by Kimberly Fielding

When I think back three years ago… I can’t believe all the things I couldn’t do.
My joints were congested and so was my mind. I had no space in my body for movement and freedon, thus no space in my mind for positive thoughts and emotional well-being. My movement practice at Movements Afoot has given me space…has decongested me. I move with freedom. Confidence has filled my new space in my mind. Of course there are always times of emotional set backs, but I know staying with my Pilates practice will ground me, and keep me loving my body at any size.

I love the new Jenny Craig add. Queen Latifah, the current spokes person, emphasizes herself as being a size healthy. That losing up to 5-10% of your body weight and increasing your movement activities decreases your chance of Type 2 diabetes and other life threatening illnesses.

Even prior to my 80-100 pound weight gain I always had a negative tape playing in my head. I knew I had to finally stop the negative dialogue in my mind if only for a little while to start positive changes in my life.

I realized that moving from the inside out was giving me the chance to get to know myself. I never knew what that meant. I never knew that you could really be nice to yourself and really be your own friend…but you can.
• It is so liberating to quiet that negative voice
• to focus on my tailbone
• to actually narrow across my hip bones,
• to feel my back widen from my breath
• to feel my strong hand scapula connection as I open the reformer carriage in control front
• to finally be able to press myself up from the reformer for control back
• to execute long back stretch and twist
• to lift my leg up high while feeling my femur bone roll in the socket and keeping my hips level
• to be able to do a hand stand and a walkover again.

That is the way I have been getting to know myself. My true self. The self that I wake up with and go to sleep with, the self that is with me all the time. A self that is a size healthy and always getting healthier as healthy as I can be.

by Doris Pasteleur and Lesley Powell
Edited by Dr. Martha Eddy

Movement is the shifting of the body’s weight on different surfaces. Different parts of the body may shift on the ground or surface. However the weight shift is the propulsion of the center of the body, the pelvis through space to cause locomotion or a change of levels and locomotion.

Building blocks: A good weight shift is the coordination of the body to (1) ground into the floor (surface) and (2) to move the body in a specific direction in space. Before we can move up, we must have the foundation of down, grounding. Grounding is a basic foundation. Without a foundation, there can be no building. Weight shift involves the coordination of dynamic alignment seen in the sequential leverage of our bones from toe to head, organized by the muscles, and accompanied by the fluids and organs moving in synchrony.

Propulsion: When a person releases his or her own natural body weight into the floor, it helps the brain estimate the amount work needed to coordinate the necessary push off to shift the body into space. Even when pulling a heavy load successfully involves having a person push her or his feet into the ground first. An improper weight shift puts undue pressure on the spine and superficial muscles of the limbs.

Pelvic Shifts: Irmgard Bartenieff divided the concept of weight shift into two building blocks of movement, pelvic shift forward and pelvic shift lateral. Of course this fundamental action includes multiple aspects, for instance the pelvic shift forward includes a pelvic shift back. A healthy gait has elements of both the forward and lateral pelvic shifts.

Weight shifts enable level changes from lying down to sitting to standing. They are the building block for locomotion - traveling across space. There is a constant changing relationship of weight shifts from one body part to another, a dynamic dance.

“What about ankles? My friend has old ankle injuries and has had little luck fixing them via surgery. I know alignment and muscle use can make a huge difference. Would it help him? Where should he start? “

Yes alignment and muscle balance can make a difference. Sometimes when there is an injury, you need to look above or below the problem. For instance, knocked-knees (valgus) usually puts the weight on the inside of the ankle. The ankle, knee and hips have to organize around this disfunction.

I have a Pilates client who has a pin in her ankle from a terrible fall. Because of the pin, she no longer has much range of motion in the ankle. I still train her feet, legs and work on alignment. Her gaining strength has made a big difference in her posture. When the foundation is weak, the entire body compensates.

A lot of bunion surgery is unsuccessful. What was not addressed is the movement patterns that caused the bunions. I highly recommend training like Pilates, yoga especially the standing poses to help build strength in the legs and torso to help with standing and walking. A good teacher can work with the limitations of an injury and help a client gain the necessary support for better function. Of course, certain injuries, such as my client with the ankle pin, will never return back to normal function. By improving overall tone, alignment and flexibility, my client has made incredible changes in function.

Some great reading about foot strengthening are:

The Wharton Stretch Book by Jim & Phil Wharton
See the section on the foot

“One of the dirty secrets of the fitness world is that for all the talk about the importance of stretching, many athletes and other fit people don’t bother with it. It’s hard to gauge the benefits, and it seems as if the time could be better spent running, lifting weights, or perfecting sports skills. This sentiment is expressed by Dr. Bob Arnot in the foreword to “The Whartons’ Stretch Book,” and he says that the Whartons changed his mind. He went to them with a stiffened hip that he thought needed surgery, but after a regimen using the active-isolated stretching technique, his flexibility in that hip had increased 40 percent.

Active-isolated stretching is very different from what your high-school gym teacher made you do. Rather than holding a stretch for a half-minute, you hold it for just two seconds. This prevents the muscle from activating an instinctual braking device to keep itself from overstretching. Traditional stretching forces that braking to occur, and the Whartons think that’s not only counterproductive, but dangerous. If you force too deep a stretch while the muscle is doing all it can to keep itself from being stretched, something’s got to give. And a torn muscle will repair itself with scar tissue, ultimately making that muscle less flexible.”

Conditioning for Dance by Eric Franklin

This book has a great section on the foot. Even though it is written for dancers, there is great information how the foot works and how to train it.

by Lesley Powell

I have been teaching a class, PilatesDancing, for the past year. It has been amazing how many changes are happening in my students. I combined Pilates, Laban/Bartenieff and the Franklin Method to create this class.

The structure of the class consists:

1. Foot training includes releasing tension, strengthening the foot and the mechanics of the foot in movement. We bring the new foot connections back to standing. As the foot become better connected and grounded, alignment and core tone changes.
2. Pilates mat and floor barre includes strengthening the core three dimensionally in a dynamic movement routines on the floor. This includes challenges of balance and level changes which demand more core than doing exercises on your back.
3. A standing warm up, we use a block to challenge balance and understand the importance of the standing/working leg. I also bring into principles from my training from the Franklin method and Amy Matthews, a BodyMind Centering practioner, about rhythms of bones in the leg to enhance standing and function.



4. We end with an adagio. The purpose of the adagio is to practice the themes of the class that day.

By Lesley Powell

“One of my students that I teach private reformer with has brought up the following comments a few times…

1) She is not used to thinking of soft abdominals during Pilates practice and she is having a hard time understanding how her abs are working if the are softer rather than tight and gripping…and

2) She has been sore (good sore) after a few my sessions with her, but not all–and she has this hang up that she needs to be sore the next day, like if she’s not sore she didn’t work as hard…any thoughts on how i should respond??”" BBU Teacher In Training

There are many ways to use muscles.

Make a fist with your hand. Feel how you create a lot of tension in your muscles. But…now try to move your fingers!

Now extend your fingers and wiggle your fingers! You are using a different quality of tone that allows movement.

Dynamic movement requires a constant dance of muscles around the joints to stabilize. If we get too rigid in the muscle tone, we lose movement. The deep stabilizers of the body work in coordination with other muscles groups. The coordination of muscles is phenomenal, but it is never going to feel like a bicep curl. Look at weight lifters flexing their muscles. They have to create a static position to bulk the muscle up. These positions have no relationship to how we move.

To get to the deeper muscles of the core, will never have the same quality of tone as flexing and hardening the rectus abdominus. Remember the way to develop the six-pack is crunches. The transverse abdominus will have more of a feeling of a corset. Pilates is training the abdominals in relationship to movement and posture.

Some client’s pathway is that they must learn to release into strength. Tightening superficial muscles is not the answer to improving core support and posture. Also Pilates does not work on the same overload principles as traditional exercise. Traditional exercise works on doing many reps at one time to fatigue a muscle. Pilates has you do smaller reps with different variations of using the body. By the end of a Pilates session, one might have done the similar reps of a body part as traditional exercise.

Sometimes we must challenge the client into realizing their poor connections. Put them in plank pose for a longer period time. SAFELY put them in an exercise a little above their level. Then bring back the importance of the beginning work to create this kind of strength.