Whilst there may be vigorous debate, and plenty of argument on social media’s Pilates teacher forums, it seems that there is usually broad agreement on the ‘teach the body in front of you’ mantra. I take this to usually mean that we shouldn’t adopt a ‘one size fits all’ approach to teaching, and make allowance for individual capacity, restrictions, pathology etc.
There wouldn’t seem to be much to take issue with there, except that (while I’ll never argue that human bodies aren’t totally amazing) we are so much more than our bodies. At least in the muscle, fascia, bones sense. I’ve often felt uncomfortable hearing a teacher say to their client at the beginning of a class “How’s your body?” The teacher may well know all about the non-corporeal factors influencing their client’s life, but I’m sure that there are times that the question is implicitly stating “I’m only interested in how you are physically, and not interested in anything else going on in your life.” I’ve met teachers who know nothing about their clients’ hobbies or interests, and even one who didn’t know what a client did for a living. Can you teach a body if you know so little about its context?
Are the exercises we teach actually helping people’s lumbar spines to become more stable? Unlikely. Is there something particular to Pilates exercises that helps people to ‘improve’ their posture? No – posture is a manifestation of our entire system, not of biomechanics alone (thank you to David at AMN Academy for helping me to understand this).
At a time when it seems we can be less and less certain about exactly how our teaching affects our clients, don’t we need to be teaching the person in front of us? Perhaps a bit like the ‘person-centred approach’ in psychotherapy – we help to create the appropriate environment for each individual to make their own changes.
‘Teach the person, trust the body’, maybe?
paleolates 