Out there in the culture,
there is this idea floating around that sitting is the new smoking. I can’t really speak to smoking, not having had
that particular habit, but I can say pretty authoritatively that too much
sitting is Not Good. We may not be able
to avoid it if we have a long commute and/or a desk job, but Pilates can help.
One of the ways Pilates
helps is by gently encouraging flexibility and mobility. Our bodies seem to have been listening when
our moms told us that our faces would freeze that way—they get stuck in the
flexed and slouched postures of our chairs.
Pilates unsticks us.
Even better, Pilates
teaches us good mechanics so that when we do all that sitting, we can at least
do it with better posture, axial elongation (that’s a fancy way of saying
sitting up tall), and core control.
Fight the dominant
paradigm! Squeeze in some Pilates!