Written by : Lucia Farina
So much of the essence of Pilates is about taking load off of the joints. The Spine specifically.
The exercises get you moving your spine, organically it would, as you work through the repertoire. By the end, you would have moved your spine in 4 directions. That’s the aim.
The space IN the movement however, that’s something you have to create yourself. It sort of relates to our previous blog, (Bye Bye Tension, I don’t need you!) which speaks about using the deeper, more internalised muscles to find a softening externally.
When I was training on rope/ corde lisse for my Performing Arts diploma, (which was in fact circus school), we were always told “a tight body is a light body”. This was in relation to doing partner work and also the flying work or aerial components, where becoming more tense in the muscles, or becoming rigid made it easier to pull yourself up or to stand on your base (the person who does the heavy lifting/ holds you up).
That made perfect sense for that practice however I never found it useful in this method. It limited me. Squeezing my muscles makes me feel stuck when practicing. No ability to flow!
For Pilates, I find the saying, a “long body is a light body” far more fitting. Now, to be super clear, we are not talking about body weight, how many KG a person is. We are talking about the lightness created by LIFTING up and out of the joints. A lift coming from the center of the body, the core, the powerhouse. Often, from the waist area, with the idea being about not dumping into the joints but instead, pulling against gravity and supposedly allowing the joints to move with more ease and less compression.
Sometimes it’s about finding your midline and stretching it lengthways! Sometimes it’s the lift of your rib cage. How and where you lift is really dictated by the exercise, the purpose of it, even though, on different days and when training with various teachers, the intention can be changed slightly, depending on where we focus the root of our lift, in the exercise . There is lifting component is valid for each and exercise
Lifting and lightening the load in Pilates can also really encourage what a lot of people call “Good form”.
"Good form" is really about being in the position / placement that allows for effective and efficient movement. That’s literally it. And that changes person to person, because we are all so different and have different bodies. So it’s about what will give YOU the more efficient movement. Lightening the load can often assist in finding that, as it alleviates compression and creates space.
I’d like to touch on how lightening the load in Pilates can actually advance your practice. Once you find how to lighten the load, in my opinion, you’ve managed to go deeper into the work and that’s because you went deeper into your body. Which would be those deeper muscles that we spoke on in the last blog.
Finding a less grippy way of moving in Pilates is in fact, advancing your practice. Doing my fancy complex exercises is one part of advancing but doing a more simple exercise in a deeper way, with less tension and more true connection and LIFT, also shows that your connection is deepening.
So the next time an exercise feels tricky or “impossible” try working your lift and lighten the load to see how it could help. Feeling floaty after a class is generally a really good feeling! Go get it!!
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