Archives For Pilates

Embodiment and the Limits of Language

October 15, 2020 — 2 Comments

One of the books I have ‘on the go’ at the moment is ‘Affluence Without Abundance’ by James Suzman, subtitled ‘The Disappearing World of the Bushmen: What We Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Civilisation’. One of the ideas from the book that has delighted me the most is the frustration of Portugese sailor Vasco de Gama at the Bushmen’s disinterest in trading. The Bushmen knew that they already had everything that they needed and had no desire for anything that the sailors had to offer. The very foundation for the voyage, for the European drive to build empires, meant nothing in southern Africa and was incomprehensible to the people there.

I’m sure most of us have grown up in a society that regarded trade, commodities and avarice as entirely normal and it is fun but also very hard to imagine not understanding those things at all. They are woven into my existence at every level. (Perhaps this is why practicing ‘gratitude’, particularly for the natural world, seems to be such a powerful tool for many of us now).

I think of this because it makes me reflect on the beliefs and unconscious dogma that influence my perception of myself and other people as living organisms. It is well documented that a number of what have been unfortunately referred to as ‘primitive’ tribes or cultures have a different sense of ‘self’ than we do. In some cases individual pronouns might be rarely if ever used – so ‘we’ will be used as if an individual is so closely tied to his/her tribe that they naturally speak for the group. Alternatively, ‘I’ might be used as a collective term for the whole tribe both in the present and historically (there is an example of a warrior referring to a battle with another tribe before he was born and saying ‘I defeated [other tribe] in that place.’) I’ve written previously about the idea of ‘the long body’ in native American societies – meaning that self includes the surrounding environment. There is a less clearly defined boundary between a person’s physical body and their habitat. 

We live in a culture where many ideas and beliefs are accepted as reality, as absolute truth. We have been able to both take apart ourselves and other creatures, to see the exact physical make up both with the naked eye and powerful magnification; and to look inside by means of all sorts of scanning/X-ray/imaging devices. When we are able to ‘know’ so well what is observably there it is easy to  reject any concepts (meridians, chakras for example) that are not visible. This bullet-proof knowledge permeates our language and reinforces our perception of ourselves. It becomes very logical to perceive the ‘body’ as a distinct part of our ‘self’ (and serving as a “brain taxi” as Mark Walsh says). How challenging then is it to experience self as a unified whole, with no boundary or separation between physical body, soul and consciousness/mind? Do we have the words or language to express this idea of wholeness without using terminology that is elitist or alienating? And how does this fit into teaching Pilates, or any other movement practice?

One of my primary goals in teaching movement these days is to guide people toward an embodied experience. I believe that the bar should be no lower for me than to do whatever I can to help people to reach their potential – and as author Scott Barry Kaufman describes, not their potential as an individual but their potential as a part of society, in relation to others. (For the Maslow fans this means ‘transcending’ self-actualisation – not typically included in the misleading pyramid that is associated with his hierarchy).

I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone directly that this is my intention, not least because it’s not an easy thing to describe. If I have to describe it to a ‘civilian’ (from hereon shorthand for someone who is neither a teacher nor a movement professional) then I would talk about the value of their increased awareness of their own physicality.

Already I’m aware that I’m deliberately looking for an alternative to ‘awareness of their own body’ because I feel that language is already starting to fence in, or steer the conversation back to a notion of separation. I find the idea that Pilates, as a movement practice (exercise system, if you prefer), represents the union of ‘body, mind and spirit’ to be problematic, not because I see Pilates existing without mind or spirit but because the idea itself is reinforcement of separation between these three. We do not exist outside of this union because the three linguistically reinforced notions of ‘body’, ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ are a part of creating a separation that is as convenient as it is misleading.

I understand that I am, and that an organism is, a process rather than a thing but feel that I lack the vocabulary to share this notion/sensation/understanding. Perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough for alternatives but at the moment one of my greatest challenges is to articulate the sense of being that I would like to feel and engender in the people I teach without slipping into the ‘old’ language or sounding entirely foreign. Maybe I haven’t experimented with it enough but phrases like ‘biointelligent tissue’ (heard from Liz Koch) don’t feel right to me.

To devise new words, to somehow codify the concept seems to undermine it. How can we guide people toward an embodied experience without them needing to learn a new language in order to have the experience? My clearest experiences of self as process have come during workshops which are much closer in content to contemporary dance (yes, I’m talking Fighting Monkey, again…) than Pilates. Does embodiment belong in Pilates at all?

Can we teach the feeling of embodiment? Can we teach the feeling of embodiment without inventing a new language that may still be dictating a particular sense or feeling from their movement? It seems to me more and more that the art, or skill of this is to be able to move out of the way. To offer an exercise, drill or movement sequence and ‘hold the space’ for whomever we’re teaching to have their experience. For me this doesn’t mean not teaching, or cueing at all but rather being careful about how I guide them so that I’m helping them in how to feel rather than what to feel.

So this is a request for help – if you teach movement from an embodied perspective, or with an intention of promoting an embodied experience have you faced the same challenge, and how have you overcome or worked around it?

(with gratitude to Wendy Leblanc Arbuckle for her generosity and conversation, and to my wife, for her love and patience)

 

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Thoughts on ‘re-opening’

August 16, 2020 — Leave a comment

The first thing that I should declare is that the forced closure of our studio, along with the all the other elements of the ‘lockdown’ proved to be an extraordinary gift to both of us. It was a gift because it made time for us to reflect on what’s truly important to us. And I am blessed to have a number of loyal and generous clients so that, while our studio business was/is in a grave situation, my private work increased.

I am also very fortunate to be married to my business partner, and to have spent so many hours walking and talking about our vision and our dreams, as well as hours in nature just being and feeling rather than doing. I imagine that there are many Pilates teachers and business owners who have been less fortunate and what follows is in no way intended to judge anyone – I’m simply interested in sharing some thoughts as well as some questions that this extraordinary time has asked me.

Why re-open?

For a while now the forums seem to be full of questions and requests for advice around how to ‘safely’ re-open studios or resume teaching, and how best to conform to the various rules that may be in place. Should I wear a mask? Should they wear a mask? What about visors? And socks? And ventilation? And spacing between apparatus? Etc.

I’m curious as to whether there is a question about how what we teach under new restrictions relates to why we started teaching Pilates. Is it possible to teach Pilates in a “Covid-secure”* manner and in the spirit of the man who wrote ‘Your Health’ and ‘Return to Life’?

*(I put “Covid-secure” in inverted commas to reflect my belief that the very idea is probably nonsense – to imagine that by means of sanitisers and masks and visors etc we can stop certain viruses from interacting with us seems the height of hubris to me. Just so you know where I’m coming from…)

What do you imagine Joseph would make of this situation? The man who advocated as much fresh air as possible, and made so many films of himself working outdoors. Would he have been happy to wear a mask? Or to work in a room that was closed off to the outside world with air circulating through UV filters? Maybe this is entirely unimportant when the imperative of earning and paying the rent trumps all other considerations. If this is the case, I wonder how far we have to be pushed away from the holistic health origins of the work before it starts to feel odd. 

Is there a point at which the rigmarole of meeting all the regulations, in order to pay the rent, actually become of greater importance than the outcome for our clients? And I wonder how many clients may be returning in order to support the business, rather than supporting their own health. We have certainly benefitted from this kind of moral and financial support over the lockdown and I bring this up only because I imagine that we have to be watchful – at some point that kind of motivation will surely wear thin.

I guess the short version of the above is “Are we re-opening because our clients need us, or because we need them?”

This was not clear to me when I first started teaching but I now recognise that my goal in teaching movement is to be in service to other people. If, by helping someone else to feel more joy, to live a more beautiful life because of a change in their relationship with their physical self, then perhaps I can do my small part to help the world be a better place. Having had this realisation about my job, which is also my mission, I cannot easily contemplate working for any other reason. This means that if, by opening up our studio with the imposition of a lot of rules (ours or the government’s), someone might feel more anxious about a virus, or their well-being then I would prefer that they don’t come. Ideally I’ll be able to teach them online and we will still be able to achieve great things without any Pilates apparatus. In many cases people would prefer to stay away, and I support that wholeheartedly. Perhaps it will turn out that many people who have previously been Pilates regulars discover that, actually, they don’t need us. That seems like a really good discovery to make and if our business has to change as a result then that is simply the way it is.

And what about health?

One of the strangest things about the past few months for me is the apparent absence of advice on how to be more healthy. This is particularly odd when it seems to be abundantly clear that the more healthy you are the less significant this corona virus is. The dominant advice in the UK appears to have been “Stay Home” – with the promised result of either ‘staying safe’ or ‘saving lives’. As I alluded to above, the idea that staying in your home offers any kind of protection from interacting with a virus is utterly bizarre.

Yes, podcasts and people  that I follow have had episodes on how to boost your immune system but they feel quite niche in terms of their reach. The best I’ve seen is a supplement company advert on the back of a bus. The people most susceptible to an adverse interaction with the virus are clearly those with metabolic syndrome and, as I saw pointed about by a doctor recently, neither wearing a mask nor having a vaccine will address diabetes, heart disease or obesity.

Are we re-opening to enhance people’s health? If we support a culture of fear (of both the natural world and our fellow humans) by embracing the notion that the studio is currently an inherently dangerous place to be and requires multiple special measures to be rendered ‘safe’, are we supporting health? What is the impact of fear on our health? If love is the absence of fear, what does that suggest? I imagine love is good for our health…

If any of this resonates, are there other ways that we can be of service to and support our clients? Can we adapt, and be proponents of holistic health (I know you may not feel qualified to give health advice, but I would respectfully suggest that if you’re teaching movement you are already doing so)?

I would suggest that this starts with something like “How are you?” and “Is there any way that I can help you right now?”There is so much information available for free online and researching sound sources of advice will only help us. I don’t know how it would be in the USA but I doubt that sharing an article about, say, Vitamin D with a “I saw this and thought you might be interested” could be construed as criminally outside of a movement teacher’s scope of practice.

The condensed version of all of this:

Why are you  pilates teacher?

Why do you have a Pilates studio?

 

 

 

 

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Where does ‘I’ finish, and ‘We’ start?

May 23, 2020 — Leave a comment

An argument for using a wide-angle lens in a person-centred approach to teaching movement.

 

Anatomy is ‘the science that studies the structure of the human body’. If we’re teaching movement we probably had to learn anatomy at some point. Depending on our teaching style and priorities our anatomy knowledge may be at the forefront of our teaching. It may feel important to ensure that the person we’re teaching is using the ‘correct’ muscle/s; it may feel important to know that agonists and antagonists are co-firing appropriately; or that their stabilisers have fired prior to their mobilisers.

Ideas like these above are typically based upon a conceptualisation of the human body in isolation, constructed in layers:

Bones form the stiff structure, they meet at joints, held together by ligaments, crossed by muscles that are attached by tendons, wrapped up in skin (perhaps with some fat padding).

For classification and quantification-loving creatures like humans this can be a very satisfactory model. We can apply Newtonian mechanics to this structure, giving us ‘biomechanics’: “the study of the structure, function and motion of the mechanical aspects of biological systems” In other words, we have decided/accepted that biological systems can be analysed and understood according to what we view as their mechanical aspects. It’s worth mentioning that much of the information that this relies upon is gathered from studying dead bodies rather than living ones.

This approach to studying and understanding human bodies may be useful but, as Andreo Spina says “the complexity of what we’re dealing with exceeds our mathematical knowledge”. He uses the term ‘Bioflow’ in preference to biomechanics, to include the flow apparent in human movement (compared to, say, a robot controlled by mathematics) and also to “describe and conceptualise the extent of continuity found in human tissue at a microscopic level”. Specifically he refers to the impossibility of exactly defining where muscle becomes tendon, or where tendon attaches to bone.

Embryologist Jaap van der Wal takes a similar view and argues against viewing tendon as distinct from ligament. If you have heard or read much about fascia you will be familiar with these ideas. Anatomist John Sharkey, who has performed over 1000 dissections says that no two bodies have looked the same when he has ‘looked inside’.

Perhaps we do best to consider that the structures we see in handbooks of musculoskeletal anatomy or really rough guides, or represent loose similes for the living organism. I doubt that is a cognitive stretch to recognise that bones are not shaped the same from person to person (get into a debate about the best way to squat with anyone on the internet and differences in shapes and angles of femurs will quickly be deployed in evidence). Surely then it is reasonable to suppose that our muscles and connective tissues are not shaped the same. We might say that muscles respond to the thought of an action of a joint, or joints. The muscles will form according to the shape of the bones and joints, not according to the pictures in our text books.

I much prefer to view bones and muscles as variations on tissue types that give both stiffness and extensability/elasticity to the matrix of fascia that actually forms our structure but this model still fails, I believe, to allow me to fully understand myself or anyone else.

Tom Myers is renowned as the ‘cartographer’ of Anatomy Trains – mapping “the longitudinal myofascial connections – how the muscles are functionally linked in ‘myofascial meridians’ through the fascial webbing”. Clearly there are connections to the continuity of human tissue in the Bioflow model and the popularity of Myers’ work shows how appealing this integrated view of human movement is to many of us.

Yet this view of our bodies, that allows for the spirals that exist throughout nature and biomechanics seems to make less allowance for, still views the human body in isolation. It stops at the skin. While this may seem entirely reasonable to our ‘civilised’ minds, it is at odds with indigenous societies conceptualisation of ourselves, and perhaps at odds with almost every human spiritual tradition. We are very literally products of our environment and therefore we need a good understanding of the nature of our environment to understand ourselves.

We have probably all heard of the human microbiome. We can view our gastrointestinal tract as a tunnel through our body so that, in a way, it is actually outside us. At the very least it is a very direct connection to our external environment, and the variety and amount of bacteria, viruses, fungi etc that constitute our microbiome is determined by our environment. Is it a stretch then to say “We are our environment”? Indigenous people apparently recognise this without knowing the details of the microbiome that we can see thanks to our technology.

I was introduced to the Native American concept of the Long Body by Frank Forencich. In this view the self is not seen in isolation and only exists in the context of environment and tribe. As he puts it, when we zoom in on the body, as Western science is inclined to do (and develops increasingly sophisticated means of doing), it is useful but makes us short-sighted, particularly to the life-supporting relationships that exist outside of us.

If we are concerned with teaching anyone to move well/better, can we do this job well if we see only their ‘short body’, and fail to consider how their environment and their ‘tribe’ (family, friends, social network, society as a whole) are influencing them? If you are a Pilates teacher and embrace this practice as being for mind, body and spirit can you hope to address all three without seeing the people you teach in the context of their four or five dimensional selves?

We need to understand the inner workings of the body, certainly, and to recognise that the inner workings are manifestations of a much bigger picture.

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Teaching Experiments

November 28, 2019 — Leave a comment

Last year I attended a seminar during which we were asked what we could teach with our eyes closed. There are some foundation exercises that I believe I could teach with my eyes closed, so I volunteered. However, the parameters quickly changed and I was soon in a rather uncomfortable position – but one that stimulated a lot of reflection.

I find the idea of imposing limitations on the teaching strategies that I might use to be a challenging and richly rewarding exercise, and would like to share some of these here. Some of the experiments are more cerebral, or abstract and some are more straightforward.

It might help to think of some of these like drills that you might see runners doing – the drills don’t really look like running but they’re designed to make the act of running better, more efficient.

Dumbstruck

How is it to teach without using your voice, at all? You may need to keep this for a non-paying audience who are in on the  challenge. You can mime, demonstrate, gesticulate and use hands-on cues.

This may seem like a pointless exercise, until you have someone who is deaf in your class, or someone who does not understand the language that you teach in. Even if you never find yourself in that situation, perhaps this can sharpen your manual skills. And I suspect most of say too much anyway…

Sacrilege

Imagine that you are living, and teaching, within a culture that holds any reference to human anatomy to be an affront to their God. You may not refer to muscles, organs or bones and, as a result, abstractions such as ‘core’ make no sense in this culture.

The law permits the naming of body parts – hands, feet, head etc. However, if you want to really stretch yourself then imagine that any reference to our physical form is considered sacrilegious.

I am a big fan of avoiding mention of muscle names for all sorts of reasons (I stopped my regular yoga class because the teacher kept on referring to muscles all the time) though that’s not the sole point of this exercise. I find that it reinforces very direct movement language – action words such as ‘push’, ‘pull’, ‘reach’, ‘grasp’, ‘yield’ etc. are strongly encouraged.

Hands free

Could you still teach if you had no arms? Could someone who was born with no arms teach Pilates? This is not meant to be an argument against tactile cues, or having expressive hands – which are both huge assets in teaching – but what happens if you have to go without them?

You are ‘allowed’ to use your feet, so tactile cues aren’t necessarily eliminated entirely (I remember a Jillian Hessel workshop on the Cadillac in which she used her feet all the time, to great effect.

Heart-full

Another culture displacement idea – you are teaching in a culture that believes that the heart is the centre of everything: energy, power, control and strength. The word ‘core’ has no meaning whatsoever, nor does ‘powerhouse’. If you want to express an idea of centre you have to use the word ‘heart’.

This may well mean that you have to reframe what you might typically say in order to fit with your own understanding of ‘heart’. Does it make you think of Pilates as a more spiritual practice? Does it encourage you to focus more on the manner of effort that your students make, rather than where they feel the work? Does the idea lend itself to giving the effort of the class an ‘intention’, as many yoga teachers propose at the start of class? How does that feel for you?

Read my lips

Imagine that everyone in your class is deaf – they know sign language and they can lip read.

Assuming that most of us don’t sign, if you’re speaking everyone in the class has to be able to see your mouth moving. Perhaps it means there’s less emphasis on verbal teaching, too.

In the dark

Carrying on the theme of limiting senses, you’re teaching a room full of blind people.

Demonstrations are useless, and there’s no point in staying at the front of the room. Obviously, verbal and tactile cues become paramount.

TASK

This is an idea that I learned at the seminar mentioned above, from Thomas Reid. In short, Treat everyone with dignity and respect; Assume positive intent; work to everyone’s Strengths; Keep everyone empowered.

Truly I believe that this is a philosophy that we would all be best practicing all the time, rather than an occasional experiment. It’s such a simple idea and I was surprised by how much it helped some of my relationships. I still fail regularly with some or all parts of the acronym – more with colleagues than students, and it remains a work in progress. 

 

I’m sure there are many more ways of challenging the parameters within which we teach, in order to learn and grow, and I’d love to hear more ideas for similar experiments if you have them.

 

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Vulnerability, not ‘vulnerable’

October 5, 2019 — Leave a comment

This is, sort of, “How might I be wrong about this?” Part II.

I have to confess that I don’t care for the word ‘vulnerable’ as it often appears in the media these days – “in need of special care, support, or protection because of age, disability, or risk of abuse or neglect”. It strikes me as an overly general label to apply to a section or sections of the population, and distinctly disempowering – If I am vulnerable, according to this definition, is there much scope for me to excel, to be my best self?

All of that said, I’m increasingly aware of the value of vulnerability – as in this definition: “exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally” – for my growth as a husband, father, friend and teacher/coach. Happily the pursuit of the kind of vulnerability that I’m referring to is unlikely to involve physical harm but absolutely carries the risk of failing; of looking and feeling foolish; and seeing a reflection in the mirror that I may not care for. I’ve referred to being ‘outside your comfort zone’ often and almost glibly as ‘the place where the magic happens’ without really acknowledging that this is entirely about risking failure. I’ll be less quick to talk about my comfort zone in future because I want to be more comfortable with failing – comfortable with being uncomfortable, you might say.

Because that’s where I learn, and where I can grow.

I don’t want this to read as though I’ve mastered the art of vulnerability – that it’s somehow easy for me now. That’s absolutely not the case and I have to override my own instincts and, perhaps, to re-shape an identity that I have assumed as ‘boss’, or ‘expert’. I’m also fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with someone who is similarly driven and will hold me to account.

Why is this so important to me now? Historically I’ve been really good at making excuses. When I was going up I can remember frustrating my parents because “Nothing’s ever your fault, is it?” I didn’t know it then but I suspect I always felt safer finding external forces or circumstances to explain why I’d failed. I know now that this is symptomatic of a fixed mindset and not in keeping with a mission of growth toward self-actualisation.

I believe the fact that there are many interpretations of the Pilates method is a blessing and a curse. It means that being a Pilates teacher almost inevitably means subscribing to a dogma (or several). I believe this lends itself to adopting fixed opinions that may cloud our view of the truth. At the very least, being governed by dogma does not invite questioning of our own methods. If you are a Pilates teacher reading this I invite you to consider your core beliefs about Pilates (Do you believe it’s a complete system? Do you believe it’s a holistic practice? Does it do what yoga does but without all the chanting? Is it the perfect marriage of stretch and strength? ……), and then to search for any reason why you might be wrong.

Logan Gelbrich (referred to in the earlier article), at his recent ‘Hold the Standard Summit‘, told us about an exercise conducted at his gym in which coaches were divided into two teams for a debate – one team had to argue in favour of CrossFit and the other against it. Could you formulate an argument against a regular Pilates practice? What might you learn if you try? If we actively search for information about how we’re wrong, we may discover that we are indeed wrong, or we may learn more, or have greater clarity about why we are right to be doing or believing what we do currently.

Another compelling idea that Logan introduced us to is the two types of challenge, as identified by Ronald Heifetz: technical and adaptive.

Technical challenges can be looked up, or answered by an expert – as a Pilates teacher, if you’re uncertain about the proper choreography of an exercise, or how many springs to use, you can find the answer on YouTube, or consult another teacher.

Adaptive challenges are those that will likely require us to be vulnerable, because they require growth – evolution. Let’s say that one of my challenges as a teacher is expressing my true self in a way that doesn’t alienate the people I want to reach (no, really!) This is not a technical challenge – I can’t look up the answer, and no expert can tell me how to do this. If I want to successfully address this I’m going to have to fearlessly examine my behaviour and motivation, and scrutinise past reactions through the lens of ‘how might I be wrong about this?’

It means taking responsibility for everything that happens in scenarios both of teaching and social media interactions, for example.  If the person that I’m teaching doesn’t appear to be following instructions, or isn’t doing as well as I believe they can I have to take responsibility and ask myself how I might express myself differently (this could be a highly complex question and might be worth a thousand words on its own), or change my coaching to help them be more successful. If it’s wrong, it’s my fault. If a post or comment of mine on social media elicits a reaction that I don’t appreciate I have to take responsibility and ask myself what it was about my contribution that triggered such a response. You might recognise this as being inspired by Carol Dweck‘s work. If I look for failings in other people that explain unsatisfactory outcomes I limit my own chances to evolve. If I can allow myself to risk being wrong (and, again, it’s not necessarily my first instinct yet – it’s a work in progress) I may discover that I can change – behave differently and make for a more satisfactory outcome next time.

As before, how might I be wrong about this?

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The Alignment Problem

August 28, 2019 — 2 Comments

I imagine that there’s near universal agreement amongst Pilates teachers across the globe that alignment is important. Perhaps it is even the central tenet of the Pilates Method.

I’m increasingly of the view that the ability to clearly and succinctly define things is crucial to being able to implement, influence or otherwise effect those things. If you believe that ‘alignment’ is indeed central to Pilates, what do you mean by ‘alignment’? Can you define the concept in one sentence? The idea of defining what we do is a topic that features in the illuminating conversation between Anula Maiberg and Raphael Bender that helped spur me on to write this. I encourage you to listen to if you haven’t already.

I had an exchange via Facebook with a teacher recently, around a post about an online course that, as I remember, used the phrase “it’s all about alignment”. I asked for a definition of alignment (I know, I should learn to leave things well alone) and the answer was along the lines of ‘it’s too complicated to explain in brief but the answer would become apparent if you read all our blog posts’. This may have simply been the best way to deal with an antagonistic social media user but, to me, it hinted at something that is endemic in the Pilate teaching world and, again, referred to by Anula & Raphael – that even though we know what we do is important we aren’t always good at defining what that is, teachers and continuing education providers alike.

For what it’s worth, if I have to define alignment I would say something like “the organisation of the 3 main body weight centres (thank you Jozef Frucek) relative to each other, and the optimal centration of the bones at every joint”. This means, to me, that there is no single appearance of ideal alignment. I also believe that the route to optimal alignment lies in practicing varied movement and not in practicing being in ideal fixed positions – I don’t believe in teaching anyone to sit well, for example. I would rather teach them varied and efficient movement so that their system has more options to deploy when they are sitting.

All of that said, I believe that there’s a different kind of alignment that is more important to teaching Pilates than the alignment of bones and body parts. Last year I was fortunate to attend an evening with Dr John Demartini, and Carl Paoli‘s ‘Freestyle Insider’ seminar. Both of these events invited/encouraged me to examine my personal values and my goals and, particularly in the case of Freestyle Insider, to articulate my mission.

I learned from Dr Demartini that when my values and my goals are not aligned I can expect to be dissatisfied, unhappy and unsuccessful. It makes perfect sense, I believe – if my actions aren’t in line with those things that I hold dearest I am engaged in self-sabotage. I learned from Carl that I need to be able to clearly and concisely express my mission in order to have a clear path to follow. So my values help to define my mission and my mission helps to define my goals.

This is ‘the alignment problem’ that Anula and Raphael raise in their conversation and, I suspect, may be plaguing the Pilates teaching community. I have asked enough teachers to define what they do, for a lay audience, in one or two sentences enough times to believe that the inability to do so is a widespread problem. The answer to many questions is often ‘It depends’ but in this case I’m afraid that will not do.

If you are able to clearly define what you do then you will be very clear in what you are offering to the people who might pay you; you will recognise more readily those people whom you may not be able to help; and the choices as to what specifically to do in a session with a specific person will be easier to identify.

To be blunt, “I teach Pilates’ is not a clear definition of what you do. We all know that there are many definitions and interpretations of that statement so it doesn’t represent clarity of purpose, at least to a layperson. What does ‘I teach Pilates’ mean to you? How can you break that down into something more meaningful? As an aside, I’ve found the exercise of asking ‘Why?’ at least 5 times to get the root of things really useful (eg. ‘I teach Pilates.’ Why? ‘Because it’s a really good way to exercise.’ Why? Because it can be adapted to meet the needs of many different people.’ Why do you want to do that? ‘Because I like to be able to reach different types of people.’ Why? etc etc

If we have a less than clear answer to this question, and an indistinct definition of what we teach it is that much easier to fall into generalisations of the ‘That’s what we’re supposed to do’ kind. For example, cueing a breathing pattern for an exercise to a client who may already be overwhelmed with inputs because ‘we’re supposed to cue breathing’; or teaching someone correct TVA engagement (!!!!!!!) before the Hundred ‘because that’s how my teacher does it’. What we’re ‘supposed to do’ rarely has any connection to effective teaching.

Assuming that we all want to be effective teachers, before we concern ourselves with the alignment of the individual on the mat or the Reformer in front of us, we should first be concerned with our own alignment. Is what we teach truly in harmony with the outcomes that we’d like to offer?

 

 

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Does education always equal growth?

July 30, 2019 — 4 Comments

I believe that, as a profession, Pilates teachers are generally eager to learn and driven to keep doing courses and workshops long after their initial training. I recently discovered the term “course whore”, applied (by herself) to a Pilates teacher and, while it may not be a phrase I’d use, it appears to be a ‘thing’. It’s all the more interesting because it was clearly used as a pseudo-derogatory term, feeding an idea that the more courses you’ve done the better you will be. Or the more knowledge you have the better you will be.

I’m certain that all of us who call ourselves Pilates teachers have a responsibility to continue to learn and grow. How we do that is what motivated me to write this.

Hopefully attending workshops/seminars/courses is never a box-ticking exercise (if you belong to an organisation that requires you to attend X hours of courses that they run this may well become a problem) so let’s assume that we have intrinsic motivation to look for whatever we sign up to. What is it that drives that motivation? I wonder if we can divide it into fear and love? We could also consider this as ‘outcome-driven’ (box-ticking, getting a certificate, adding to a CV) and ‘process-driven’ (exploring, challenging beliefs, learning about self as well as subject).

Fear as a motivator might sound like “My training didn’t cover working with people with …..(insert condition/disease etc here); or, “I’d like to work with X type of person but I’m not qualified. Questions on teachers’ forums looking for courses on working with specific populations seem very common (along with the advertising of such courses). Underlying this are the beliefs that “I can’t work with that person because I’m not qualified/certified in the condition that they have”; and “when I’ve done that course I’ll be able to sell myself as a specialist in…” It might also sound like “I need to find another workshop to do this year to get my hours up to the required amount.”

The courses that will fit the bill in a fear-driven search might well give you more understanding of generalities about say, neurological disorders, and maybe some exercise ideas but will they help you to be a better teacher? Perhaps you’ll feel more confident, and that’s important, but what happens when you come across another condition that you’re not certified to teach to? Do they educate you, or do they develop you as an individual and, therefore, as a teacher (or is there a bit of both happening)?

The love-driven search is probably more instinctual, more likely to be via recommendation, or as a result of research into a subject or field. For example, if Joseph Pilates’ writing (or some other source) encourages you to investigate children’s developmental movement patterns, you might discover The Prague School of Rehabilitation and discover their DNS course(s). This course could be transformative to your teaching but you probably wouldn’t find it if you were looking for something to help you feel better qualified to teach people with, for example, SIJ dysfunction. Betraying my own bias, the love-driven search may also take you into a different movement realm, to spend sometime being a beginner again, and to see with different eyes.

I think there’s a danger that one might get stuck in a loop that will be self-limiting – there will always be conditions for which no-one is going to develop a course, because they’re just not common enough for anyone to make money running a course about. I can think of at least a dozen examples of people with uncommon or complex conditions who’ve come to our studio in the last 10 years whom we would have had to turn away if we believed that we needed specialist training to teach them. And here’s the crux of the matter – YOU DON’T NEED THOSE COURSES!

Let me qualify that. If your training as a Pilates teacher prepared you to teach principles, rather than teaching you exercises, then you don’t need courses in working with ‘special populations’, or specific conditions. You’ve been trained in teaching Pilates to whomever turns up at your door, or in your class, and you have the skills and understanding to figure out what they need. And to be clear, I’m not talking about the 6 principles from the Eisen & Friedman book. Instead I’d suggest researching the principles as described by Benjamin Degenhardt, or have a look at this. (This doesn’t mean that you should agree to work outside your scope of practice – if you don’t know how to work with someone then it’s essential to acknowledge that. Though this would also be automatic if your training has been thorough.)

Why don’t you need specialist courses? In addition to teaching principles, hopefully you teach the person or people in front of you – you’re not teaching from a one-size-fits-all script, you are practicing person/client-centred teaching. They’ve chosen Pilates, or they’ve been recommended to take up Pilates because it’s magic recognised as helping people to be better. You may need to do some research, and you definitely need to find out from them what they want, what they think they need, and what they need it for, to help steer your choices. If a cyclist comes to your class, you don’t need to ask her to come back after you’ve done your “Pilates for Cyclists’ course – you can start building a relationship and demonstrating that she has some agency by finding out from her what the particular demands of cycling are, and if she has a problem you’ve got the principles in mind to figure out the movements or exercises she will benefit from.

We could switch ‘cyclist for ‘man with Parkinson’s’, ‘lady with MS’, ’65 year old golfer’, ‘young woman with scoliosis’ etc. etc. Your job is to teach them (the universal principles of better movement that are embedded in) Pilates. Not ‘Pilates for Golfers’, Pilates for Neurological Disorders’, or ….. You’re qualified to teach Pilates, to humans, individually, in their infinite variety. You don’t need the specialist course for each one, instead each individual represents an opportunity for your personal and professional growth, because they will each be able to teach YOU something.

This is the thing that concerns me the most – if you are attending specialist courses are you growing – expanding, we might say – or are you being channeled into ever narrower lanes that limit your scope and outlook (like the scientists in the quote above)? I suspect that the latter is more likely.

Especially if you want to specialise in working with a particular population, your insurance may require you to have specialist training and, in some cases, there may be nationally established guidelines that should be followed if you are choosing to advertise yourself as specialised in working with, for example, pregnant women. In such cases it probably makes sense to pay for that specialised course, though you will probably need to acknowledge that many people won’t fit the guidelines, and you’ll be reliant on teaching principles, listening etc etc. If you’ve developed your listening skills, and your looking skills; and acknowledged the extent of your knowledge to yourself and your clients; and experimented, failed, learned, tried, failed, learned, improvised etc then you will very likely have a far deeper well of knowledge and skills to draw from than if you’ve attended half a dozen courses where the lessons have been any more specific than ‘teach the individual in front of you’.

I’ll leave it to you to decide how relevant the Konrad Lorenz quote is to this. For me, I’d prefer to be in-between these two extremes, but definitely tilting toward the philosopher end of the spectrum.

 

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“How might I be wrong about this?”

May 30, 2019 — 2 Comments

“Pilates teachers are control freaks who can’t let go.”

This was said to me by someone who has been teaching for decades, whom I know not mean or judgemental. It was said with a degree of affection, a wry acknowledgement of a general truth – after all, the creator called it ‘CONTROLOGY’, right? It’s not an accident that control freaks are drawn to it, and I hold my hand up as one of them. I like certainty. A lot. And I’ve taken up fixed positions that I’ve argued for vociferously, then later rather more quietly let those convictions go. In other words, I understand the desire for certainty (which is a kind of comfort, of course) but I’m now trying to keep in mind that certainty does not serve my own growth, and lack of growth on my part is against the interests of the people that I’m lucky enough to teach. A more academic teacher friend of mine tends to say “current best guess”, in relation to almost everything to do with anatomy, biology, exercise, etc. and I do my best now to remember and to live by this wisdom.

The approach that we take to running our studio has been shaken up and transformed by exposure to the ideas of Logan Gelbrich, owner of Deuce gym in Venice, CA. Much of this revolves around personal growth, leadership and cultivating a culture of excellence and begins with what he calls “disconfirming information”. What this boils down to is, if you’re interested in pursuing your own highest expression, you need to actively seek feedback that identifies what you could do better, not more feedback about what you’re doing well. He urges us to ask the question: “How might I be wrong about this?”

It takes a certain vulnerability to ask this question and, just as many of the people we teach will be expressing vulnerability in the act of coming to class, to be a teacher surely requires a willingness to be vulnerable. Certainty, or a show of it, is a kind of safety but the trouble with comfort is it’s very comfortable – why would we leave it? Adaptation is driven by stress of some sort, if we remain comfortable there is no driver of adaptation, of growth. If you know everything and your teaching is perfect, with no room for improvement anywhere, you have no need to grow – in fact, you shouldn’t waste your time reading on.

There are a number of dogmas that seem to be so entrenched in Pilates that it’s considered bizarre, or an affront to common decency to call them into question. This can lead to confirmation bias and blind spots in our teaching. As Jozef Frucek of Fighting Monkey says “Any great system has great deficiencies.” I’m sure that this is as true of Pilates as it is of Tai Chi, Yoga etc etc. Everything that we do deserves to be up for examination and, as I can’t remember who said, “Real intelligence is to be able to hold opposing views in your mind simultaneously.”

Writing a blog is an indulgence and it’s also a way for me to test ideas and lay them open to disconfirming information. I like being in control but liking it doesn’t mean that it serves me well. I recently shared a post in a Pilates teachers’ forum about my dislike, or rather my unease around the use of the word ‘core’. The title: “Pilates teacher? Please don’t say ‘core’. Ever again.” was intentionally provocative, and probably foolish (though I did ask nicely…) so it may have deserved this response:

‘I am not a minion…and will queue the way I see fit. This is like FB saying ” you have been shampooing your hair wrong all these years”. Back off- I shampoo the way I want😂😂’ 

Maybe what I write did it’s job and even now the writer of this comment may be reflecting on her shampooing technique, or better yet, her teaching cues. And maybe I’m wrong, and none of the arguments that I presented made sense.

I used to teach an ‘abdominal scoop’ with great conviction, and I read studies to support conscious activation of TVA in anticipation of movement and applied tat to my teaching. I was sure I was right in this, not least because it was what all the teachers I knew also taught. I didn’t know then that I would have disdained an abdominal scoop within the first decade of teaching (I might say “scoop” still from time to time, with a client who I think might appreciate a food related image, and describe the action of a Roll Up as being like the curl of ice cream as it’s scooped out of a tub…), nor did I know that the researchers would have called their own work on the TVA and interpretations of it within a few years. Current. Best. Guess.

If we hold fast to “truths’ around how we work it becomes very tempting to chalk our successes up to the efficacy of our teaching, and to assume that the clients whom we fail to help, or don’t return were at fault. If we want to take some credit for any positive results then we must also take credit for lack of results. The avoidance of our own culpability is such a powerful impulse that books (“Mistakes Are Made, But Not By Me’) have been written about it, and there is this list of cognitive biases on Wikipedia (‘Bandwagon Effect’ and ‘Groupthink’ may be a couple of the issues that inhibit our growth as Pilates teachers).

If you know that teaching ‘core activation’ works because you see it being effective and don’t notice the times that it doesn’t work, or you cue ‘navel to spine’ or some variation of that concept because it makes sense to you and you believe that it helped you, will you be open to the possibility of something better?

Here’s the crux, alluded to above, do we believe that we can be better? 

I imagine that the answer must be “YES” and, in that case, we have to look for ways in which we may be wrong, and seek the input of peers, colleagues, family, friends etc who we can trust to tell us the truth – much better to have someone who cares about us giving this information than someone who does not. I know from first hand experience that this is hugely challenging for many teachers, and an environment and culture of trust has to be cultivated and nurtured.

While it is challenging it shouldn’t be out of reach. After all, this is exactly what we do for a living, especially teaching one to one – we provide a safe, supportive environment in which to offer advice or instructions in how someone can be better.

Oh, and please let me know – How might I be wrong about this?

In Pilates
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Teaching principles, not exercises

November 25, 2018 — 5 Comments

Eve Gentry asked the question “Do you teach concepts, or do you teach exercises? Are you a teacher, or are you a conveyor belt?” She went on to say “If you’re a conveyor belt then, sooner or later the mechanism will get stuck.”

You are probably familiar with the expression “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch a fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Eve Gentry was saying essentially the same thing, and this reflects how we want to teach people at our studio – the exercises are expressions of concepts, or principles. Our goal for our clients, our ‘offering’ if you like, is ‘whole body health’, in keeping with Joseph’s intentions. We are not interested in making people better at Pilates, but rather in improving all aspects of their health that movement can influence (and being ‘better’ at the exercises will be one manifestation of this). We will help people to move better (and, by extension do the exercises better) if we have explained the principles behind the exercise, and how to apply them.

If we fall into the trap of teaching people choreography – something which stands alone – then we teach them to be better at that specific movement. We miss the opportunity to make connection between exercises that reinforce movement principles, and therefore the carry-over into other activities.

For example, Clams might be considered an exercise done side-lying with your hips at 45 degrees, and your knees at 90 degrees, in which you target your gluteus medius by reaching your knee toward the ceiling. Or we could consider it as a movement of contrasting stability and mobility, similar to the way we lift our legs for the Hundred, in which the stability of your trunk enhances the mobility of your hip. Instead of being The Clam, part of the side-lying repertoire, it is another movement (one of many in Pilates) of stabilising your trunk against the load of your limb/s.

You may be lucky, and find that something that you say is a lightbulb moment for someone that you’re teaching for the first time. On the whole, if we are to be successful, we have to build relationships with the people that we teach, so that we can understand each other better. Naturally, we have to maintain clear boundaries, and you must set those according to what feels right for you. At the same time, to learn more about the people we teach we have to give something of ourselves how can you learn what their interests are? What makes them tick, what do they care about? Small snippets of information may provide valuable clues as to how best to communicate a specific idea to them.

Part of maintaining healthy functioning relationships is the ability to let go of your plan, to be able to react to the other person/people in the relationship. I’m sure that you know this from your own life, and it’s true for teaching, too.

To approach your class with a plan is useful, but if your plan is a sequence of exercises, with specific repetitions, and customary verbal cues, do you leave yourself the space to respond to your students? Does teaching your class according to your plan actually get in the way of you being present, and seeing what is happening? Can you let go of the plan if it’s the thing which determines the structure and flow of your class?

If you are teaching principles, or concepts, then letting go of the plan becomes relatively easy. Instead of a set sequence of exercises we can teach to a theme; or have a single exercise as a goal – ‘I’m going to teach the Push Up today, so I’m going to build up to it with all the different components that I think are crucial to the movement, informed by how everyone is moving today.’

If we recognise exercises for the concepts that they teach, then choosing them ‘on the fly’ becomes easy. If the group needs reminding of efficient weight-bearing through their hands then we can do something specific to that, if shoulder stability needs addressing there are plenty of tools for that, if it’s midline stability that needs the focus…well, Pilates has lots for that. All of these will be great preparations for the Push Up, but they’re tools in the box, instead of being a plan I’ve committed to. Then, we can teach people what they need, instead of what we decided the day before that we wanted to teach.

Eisen and Friedman, in their book published in 1984, gave us the 6 principles that most will recognise as the principles of Pilates. However, the concepts that we are talking about teaching are the ‘how’ of position and movement that will help to achieve some of those 6 principles.

For instance, how does someone achieve ‘Control’ in their movement? Controlled movement is a product of joints fitting together well, and efficient transfer of weight/load through our structure. This is what we need to teach: how to achieve joint congruency and efficient transfer of load – this is the ’how’ of moving well, and therefore the how of executing Pilates exercises efficiently.

If we talk about ‘centre’, ‘cylinder’ or ‘core’, what do we mean? We may have a very clear physical sensation that fits with one, or all, of these abstract terms, which might be a product of lots of practice, anatomical understanding and kinaesthetic awareness. If our clients lack these, how can we explain it to them? And how can we explain it to them in a way that becomes repeatable for them, and useful in their everyday activities? Will it be sufficient to tell them to ‘engage’ something or other? How will they know, and you know, if they are really doing the right thing? What measure do they have for ‘am I using my centre or not’?

We want to teach people in a way that gives them skills they can reproduce outside the class, and to encourage their reflexive responses – so they don’t need to be told to ‘switch on’ or ‘engage’, their actions and environment trigger the appropriate support automatically.

So what are the principles that we should be teaching?

Grounding

Unless we are relaxing, to create stability we need to have a firm base of support. If we’re standing, the action of pressing our feet into the floor will help to organise our joints in a stable position. The same when sitting. If I’m lying down, doing a Pelvic Lift/Bridge perhaps, my shoulder girdle and my feet need to press firmly into the floor to create stability; if we’re doing the Hundred, our mid-backs need to anchor to the floor, as well as the back of our pelvis, to create stability. We can teach these positions relatively easily, without having to resort either to naming muscles, or to abstract concepts (core, centre etc).

Centration

For efficient transfer of load through our bodies, and for the longevity of our joints, we need to maintain congruency, or centration of our joints while we move. Meaning that the articular surfaces of the joints maintain as much contact as possible as we move – they fit together well. The action of grounding may well stimulate centration, along with Kelly Starrett’s concept of torque farming, particularly in relation to the ball and socket joints. Keep in mind that the external rotation of ‘torque farming’ has to occur at the ball and socket joint. The distal part of the limb (forearm/shin) needs to be counter-spiralling in internal rotation to facilitate congruency of all the relevant joints.

A joint that is not congruent might still be stable, but not in a way that involves all the soft tissues around the joint working together. You can test this on all fours, feeling for yourself the difference between relaxing and pushing your hands and shins into the ground – notice how the rest of your body responds, not just your hands and shins.

Elongation

Of course, we always want to encourage length in every exercise that we teach – it’s almost synonymous with Pilates. Benjamin Degenhardt likes to ask this question, in every exercise: “Do you have space for your joints and organs?” If we answer “No”, then we’re not in a good position. Once again, the action of grounding may well assist in giving us more space (and putting our joints into better positions).

Compression/Decompression

We need compression (not to be confused with shortening, or crunching) of our joints, to lubricate and stimulate them, but this should be coupled with decompression, so that there is a pump-like action working on the joint. We need one to achieve the other,  the same way that we need to go further into extension to facilitate flexion, and vice versa. So, for example, if someone is habitually anteriorly tilting their pelvis, rather than trying to stretch them in hip extension, they need to be taken further into hip flexion in order to be able to then go into more extension/posterior tilt.

To help reinforce the teaching of these principles, the following ideas might be helpful: The developmental pathway of human babies includes these actions:

Push; Pull; Reach; Yield; Grasp; Release

These could form the basis of all movement teaching, since they are innate to our development – we are ‘wired’ to do these. Using these words when you teach may well take care of a lot of the reflexive responses that we want to encourage, without the need for ambiguous or opaque verbal cues. Students can use their environment (whether it’s the mat or the apparatus) to learn better movement patterns.

In athletic development the fundamental movements are considered to be:

Push; Pull; Rotate; Raise/lower centre of mass; Locomote

This is to say, for decades these movements have been recognised to be fundamental to human athletic endeavours and, particularly since they are not activity specific, we can assume that they will serve our students/clients well in their day to day activities.

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CrossFit > Pilates?

November 20, 2018 — Leave a comment

Though I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard Pilates teacher suggesting that CrossFit is good for business because “They’ll injure themselves and then come to us” (or words to that effect), too often lately I’ve had to ask myself “Is CrossFit doing a better job of carrying Joseph Pilates’ flame than we are as Pilates teachers?

Or, more simply put: Could CrossFit be the new Pilates?

Full disclosure: though I have been through the CrossFit Level One Trainer course I’ve never advertised myself as a CF coach, and my certificate lapsed about a year ago. Why then should I care about, or pay any attention to CrossFit? The simplest answer is that I’m reminded from time to time, that I feel I have more in common with CF coaches than I do with my Pilates teaching peers.

To be fair, it’s easier to define CF than Pilates – Greg Glassman, CrossFit’s founder, conveniently wrote “Fitness in 100 words”, which does a decent job of concisely describing the CF lifestyle. Us Pilates teachers do have “Your Health” & “Return to Life” to refer to but, as well as being much less concise, I suspect that many of us have lost sight of what he wrote about holistic health, not to mention ruling out some of his original exercises for one reason or another.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to draw some comparisons between his writing and Glassman’s 100 words: it’s clear that Joseph was interested in much more than exercise. It’s also clear, from archival footage, that his own movement practice strayed well off the mat, and the confines of Reformer or Cadillac. Joseph was ‘selling’ health and I believe that, as Pilates teachers, we should be ambassadors for health, with movement as our primary tool. I suspect that this is what many CrossFit coaches and gym owners would say that they do, too.

So much for trying to lay out the similarities of the two practices. There are specific reasons for me to have had this heretical thought that CF may be doing our job better.

If you’ve been here (reading this blog) before, you may know that I believe pull-ups are a reasonable thing for Pilates teachers to have within their capacity. The broad scale rejection of this idea is as disappointing as it is perplexing and, most importantly, makes me suspect that, as a profession, we have low expectations or aspirations for the people we teach for the reason that we have low expectations for ourselves.

A couple of weeks back I had the good fortune to spend a couple of days at Carl Paoli’s ‘Freestyle Insider’ seminar that was attended by mostly CF coaches and other ‘functional fitness’ professionals. In a lunchtime conversation, with 2 men & 3 women, I mentioned this resistance to pull-ups amongst my peers to universal bafflement. For these movement teachers pull-ups are amongst the more basic skills that they would expect to be coaching. Furthermore, if you have a look at CF’s social media feeds, you will soon see amputees finding ways to do pull-ups (and more amazing feats), AND examples of imaginative scaling of the exercise for people who are not yet able to do a pull-up, so that they needn’t be excluded from their group class.

For sure CF does a better job than we do of promoting community, which is surely a key feature of health, particularly in these times of increased awareness of mental health. I’ve rarely been made to feel as welcome in the many Pilates studios that I’ve visited as I have in any of the CrossFit boxes I’ve been to. I’m sure there are notable exceptions but, if you’d like to feel universally supported in pursuing your best effort then CrossFit is probably a better bet than a Pilates class. (And please don’t think that it makes me happy to write that – it truly makes me rather sad.)

Another specific reason for my pro-CF assertion occurred when I was writing an article for a Pilates newsletter (also published here). I was using the opportunity to suggest that Pull-ups, Pistol squats and Hollow rocks ‘should’ be within a Pilates teacher’s capacity. Early feedback from the editor questioned the validity of Pistol squats as a test for all of us, in part because he has an arthritic hip. This prompted me to contact my CrossFit coach/box owner friend to ask his views on coaching pistols for someone with arthritis. His first observation was along the lines of “He needs to clean up his diet”. Not thoughts about scaling back, doing some sort of preparatory gentle mobility exercise, but an idea based around lifestyle. Even as I write it this doesn’t sound very momentous but it really struck me at the time as significant – I don’t think I’ve ever met a Pilates teacher who would be likely to have a similar response. Obviously I’ve not met them all, and it may well be that Sham (coach friend in question) is an exceptional CrossFit coach yet I still feel that it speaks volumes about how we approach HEALTH.

In short, I think that us Pilates teachers may have a more myopic view of health than Joseph had, and the average CrossFit coach has.

Please tell me I’m wrong. Thanks.

In Fitness & Primal lifestyle, Pilates , , , , , , , ,
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