Contrology by Joseph Pilates

"The mind, when housed within a healthful body, possesses a glorious sense of power. / Contrology develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind, and elevates the spirit. / Pilates is gaining the mastery of your mind over the complete control over your body. / Contrology is complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit where you first purposefully acquire complete control of your own body and then, through proper repetition of its exercises, gradually and progressively acquire that natural rhythm and coordination associated with all your subconscious activities. / You will feel better in ten sessions, look better in twenty sessions, and have a completely new body in thirty sessions.” - Joseph Pilates

Many of my friends have asked me about my experience with Pilates and so here goes: I know I have neophyte fever, but this practice has completely changed my life. I've never had this kind of command over my body in all the years I've lived, even from years of dance study, even from years of the practice of yoga.

I started exactly two months ago and I have just had my 11th session. What happened was, I was sick and tired of being bone-weary tired and having random aches and pains and squeaking cracking knees. I knew I needed to go back to dance class or yoga class, needed to start moving outside of the 2 miles I walk on my commute, and then there have been a bunch of stories of people our age just dropping dead within the last couple of years. I have a dear girlfriend who teaches Pilates in Virginia and I've watched her body transform from flawless dancer to potent panther. I know the history behind the practice, and I looked FOREVER for somewhere to train and, hello, there had been a studio right around the corner from us for years, but it just wasn't Time, obviously. Then, a couple of months ago I googled studios again and there up popped Gina at Zend and here we are. My husband and I agreed, we need to do this NOW while we CAN and not later because we HAVE to. I have another girlfriend who just told me something I didn't know: she lost and kept off 50 pounds JUST by doing Pilates, not dieting. It's absolutely transformational. It changes the way you live. I suggest you go somewhere to take a private intro class so that you can get indoctrinated properly in to the practice, and then move to classes. ALSO ! machine classes, not mat classes...IMHO, mat classes are too advanced for anyone just starting out, and I believe you can get injured. I got a book many years ago when I was dancing and young and all it did was hurt my coccyx. What I didn't know is that I hadn't developed the specific muscles needed to perform the practice and so I just gave up.

So if my hinges and bones and joints were all creaky and my knees were all wonky and my ankles would get all sore and my muscles were all tight, why didn't I just go back to my practice of Integral Yoga which has brought my soul and body salvation for decades?

I gotta tell ya ... there were times when I could pull myself up for the first back arch of the Salutation, but I just couldn't get down and comfortably throw my leg back to get even half-way through the first two postures. My knees were just too tight, no matter how much stretching I did beforehand. I was also wearing my shoulders like earrings and no matter how much meditation I practiced, no matter how much stretching I performed, I couldn't get my shoulders down, I couldn't get my legs to respond responsibly to my efforts, I just felt like I was on a treadmill of warming up enough to get out on the street for my day. (My day is a commute from Queens in to New York City which is a half-mile walk, climbing four stories of steps, climbing another four stories of steps in the city, and a quarter mile walk once I'm there, lather, rinse, repeat.)

So ... what's all the hubbub, bub? What makes this practice different from all other practices?

I promise my knowledge of myology (the study of muscles) is next to nothing but I have been a life-long lover of the study of kinesiology, the body in motion, and the physics of moving my massive frame through space has always intrigued me. What I'm about to describe is just my experience, and the guidance of our Pilates instructor over the last two months.

The concept, as I understand it, of the practice of the progression of Integral Yoga postures (regardless the class level, you always proceed through the same sequence of postures) is that you're using your entire body the entire time to stretch and lengthen all of your muscles as you're massaging all of your internal organs. During my daily dedication to this practice I always felt lithe and long and lean, my hip pans contracted and became narrow, moving me from the first time in my life from a 42 inch waisted pant to 36 inches, and my lower back was strong and pain-free. I could never keep myself upright, however, without a lot of concentration, and I always had problems keeping my shoulders down.

What I've discovered through Pilates is that yoga, to me, is like the stretching one does BEFORE a ballet class, making the muscles supple and poised for action; Pilates is the actual ballet class where you tone and discipline the body to be able to respond to your requests to perform the many movements that make up the dance.

Look how large the entire trunk of the human body is. If you look at the picture of the musculature above, there is an entire system surrounding and protecting the torso which I promise you I had NO knowledge of in my entire life. While yoga works through these muscles, Pilates demands that you engage them. That literally is the entire practice in a nutshell: Your only obligation, regardless the ancillary movements of any other part of your body, is to engage all of those muscles, and any other movement of your limbs is the result of your engagement of those muscles.

In Pilates Anatomy by Rael Isacowitz and Karen Clippinger, we’re told:

</The powerhouse, or core, can be described as the area from the bottom of the rib cage to a line across the hip joints in the front and to the base of the buttocks in the back. Joseph Pilates placed great emphasis on the powerhouse, considering it a physical center of the body from which all Pilates movements should proceed. Many Pilates exercises are designed to strengthen the powerhouse, and there is a desire to keep the powerhouse working consistently throughout a given exercise. If the powerhouse is being used appropriately, the limbs should be able to move in a more coordinated and connected manner.

<Some Pilates practitioners and many people in disciplines such as dance, fitness, and rehabilitation also refer to this area as the core and the desired maintenance of appropriate positioning and activation during movement as core stability. Core stability can be thought of as the ability to keep the pelvis and spine in the desired position while moving the limbs or the whole body through space without undesired distortions or compensations. Someone who is not maintaining desired control of this area in a given movement and who arches the lower back or moves the pelvis excessively is often said to have a weak core or demonstrate poor core stability or poor core control./>

It is this very concept which has given me, for the first time in my life, the most holistic and peaceful feeling I've ever encountered in my life. We're practicing once a week and the from the moment we leave the studio to the moment we return, my body spends that time continuously self-correcting ... pulling itself up, re-arranging itself, tucking itself in, so that I'm constantly in a state of perfectly erect alignment. My core is like a corset in which my very being sits; my torso is high, my neck balanced on, not sunk down in to it ... for the first time in my life my shoulders are completely relaxed and down where they should be, but it's no longer a conscious struggle to keep them there, it's a result of the core's engagement insisting everything be where it should be. As Joseph Pilates said,

"The Pilates Method teaches you to be in control of your body and not at its mercy. / Contrology is designed to give you suppleness, natural grace, and skill that will be unmistakably reflected in the way you walk, in the way you play, and in the way you work. / Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness. Our interpretation of physical fitness is the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body with a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily, and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneous zest and pleasure."

And it does.

Is it "expensive"? In New York City it generally sits around 30$ a session. I'm VERY cheap and for ever I wouldn't even consider paying that money because it seemed an insane amount to me. But as I said before, we need to do this now while we can and not later because we have to. Here in the city? What is that, six Starbucks? Three beers? It's less than two movie tickets. It's certainly less than a meal in a semi-nice place. Plus: this isn't just a practice, it's a lifestyle, and I hope to keep a vow that I won't go another week of my life without practicing in a studio on the equipment.

I also strongly suggest to go the extra mile at first and take private sessions. There is indeed a period of indoctrination, a period of learning not only the lexicon of the spoken vocabulary of the practice but the lexicon of what it feels like inside your body. The luxury of "gaining the mastery of your mind over the complete control over your body" in a private one-on-one setting sets you up for a lifetime of success. "To achieve the highest accomplishments within the scope of our capabilities in all walks of life we must constantly strive to acquire strong, healthy bodies and develop our minds to the limits of our ability. Joseph Pilates."

We walk in to the studio, and I place my head on the head rest and lay my shoulders in the blocks, press my spine against the bed and begin to breathe. It's like "going back to one," like the first plié in class, what original Martha Graham Troupe Member Ethyl Butler would say at the beginning of our sessions: "Friends: Let's Begin ... and ONE ..." It's home. It's salvation. It's the beginning of every new breath. And as my girlfriend Jenn says, It may be uncomfortable at first because it's different, it may be strenuous at times, but "at least you're lying down!"

So that's where we are today.

"Not only is health a normal condition, but it is our duty not only to attain it but to maintain it. Everyone is the architect of her own happiness It’s the mind itself which shapes the body. A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of doing sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion. - Joseph Pilates."