For health: Pilates or Yoga?

  There are innumerous amount of articles and discussions on this topic, but as I got asked it so often, I’d like to share my point of view here.

 First of all, in my honest opinion Pilates and Yoga are often have been misconcepted all way around – mostly, I think for marketing reasons, as both practices became a popular in fitness industry, therefore it a something to sell, often sacrificing the real value in it, as market demands specific values to be put in to make profit.

So if we think about Yoga - an ancient practice with a deep philosophical system behind it, it has specific goals.

“The final goal is to differentiate the soul from everything what is not the soul” – citing Shandor Remete “ Shadow Yoga”. For those who wants to go deeper – the are many ancient texts about Yoga (all different kinds of it) – you can investigate what yoga actually set as a goal and which instruments you will use on the way.

  Shortly saying, hatha yoga for example, may improve your physical condition - if practiced under the guidance of good and experienced teacher, but again give you no guarantees of achieving a great health. Again, full explanation of my last statement may take time and appropriate level of opponent for discussion.

  Having some yoga experience ( I’m saying under the guidance of real yogi with great experience, not a yoga teachers you’d meet at mass market gyms etc.) – I wouldn’t put health as a first goal of such spiritual practice as yoga.

 Pilates, on other hand stated in his book: “The physical fitness is the first pre-requisite of happiness”© and” Contrology-is the full coordination of mind, body and spirit” ©. Pilates method does not work with your connection to the higher power or God, but focuses on connection of your mind into the body, teaching how to control the body and coordinate it with the mind and spirit. More about Pilates method -in the book of Joseph Pilates “Return to life” and “Your health”.

  Properly designed Pilates session will determine your goals for physical conditioning and skilled teacher on the way will work on your concentration and breath as a powerful tool to work on the mind. For designing a session teacher will make a postural assessment and test your condition to create a program (private setting).

Finishing this short (but possible to extend much more) text, I will put in one more quote from J. Pilates: “Where flat feet, curvature of the spine, protruding stomach, stooped shoulders, hollow chest, bow legs, and knocked knee conditions are cured through corrective exercises” ©

In Pilates we* do focus on your health at physical health first ( *we-experienced Pilates professionals, who were properly trained and certified).

 With respect to both Pilates and Yoga and all my great teachers,

Radionycheva Nadya

Second generation Pilates master Teacher 

Lolita’s Legacy Educator