offer Pilates in a way that is accessible to people who cannot get to a studio but who have an interest in learning the work and reaping the benefits.  For my part, I am not as available to be in studio since being with my son is my top priority.  Building a teaching practice in which I can do what I love and share what I know on a timetable that works for our family is also part of how my interest in the internet developed.

It is worth mentioning that Pilates was originally taught in a different way than we commonly see it taught today.  When you came to Joe and Clara’s studio, you were told that you had to come three times a week.  You were given lessons, but you were expected to memorize your routine from day one, and very soon, you were only supervised in your workout.  Your teacher did not stay only with you for your entire workout.  You were expected to practice the mat exercises at home.  I learned this information from Jay Grimes, who is one of the teachers that we still have with us who both learned from Joe and Clara Pilates directly and who continued to study with Romana after their passing.  The question that I mulled over for a few years before I went ahead and changed my teaching practice to more closely reflect what Joe and Clara did was why can’t the people of today be empowered in the work in the same way as they could back then.  The answer is, of course, that we can.  And now that I’ve begun to teach in this way I see it with my own eyes.  I have become a much better teacher because the focus in my studio is on the learner not the teacher (thanks to Amanda I was reading John Holt’s books as I was devising my new teaching format and that helped a lot with the philosophical basis for what I’m doing).  And the clients are much better learners because they are empowered as such.  And the Pilates itself?  Well, of course it’s better.  It’s coming from within just as it should.

I have my ideas and I sincerely hope to see them come to fruition.  How that will happen, I don’t exactly know yet.  But I do know this:  Pilates has played a major role in who I am today.  It has given me the confidence to first acknowledge my dreams and then to follow through with action to make them reality.  Along with that, it has given me a way of understanding us and a sense that I can make a positive contribution to our community.  With that I do not have to worry about the how, because I know that I come from a solid foundation.  I cannot think of a better way to begin any worthwhile venture.

You would think that the inevitability of death would mean that when it arrives I am not surprised.  Death’s wake has left me in a state of disbelief two times in one week.  In all the old ways, I’ve slipped away from my Pilates community in the past few years.  This blog and my little studio are what keep me in the work.  That’s where I am when I hear the news that Romana is no longer with us.  And I don’t know what to write or say, only that it bears my sincere and heartfelt acknowledgement.

When I first met Romana in 2004 I cried.  Because I knew I was meeting her so late in her life.  It felt late in my own life, but I was lucky to have what time I did with her and I made the most of it.  Once my own self-involved tears were shed I came to see the situation more broadly and to realize that this is very much a human condition.  We are brilliant innovators, but we each only live so long and only give what we can in every moment, alone we each burn at the equivalent of one small candle.  We become bigger through the creation of our unique contributions, through the relationships that we have, through the memories that those interactions create.  In all those actions of a  lifetime we pass the flame back and forth and depending on our life, by the time we are done, we may leave quite a bonfire behind when we finally say goodbye.

In the face of that enormity our lives are brief.  But it is so important to remember our humanity, our mortality.  Our humanity gives us the opportunity to do what we do and at the same time puts a limit on us.  I think that the limit is the compelling part of it.  The limit is what gives us the drive to share and to expand.  Because without that expansion, we would each be only the light of a single candle.  It is the sharing and the love of our relationships that creates the bright burning fires.

Joseph Pilates created the fire, Romana breathed more and more life into it so that by the time she said goodbye, she was at the center of a great bonfire.  She has left us all with a great gift in the work of Pilates itself.  But perhaps even more, she’s done an excellent job of ensuring that the flame will keep burning, long after Mr. Pilates’ goodbye, and long after her own.

At her purest form, Romana was loving and generous.  We have proof of that in how many more people now have the work of Pilates to share with others.  And now, we may each honor her by continuing on with the great work that she kept alive and by wishing her peace now that her work is done.

Love is all around always.  Romana reminded us of that often.

WEEKLY STATS  Weight: 150.5   Waist:  33″  Hips:  40″  Thighs:  22″

The good news first:  I have been very diligent about my workouts.  And while my stats are decidedly unimpressive, the photos reveal that I am steadily growing slimmer.  So my outlook remains good.  I must pat myself on the back because I’ve managed to keep up and thrive in my Pilates practice during a very challenging time.

The bad news second:  Last week was the peak of challenge – days on end without a single stop – I could not believe how much there was to do in every single moment.  And I’m still recovering.  Today is another photo shoot day in my studio which means a lot of work for me.  But it is the last of four and I’m soooo happy to have that project under my belt.  It will be a while before I actually have the photos to work with but my part of the project is almost done.  It was more than I really could do, so it will be good to return to “normal”.

Who would I be without my constantly developing thoughts and ideas about Pilates and life in general?  Today that’s all on hold as I wrap up this wonderful project which has truly been a lot of fun and a great satisfaction for me.

Today, I’ll try a novel approach and take on just one thing at a time.  Starting….now.  Wishing every reader a balanced day!

WEEKLY STATS  Weight: 151.5   Waist:  32.5″  Hips:  40″  Thighs:  22.5″

This week’s food for thought, at least in my little world, is weighing the benefits of self practice vs having regular lessons.  Sometime in the past few days, I had a look at this post and I totally agree when one is laying the foundation for a personal Pilates practice or a teaching practice – this will take about ten years, by the way.  And I myself spent just about ten years adhering to Andrea’s line of thinking.  But then my life happened.  Mainly, I had a kid.  And everything changed.  Except my passion for Pilates.  (And a few other things but I will resist the temptation to digress).

I’ve come to see Pilates as far more accessible that I did before, because now I think of it so much more in terms of movement rather that a precise expression of an ideal form.  If I think about how the original Pilates’ studio operated, I imagine the work infused with a different sort of zeal than how it is performed today (instructor-supervised, rather than instructor-guided workouts).  I know that there are very good reasons for having individual attention and for how we have evolved to the point that we are at now with Pilates – but clients always received individual attention in Pilates.  Now it’s just undivided attention for at least forty five minutes, which frankly, is pretty intense.  I know that in many ways we are each desperate for attention and individual lessons give us that.  But we are also desperate for movement.  And we are also desperate for being more of who we are.  When I teach individuals, I have trouble keeping people moving at the more vigorous pace that they can maintain when movement is the initial focus and I tend to dominate the arena.  That’s me, my style, my personality, etc.  And it’s my job to keep myself in check to be the best that I can be.

When I talk to clients who have had lessons for years and still feel incapable of putting together their own workout I have the sense that they haven’t really had the benefit of learning Pilates.  While clearly they were experiencing benefits from their lessons (they would not have continued otherwise), I think that perhaps the forest was lost for the trees.  There are pitfalls in any methodology of learning.  Knowing the pitfalls and employing a method of checks and balances is the key to overcoming them.  In my teaching practice, it was time for a change.  It was time to focus on movement.  It was time to focus on the learner.  It was time to put each and every client in charge of their workouts.  Eventually things may swing back the other way.  But for now this is working.

While I can completely understand the assertion that books and videos are not the best way to learn, we are living in a world where many people are doing just that and thriving.  I find it remarkably exciting.  Given that these days I’m mostly in home, but also highly motivated and engaged, learning over the internet is great for me.  I read a lot, and it affords me the opportunity to engage with what I’m reading personally and integrate the material into my life in a way that is appropriate for me.  When we learn from another person, in person, their persona is part of the equation.  It is easy to lose ourselves in that experience.  Especially if we admire the teacher.  While this makes for a really wonderful experience that is bursting with enthusiasm and love, it can be limiting in terms of how deeply the work can really effect us because while we are in the presence of brilliance, we are effectively in the shadow.  Pilates is full of brilliant stars, people who came to the work after careers in the limelight.  These beautiful people offer us lots of wonderfully useful information and inspiration, but they can also outshine some of us who don’t burn quite as bright.

In terms of my work having a kid did three things for me:  I completely revamped my teaching format, my self-practice became my only practice, and because it quickly became clear that I was at risk of losing my mind, I began writing regularly.  These three changes have all had a tremendous impact on how I look at Pilates because more than ever before I am in the power seat.  (I also believe that becoming a mom called me to be everything that I am which is also a contributing factor to putting me in the power seat when it comes to living my life in general.)  When we teach, we learn, so revising my teaching practice and writing about Pilates also keep my personal practice stimulating.

I had to reorganize how I teach because above all I want to be a hands-on mom.  I gave careful consideration as to how I could do both the work of my profession and the work of being a mom well.  I thought long and hard about how to optimize my teaching practice.  I managed to eliminate what was draining and challenging to me and maximize what I feel is most important about Pilates:  empowering each and every person who practices the method to be more fully alive.  This meant emphasizing the learner and de-emphasizing the teacher.  In my studio, everybody learns the system from day one.  This means that within a fairly short period of time, clients know the exercises, the order, the set up, and they can perform them all in the desired amount of time.  With all that out of the way and with their bodies trained to move, I can do my real job which is to continually introduce concepts which help each person to refine their workout.

Taking lessons is costly in time and in money.  While I have enjoyed the benefits of individual lessons for years, at this point in my Pilates practice, I know enough to give myself a proper workout.  It’s more important for me to be close to my boy than to have a lesson.  What’s more is that I have hundreds of pages of notes to peruse.  I am not without information to constantly be improving my Pilates practice.  Additionally, I’ve dabbled in other methods recently which has enhanced my understanding of Pilates.  I took my first Pilates lesson in August 2000.  I truly have not been bored since.

There is one aspect of lessons which is quite important and that cannot be replaced by any amount of knowledge or enthusiasm:  the external feedback.  Frederick Mathias Alexander was a contemporary of Joe Pilates and in his studies he came to realize that our sensing of our bodies is woefully inaccurate.  I am missing that piece for now, I rely on my memory and notes from hundreds of lessons, and I have mirrors when I really need to have an accurate idea of where I am in space.  Because of my injuries and perhaps just because of who I am, being a mom involves a considerable amount of physical strain.  Keeping myself relatively pain free and optimistic was the mainstay of my practice until I started My Pilates Body Boost.  I was not trying to constantly get better with Pilates, I have been doing that sort of expansion in my family life.  For now Pilates is my source of personal comfort, it is not my cutting edge.  But as I said, it still affords me daily inspiration which is part of how it comforts me.

Writing generally really has pulled me back from the brink many times over the past year.  Now that I’m writing more consistently about Pilates, I’m enjoying another expression of that age old truth that we learn as we teach.  Putting my ideas about Pilates into writing, with the hope that some others will experience some benefit from my thoughts, gives me a structure for my work in the studio.  Given that I do not work amongst other teachers, it keeps me engaged with broader world of Pilates in some small way which is good for morale when I have a sense that my career is on hold while I do the very important – but shamefully under-acknowledged – work of mothering the next generation.

All this is to say that there is not one way.  This is a most exciting time in the world of Pilates, the work has been shared with so many wonderful people that we each have many ways to access this amazing method.  We can put together a personal practice that is enhanced by a wide variety of informational sources.  The most important thing is always that we honor ourselves, reflect honestly on our work, and allow our practice to evolve as our lives unfold.  With those cornerstones, a Pilates practice can help us to be more and more of who we are.  I can’t imagine a better result than that.

In my little world of possibilities, my small studio, people will often bring in pieces of advice that they’ve been given with respect to their body.  Such as, when you have an injury, don’t move!  This one really gets my goat.  Try to not move.  Just try.  Are you still breathing?  You’re moving.  We are made to move.  Movement is synonymous with being alive.  So I modify the don’t move advice in practice as such:  when you have an injury, move correctly.  Pilates helps with that.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Pilates as layers of movement.  To get the most out of a Pilates practice, one has to master all levels of movement.  There is the first and most important layer, the choreography of the exercises.  Just that layer of movement is genius.  There are lots and lots of good reasons for the moves that make up the Pilates system, which is why they yield such great results.

Then there are the layers of movement beneath the surface, the coordination that eventually turns any move you do into a Pilates move.  I often refer to this as using the “Pilates muscles.”  In Pilates we have a standard coordination which many call the two-way stretch.  Beyond that universal muscle coordination, we have many more intricate coordinations that are specific to certain exercises.

Pilates has taught me so much and I look forward to all that it will teach me in the future.  For now I’m grateful for this pearl of wisdom (I will always think of Trish Garland when I use that sweet phrase):
The one thing you can count on in life is movement, so make every move count.

I’d been hearing about this book for a while (and just checked it out from the library) so when I saw that the author gave a TED talk, I was eager to watch.  As I am forever drawing links between Pilates and my life as a whole, I got to thinking about why Pilates is such an ideal form of exercise for introverts.  One of my tried and true clients is a self-professed introvert and she’s been giving me some insights into this topic as well.

One of the characteristics about Pilates that I first noticed when I started teaching is that it has a repetitive aspect to it.  Even though the system is made up of several hundred exercises, the way to approach it is to do a (mostly set) sequence of exercises.  From day to day there are certainly little changes that get made for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly it’s a set sequence.  It is a practice which has many connotations, in this case I’m focusing on the mental aspect of it.  While the same sequence is performed regularly, the experience of it is never the same.  Because the body is never exactly the same.  But in order to recognize the subtle differences from day to day, a person must be turned on mentally and focused inward.  If Pilates is just moves, then it will get boring really fast.

I learned this because I had some clients who did get bored and so I was constantly grappling with their experience, trying to understand why they were bored.  I, on the other hand, was never bored.  I continue to be surprised with what I learn every day with Pilates, be it in my own practice or in my teaching practice.  And I am constantly amazed at how this work that in some ways is so simple can constantly draw me into new ways of seeing bodies and experiencing my own body.  While I don’t really know for sure, the conclusion that I eventually reached about these folks who get bored with Pilates is that they are engaging with the work at its most outward levels.  As I already pointed out, at that level, the work is fairly repetitive and it seems like no big deal.  But layer those moves onto a precise and continuous flow of internal coordination and wow, you’ve got something special on your hands.

Which is why I think introverts can grasp the magic of Pilates a little quicker than extroverts.  If a person comes to Pilates with a comfort with the internal terrain of their body, with the inner workings of their mind, with a quietness of soul, then Pilates offers layer upon layer of material for exploration instantly.  On the other hand, if a person is more comfortable in the outer, social arenas, they will be more likely to initially engage with the moves and the apparatus rather than with their own inner workings.  True, the moves themselves, and the apparatus are pretty cool and so they are a great “hook” into the work.  And I am not in any way trying to get in between any person and their relationship to Pilates.  We are each a unique balance of so many characteristics, introvert and extrovert being just one of many spectrums that we all fall upon.

This is more just to offer another way of understanding Pilates.  We all have a bit of introversion in ourselves.  If, upon beginning a Pilates workout or lesson, we remind ourselves to let that part of ourself fully express itself, we will get just a little more juice out of our Pilates workout.  And in doing so enjoy it all the more.

Here’s to embracing your introverted self – even if it’s just a wee bit – with Pilates!