She's a Knockout!

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!