Later On

Worth reading. Pilates is an amazingly effective process—and, as The Wife observed early on, it’s “sticky,” unlike Feldenkreis. Feldenkreis can give you very interesting awareness of various aspects of your body structure and muscles, but it’s like a tour of a science exhibit: quite fascinating, but not much impact on daily life. With Pilates, in contrast, the work induces persisting changes, so that (for example) one obtains better balance, better posture, etc., even after the sessions.

Obviously, progress is always possible, and in any event it’s a process. I don’t know that you would ever “complete” the work. But so far the continuing improvements have certainly been more than worth the cost and (relatively mild) effort.

If you have access to a good Pilates instructor with a well-equipped studio, I’d encourage you to give it a go for 10 private sessions if you can. That’s 5 weeks at two sessions a week, enough to get an idea of what it can do.

I was told that Joseph Pilates said, “10 sessions to change your mind, 20 sessions to change your body, 30 sessions to change your life.” Our instructor commented that over and over she’s seen people start Pilates and then seem to start renewal in other parts of their life. Of course, people who start Pilates are already exhibiting interest in renewal, but Pilates had the interesting view that getting your body to do these specific things while exercising control (his own name for the discipline was “Contrology”)—that develops your brain in new ways, the brain being intimately involved since it, after all, is what controls the body. Indeed, controlling the body and internal processes while maintaining awareness of sensory input from internal and external sources so that the organism can respond optimally: that’s the brain’s job description and primary duties. This consciousness, rational thinking, language thing is a Johnny-come-lately and just a tiny sideline of what the brain does—save, of course, this new environment allowed the emergence and evolution of memes, whose own universe of struggle and development so affects our own lives (and evolution).

At any rate, Pilates is certainly correct that learning these new movements and how to exercise the muscle control to do them must of necessity lead to development within the brain, and since the mind resides there somehow, those changes will undoubtedly have ramifications for one’s mind. So perhaps the practice of Pilates does indeed open one’s outlook for new learning and development.

Try it and see.

UPDATE: The idea of signing up for Spanish classes came to me a month after I started Pilates. FWIW.