Today’s Pilates principle is spine articulation. Spines, as most of us are aware, are made up of a bunch of vertebrae, all of which interact with each other at multiple joints. In the thoracic spine (the part that connects with the rib cage), there are over 100 different joints, and that is just one segment. Joints are for movement. A joint that doesn’t move is not super useful. A joint that moves too much also has some issues.
In Pilates, we seek to get our spines to move appropriately at every joint. That means we want our spines to flex (bend forward), extend (bend back), side bend, and rotate. Different areas of the spine are better at different kinds of movement. For example, the cervical spine (that’s our neck) has a lot of rotation compared to our lumbar spine.
Our best function happens when our spines articulate relatively evenly across the segments. What does that mean? Among other things, we don’t want our lower back to do all the work.
One of my favorite ways to increase the articulation in my thoracic spine is by doing the supine arm twist. It’s extremely simple and takes about a minute. To do it, we lie down (yay!) on our backs with our knees bent and our feet flat on the floor. We put our arms up in the air over our chests, palms together. Keeping our elbows straight and the rest of our bodies still, we move our arms left and right (it is ok to let the shoulders move). We do about ten reps. Then we add head movement by doing about ten reps while gazing at our hands. Then we do about ten more reps moving our heads and arms in opposite directions. It’s simple, it feels good, and it helps with both posture and breathing. (For bonus points, put some yoga tune up balls in the space between the shoulder blades, one ball on either side of the spine. The exercise is a lot more… spicy… that way, but it really gets the kinks out!)
A spine that knows how to move and how to stabilize is a spine that will support us in all our activities.
Go play.
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