One moment

I love efficiency.  I think anyone who has ever had to get a kindergartener ready for school in the morning has a certain amount of fondness for it due to the absolute lack of same in the mind of most five-year-olds.  Who knew it could take 45 minutes to put on clean underwear, pants, and a shirt?  But wait!  There are still shoes and socks!

Efficiency culture, however, has its downside.  We get overly focused on how-much-how-fast-how-streamlined it all is.  We had better find yet another way to multitask while driving or reading or working out—if only we could do more in our sleep!!!  Yeah, no.

One of the beautiful things about Pilates is that it helps us be present right now, doing one thing.  We can focus on how putting our feet in the reformer’s straps make our hips feel, how expanding our chests as we inhale into spinal extension lifts our mood, how stacking our bones gives us a sense of stability.  We can slow down and notice.

I could argue that this is a stealth efficiency, that this very process of single-tasking or mindfulness or whatever we choose to call it improves our later performance.  It would even be, in some senses, true.  I’m not going to make that argument, however.  The moment is enough.  We are enough.  Right now.  Just the way we are.  We do our fitness work to learn that one thing, at least I hope so.