Why Pilates is good for Yoga people?

What Pilates can be useful for the yoga practitioners and a yoga teachers

   We’re not trying to argue about which method is the most effective and also we’re not trying to say the Pilates Method of body conditioning is the only one method on this planet.

But rather, it will be subjective opinion of the Pilates instructor, who is practicing yoga for a long time.

Any yoga people have heard the name “Pilates”, there is a general thinking that its great method for the spine health, some of the yoga practitioners maybe even dropped in for one or two sessions just to understand what is the system. I started to practice Pilates at the time when I was practicing yoga as well, but I stayed within the method for more than 12 years now and now I have a conclusion that the Pilates itself can make it easier the profession of the yoga teacher and also can prepare the body to the practice of yoga.

   How and in what way to Pilates may be useful for people who is interested only in yoga in its “pure” style?

  It’s not a secret that every human’s physical body has its own specific characteristics: the length of their hamstrings, flexibility of the spine, usual alignment of the head feet and other parts of the body at in relation to each other in space.

  We can continue this list with the:  the characteristic type of breathing, set of emotional responses, different “programs” in the mind etc. All these has its reflection on the condition of the energetical body. Physical body is just a precise copy of the subtle body. The internal changes cannot be separated from the external changes. Color and the condition of the skin, the breath pattern, and movement characteristics, the muscle balance - all these we can combine into one big term “Posture”.

Posture is the foundation of the Pilates method. To explore understanding of this term in Pilates I suggest the following explanation- good posture is the alignment of the segments of the body in relation to the vertical axis with which each segment and the body in general are less stressed with the gravity force.

“Habitual posture” is the alignment of the segments of the body in relation to the vertical axis, which can greatly differentiate from the perfect one - the most functional one condition of the body. It’s just a physical reflection of the habitual for the certain person lifestyle, work sport, climate, emotions, traumas, genes… absolutely everything what is forming life.  We’re “wearing” in the posture same as the clothes- made with the fabric made by our own mind.

Posture is an engineering construction which is changing due to changes in mind patterns.

Every subtle change in one place will inevitably lead to the changes in all the rest of the body - when we are changing only one element of the posture, we will change the condition of all of the body. Length and direction of the changes, depending on the body awareness and regular practice, on the goals and skills how to use the instruments, will influence the process.

For example - if you are targeting to relax the lower part of the chest - if it’s needed to achieve the release the spine from excessive load, we will influence on the all the breath pattern, work of all muscles of the body, change of the angles of the joint conjunctions, change of the range of motion in certain segment - which will lead to the change in the quality of performance of asana, which inevitably will bring you to the change of all of your yoga practice. Will those changes be aligned with your goals, will depending on how good you understand what you are doing.

There is one more sample of the popular task which is standing in front of the yoga teachers - how to help the person who come to your class to do the side split or samakonasana.

I will answer what I would be doing, as a Pilates teacher - shortly and in schemes, using the language of traditional biomechanics:

-I will assess the condition of the spinal curves, specifically the lumbar part and the muscular balance of the client (postural assessment is a big part of the basic training of Pilates teachers)

-Afterwards, based on the result the posture assessment, I will focus my attention on the strengthening or stabilization of the deep core muscles (“core”  in Pilates ), improvement  of mobility of the ankle joints, strengthening their gluteal  - for beginning even this is enough. You can just start to learn basic Hundreds.

   Main goals of it:

-realizing of the neutral alignment of the lumbar spine regaining the natural functional curve.

-strengthening of the muscles of the core which will be participating in holding the functional curse of the spine which will become a natural for the person

-Will develop the habit a natural lengthening of the breathing cycle under the condition of the maintaining the good control over the spinal alignment and work of the core muscles.

Result:

Change more often decreasing of the habitual load on the lumbar spine and the deep hip flexors. It will help to improve the elasticity of adductors. Proper work with the core muscles will lead to increase of the stability of the pelvis and shoulder girdle. Stability of the pelvis can allow bigger mobility of the legs in a hip joints, stability of the shoulder girdle will change the breathing pattern towards the lengthening, due to decrease of hypertension of the trapezius muscle and neck. Kidneys will feel easier, lungs easier, heart easier and your samakonasana is closer.

  I will continue to practice the side split, just adding to the program of the exercise named Hundreds (English version).

I won’t focus so much on the stretching of the adductor muscles but I will continue to study the form in the context of the sequence of preparatory forms.

  Why stretching the adductor muscles in attempt to make a side split not only ineffective, but also dangerous for the health? all what happened to the body - has a reason. Shortening of the adductor muscles - is their consequence, reason- body requires stability.

   When stabilizing muscles are not doing their work effectively, then the global muscles “movers “ will come to help - in this case adductor muscles. when we stretch those muscles, we decrease the general stability of the body, which will lead to the risk of the injury during the simplest action - for example after the class, when you were actually stretching, when you will try to get the bag from the floor or taking it out of the car- make you finish up with a pain in the lumbar spine.

Simply stretching the muscles, which are responsible for certain set of movements, without studying the source of their shortening, reminds the pulling of the rope - we pulled the muscles in the body and it will more actively try to preserve its stability ,making them less elastic, because body already has created the stereotype of stabilizing its self through engaging global musculature, so for that to switch off this function, we have to increase the awareness of the movement, using the local stabilizer muscles and its normal function . Simply speaking - before the deep core muscles won’t start to work, as it should be, mobility of the hip joints won’t increase.

Next example is the shoulder stand or Sarvangasana.

Let’s think that during the execution of this asana person experiencing some difficulties - he can’t breathe normally, the pressure is increasing, or he cannot take the pelvis off the floor by himself. use of the supportive props - chair, wall, blocks, ropes often as offered as a help as a preparatory work with asana.

This will help to push the person into the form, but what for?...  Person is not ready to it! from my point of view - this is the work with a consequence, but not with a reason. Couldn’t climb up - will put the chair under, will hang out of the chair, muscles will stretch -temporary effect will give the illusion of the approaching of the asana, client is happy. What is bad?

Let’s look where is the source which limit possibilities to perform Sarvangasana from the point of view of Pilates teacher.

1.Insufficient mobility of the spine and consequently all of the body

2.Weak core muscles not only restrict body to maintain the normal intra-abdominal pressure during the execution of the asana but also not allowing the superficial more muscles effectively do their job

3.Hypertonic upper body increase tension of the breathing diaphragm, muscles of the neck and shoulders - for sure is a limitation in this asana, not only impossible to breathe in it, but also get out of it is not possible. Because arms cannot rotate well, pressure of the body weight is shifted to the neck, we are struggling in this form as a result.

Hypertonic upper shoulders are a result of unstable shoulder girdle. The paradox is that non-stable (weak body) is becoming limited in the range of motion and excessively tense in superficial musculature. So strong at a first glance person which has big musculature, may be less prone to perform most of the functional movements then, let’s say then the accountant, who is regularly working on their awareness of the body with the use of the Pilates, for example, because his efforts for execution of the same action would be more rational.

Stretching the superficial musculature without making the stability work will lead to more and more tightening of the muscles because it will be only the attempt to takeoff the consequence ignoring the reason.

Exercise from Pilates repertoire which will help to prepare the body execution of the Shoulder stand would be for example this Swan dive prep.

Step-by-step studying of this movement from basic form which is teach the mobilizing the shoulder blades, till the more advanced versions - which are targeting the stabilizing of the well aligned scapulas, will lead to stability of the shoulder girdle, increasing of the mobility of the shoulder joints, disappearing of the excessive tone of the muscles of the upper body, changing of the breathing cycle towards lengthening, normalizing the blood circulation, pressure and so on.

By studying the system of the interactions of the different parts of the body, we can pretty easy to fix each, which caused the difficulty in making the asana.

We have only five directions of the movement:

-Bending forward, or flexion (exhale),

-Bending back (extension) back (inhale)

-side bends to the right and to the left (lateral flexion)

- twist of the body or rotation (breath retention)

   All the rest is only the combination of the five above.

Yoga as well as Pilates they influence the spine by different movements. 5 directions of the movements are dictated by the spinal biomechanics.

Importance of the spinal condition and it’s influence on the human’s body on all levels today is understandable for everyone. There are many methods to work with the spine. Pilates is only one of those methods, but it’s simplicity and effectiveness make this method really genius instrument.

Original of Pilates sequence consists of 34 exercises. For preparatory work you are enough to use 15 basic exercises, which are the keys. It’s very simple-as simple that it’s even difficult to believe in the effectiveness of the method.

Important you have to remember when you started a Pilates method that it’s not only physical exercise, Pilates is a lifestyle which is not end up with a limited set of rules but also releasing from the habitual stereotypes or movements in the white sands of the world which is increasing your strength due to rational use of the body.

Basically it’s not that important and what is the name has the system- the most important is the influence of the system on your own condition, and the more instruments you are have studied, the more easy would be to find the most appropriate tool for their achieving the goal.