PART 2- How Pilates Can Transform (Cont’d from last month) By Sandra Leigh

Do you suffer from lack of confidence?

Are you too shy to walk into a room? We’ve probably all at some stage felt a little bit of shyness, especially when we go and meet new people. Pilates absolutely will help you with that.  The first change that we experience in Pilates is a postural change, it just shifts the whole physiology of the body. When we do that, it gives us a confidence, it makes us feel strong, we walk tall, we feel great, and this enables us to try brave new things.

This postural change will enable you to do the things that you didn’t know were actually possible in your life. I have seen it time and time again, I’ve seen my clients transformed through Pilates.  They don’t think that they can do something, let’s say a plank as a perfect example. Often clients will say “Oh no, that’s too strong for me, and then bingo, they do it and they feel so confident and amazing because they have changed the way they view themselves; they build that confidence through building strength.

Pilates will also help you when you travel. I work with a lot of older clients, and as when travel, they can really struggle physically. They’re carting bags and they’re walking around on uneven surfaces; they walk all day exploring and this strength building will absolutely help in those areas as well. Travel = fun, but it cannot be fun if you hurt yourself while traveling.

Pilates will help you calm your mind and calm your life!

One of the ways that we create calm is through the Pilates breathing. We all know that there are so many health benefits to breathing. When we breathe the Pilates style, we take very deep breaths into the rib cage and this helps calm the central nervous system. Some of our other calming principles is control, precision & flow.  It is these principles that all add to the calmness in your life.

When we control a movement and really focus on the movement, make it streamlined, precise and with flow, this will bring a sense of calm to the body. Look, basically when we’re doing your Pilates, we are concentrating, we are blocking everything out in the world that’s bothering us and we’re just being with ourselves. Pilates is gentle and kind on the body.

Pilates will help you prevent injuries!

This is so key as we age that we want to prevent injuries and one of the key ways to being safe is to build core stability. When we build core stability, we prevent falls simple! I mentioned earlier also that when we stretch, we build lovely, long and lean muscles, this will in turn give us a greater range of mobility to reach for things and do all of our sport activities.

Think about range of movement, I don’t know about you, you might not want to kick a football, but if you do, you will need range of movement to do this, you might want to play tennis and reach for a ball as you’re running and playing tennis, or think about surfing, your body is in a deep crouch. If you are stiff, tight and have no core strength, these activities are huge potential areas that could cause great injury if you do not have core stability, flexibility and mobility.

Power up your Pelvic floor

The last point I want to share with you is around Pilates and the pelvic floor, all core strength starts with the pelvic floor. Like the rest of our body, the pelvic floor naturally ages and naturally weakens as you age. It ages too. It doesn’t matter if you have had children or you haven’t had children, it just naturally thins with age.

And we don’t want to be wearing a nappy, that’s for sure. Pilates will help prevent leakage and it prevents prolapse. At the end of the day, you don’t want to worry about these things when you go out. This is a very common problem for women, so building your pelvic floor through Pilates will prevent any embarrassing moments like that.

Look forward to sharing more next month and in the interim, I have a special FREE GIFT FOR YOU, it is an online Pilates membership called Fast Track your Mind and Body Health.

https://www.sandraleightraining.com/fast-track

There is a range of holistic practices, activities and a great bunch of stretch and mobility exercises inside. Look, if you never even do Pilates, it doesn’t matter, at the very least click the link, sign up for the free product and start a nice little stretch routine so that you can feel amazing EVERY DAY.