If I had to say what I
like about Pilates in one sentence, this would be it: Pilates develops proprioception. Lemony Snicket would say, “Proprioception, in
this context, means the sense of where the body is in space and where its parts
are relative to each other.”
Have you noticed in
movies that when a character is knocked out and wakes up, she always asks, “Where
am I?” It’s never “Who am I?” or even “What
happened?” We need, deeply, to orient
ourselves in our environment. That’s the
high-level, philosophical take.
The more practical angle
is this: proprioception is what keeps us
from bumping into things. It is
foundational for grace, but it also underlies the good form that helps us work
out without getting injured. We can’t
align our knees over our toes in a squat if we don’t know where our knees are
to begin with!
There are many ways to
develop proprioception, but Pilates is a good one because checking in with the
feeling of the movement is part of the process.
Check it out!
