Growing with Uncle Joe

One of the reasons I like Pilates is because I am short.  Pilates helps me feel taller.  How?  The principle, in Pilates language, is axial elongation.  Normal people might call it standing up straighter.

 

It’s a little more complicated than that, but not too much.  Gravity is an inescapable fact of our lives and as we walk around and do the things we do, it pulls our spines down toward the earth.  When we do Pilates, we work to create space between our vertebrae in an anti-gravity kind of way.

 

Want to feel taller?  Here’s how.  We’re going to do a bridge together.  We begin lying on our backs (yay!) with our knees bent and feet flat on the floor with our heels in line with our sitting bones.  We take a deep inhale.  Then, as we exhale, we tilt our pelvises back toward our belly buttons and then keep tilting until our pelvises begin to lift in the air.  We peel one vertebra at a time off of the floor until we are supported on our shoulders and our feet.  Our bodies, from our shoulders to knees, should make a straight line.  We take another deep inhale.  Then, as we exhale, we peel ourselves back down on to the floor, pulling our hips away from our shoulders the whole time.  We imagine creating space between each vertebra on the way down and our hips will likely come down farther from our head than they started.  Voila!  Space in the spine!  We are taller!  (Please note:  people with osteopenia or osteoporosis should not do bridging with spinal articulation.  Those folks, instead of doing the pelvic tilt and the peel up and down, should lift the pelvis straight up toward the ceiling.  In the lowering phase, they can still pull the hips away from the head, but the spine should move as a unit rather than one vertebra at a time.)

 

Welcome to a taller future!