The Guiding Principles of Pilates
Joseph Pilates developed his fitness method with one overriding goal: to give people a way to achieve “true health.” He defined true health as “the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body” with a well-balanced “holy trinity” of body, mind, and spirit. The guiding principles described in this chapter are fundamental to learning and practicing the Pilates method.
More importantly, you will follow these principles to achieve the fundamental Pilates goals of uniform development, deep healthy breathing, flexible and decompressed spine and joints, robust circulation, and the trinity of body/mind/spirit.
Concentration and Awareness
Concentration and awareness are like the macro and micro focus functions of a single lens. You need both to be able to concentrate on the specifics and to be aware of the whole. Concentration enables you to make precise controlled movements. To do any Pilates movement or exercise correctly, you must be able to focus your attention and intense concentration on certain body parts or specific skills. Every movement matters.
Awareness makes you “present” in every Pilates movement and exercise. In the course of any series of Pilates movements, your body is in a continual state of evolution. With each succeeding repetition your muscles become more responsive, your joints become more flexible, and so on. Being present in your workout enables you to sense the changes and continue to challenge and develop your body in new ways with each movement repetition.
When you repeat a movement, therefore, you are using a new, evolved body As a result, each repetition is a new experience, rather than a remembered response. As tight places open up, weak places grow strong, breathing capacity expands, your mind awakens, and your body and mind respond with movements subtly adapted to do more and get more from each subsequent repetition. There’s no better way to know your body, than to really notice everything it does.

Visualization
Concentration and awareness allow you to use your mind creatively through the process of visualization as you do your workout, an important part of any Pilates session. Using visualization, you remain aware of and concentrated on your movements and surroundings as you draw upon mental images to help you achieve the exercises’ movements and positions. In this way, you experience each repetition anew.
You might imagine, for example, that your spine rolls like a wheel when you do the Roll-Up, or that your spine stretches upward as though attached to the ceiling by a rubber cord when you do the Spine Stretch. Pilates is a mental and physical workout, and when you do it right, it’s engaging, satisfying, and never boring.

Using Your Powerhouse
Pilates designated the area of the torso between the lower ribs and hips as the “Powerhouse” or center. He believed that correctly developing this area of the body is crucial to mastering his method of body conditioning, and thereby achieving health. A strong Powerhouse forms the foundation for all Pilates movements; energy emanates from the center and flows outward toward your hands and feet. This principle is referred to as “centering.”
Building and maintaining a strong center is essential to the Pilates method, and for good health in general, and there are many reasons for this:
• A strong center supports and decompresses your spine, thereby enabling healthy, graceful movement and providing a natural “corset”
for your vital organs.
• A strong center promotes proper breathing because it enables you to fully expand and deflate your lungs.
• A strong center gives you more energy because generating each movement from your center makes all of your movements more
efficient.
• A strong center gives you better control over all of your movements, which in turn improves your posture, poise, grace, and balance.

Disciplined, precise, controlled movements are hallmarks of the Pilates method. Pilates originally named his method “Contrology” because he believed that you could become fit and healthy only if you trained your mind to control the actions of your body.

Following your teacher’s directions and your own internal motivations is a very important part of the precise control principle. When you study with a Pilates instructor, that person will teach you a very specific set of movements and steps for each Pilates exercise.

Flowing Natural Movement
Every Pilates exercise is made up of a series of smooth, fluid movements; you never see a Pilates student strain or jerk to achieve a correct position or movement. The whole-body approach of Pilates fosters connected, graceful, natural movement.

When you do Pilates, you don’t stop and start and you don’t move too quickly or too slowly You maintain a strong, controlled pace that takes you smoothly through the process of one movement and on to the next. And you carefully coordinate all of your movements with your breathing, to give them even more grace, strength, and connected flow.
As you move from exercise to exercise, you make each transition with the same kind of controlled, flowing movement. Because your natural, daily activities involve many transitions, the principle of flowing movement is a valuable one to practice. Remember, Pilates is a re-education of your body and mind.

The Fundamental Goals of Pilates
The fundamental goals of Pilates are uniform development, proper breathing, flexible and decompressed spine and joints, robust circulation, and a unity of body/mind/spirit. When you focus your mind to control and coordinate your movements, your body develops more uniformly, and your spine and joints achieve a healthy range of motion, thereby promoting increased circulation and breathing capacity This, in turn, brings more life-giving oxygen to all your tissues.

Proper Breathing
Remember that proper breathing is both a guiding principle and a goal of the Pilates method because it is so essential to good health. Joseph Pilates designed his method with an overriding goal of improving the way the human body is nourished through breathing. The human body needs oxygen, and the lungs are responsible for feeding that oxygen to the body’s cells through the bloodstream. When you breathe in, your lungs fill with air and extract oxygen from it; when you breathe out, your lungs push out carbon dioxide and eliminate waste products your body doesn’t need. When you breathe properly, you have more stamina, feel more alive and alert, and are better able to concentrate.

Pilates breathing is an equally important part of the “circulation equation.” When you breathe fully and deeply, expanding and contracting your lungs completely with each breath, you help boost the oxygen in your bloodstream.