Pilates Principle: Control

CONTROL

Control is considered one of the six Pilates Principles

The others are:

• Breath
• Concentration
• Centring
• Flow
• Precision

I’ve written blog posts on all of them; here are the links if you’re curious:

Breath  Concentration  Centring  Flow  Precision

Maybe you’ve read that there are eight or ten principles instead of six? No worries.

Yes there are some folks who add a few more, like Alignment, Balance, or Integration, but as all of them overlap it doesn’t really matter so much because these concepts were not specifically defined by Mr. Pilates.

All of the Principles are tenets or themes that have been pulled from within his work to help people understand it more easily.

And now back to Control Central

photo by Miguel Luis  

Control as a Principle is pretty key, I mean Joseph Pilates did name his work Contrology, not Pilates - Control definitely has a direct connection to the Pilates Method.

Why did Joe think that Contrology (& by extrapolation, Control) was so important?

Let’s go to the man himself, here are a few choice quotes:

”One of the major results of Contrology is gaining the mastery of your mind over the complete control of your body.”

Yep 

“Contrology develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind, and elevates the spirit.”

Uh Huh 

”It is only through Contrology that this unique trinity of a balanced body, mind, and spirit can ever be attained. Self-confidence follows.”

Totally 

“Through Contrology you first purposely acquire complete control of your own body and then through proper repetition of its exercises you gradually and progressively acquire that natural rhythm and coordination associated with all your subconscious activities.” 

OMG, Yes

 

Perfect! The trinity of Body, Mind, and Spirit!

Quick Question? In Pilates what sort of Control over these three bits are we actually pursuing?

photo by Lucija Ros 

BODY

Look at that last quote above the photo, especially the part about progressively acquiring the natural rhythms and coordination… Did you skim it? Go back and read it again, I’ll wait…

This is exactly why we want to control our body in Pilates, so that our subconscious activities are easeful.

Control of our body helps to develop our interoception, aka the “hidden sense”, that tells us what’s going on inside of our bodies.

In Pilates we use our interoception to move efficiently by training our muscles to fire at the right time and in the right order.

We really just want our bodies to work so…

What we do on the mat prepares us for EVERYTHING we do off the mat!

We really just want our bodies to work:

Easily

Naturally

Efficiently

I often tell my clients that the goal of Pilates is not that they have to engage their abs and stack their spines while also practicing their Pilates breathing, when all they’re doing is pushing their shopping cart through the grocery store. Efficiency rules!

So the take home is that Controlling our body in the studio lets us trust it when we’re out living our lives, moving as Joseph Pilates said, with spontaneous zest and pleasure.

Ain’t that Grand?

photo by Ina RH 

MIND

Controlling our mind in Pilates is all about staying present.

Paying attention to what we’re doing keeps us focused.

This presence & focus helps in two big ways:

Way #1

First up this mind control will help us achieve better results more quickly.

We all have movement patterns that we develop over our lives that Pilates tries to ‘undo’, bringing us as close to homeostasis as possible.

Making changes to our body usually requires some subtle shifting and our body will resist trying a new thing.

We have to repeatedly think about a new way of moving, otherwise our body will default to what it already knows how to do. I call it laying down a new groove in the brain.

This is why you might have a Pilates session where you don’t feel like you’ve done much physically challenging but you are freaking exhausted. It’s mental work!

(Ahem.. I’m sure we’ve also all experienced the very persnickety and extremely picky instructor who’s convinced that moving our pinky finger a millimetre here or there is going to offer us profound results - ummm, guilty as charged?)

Way #2

There’s a second way that controlling our minds manifests in Pilates.

The singular focus on something whether it be a body part, the breath, or the flow of the exercise, rids us of distractions. This is how an hour on our mats turns into an hour of movement meditation.

Yay Mindfulness!

This second connection between Mind and Control dovetails nicely into Spirit…

photo by Jr Korpa

SPIRIT

I think the definition of Spirit in a Pilates practice is what’s right and true for each practitioner. Heck, probably most people that do Pilates don’t think of it as a spiritual practice at all (totes okay).

All I can do it tell you that I’ve definitely had some spiritual experiences on my mat.

Trying to put those experiences into words in any articulate way feels hard and maybe a bit mmm, not scary, but more like vulnerable, because they are so personal.

These are things that I don’t really talk to anyone about but, here goes (and again, this is my experience)

In the instances where I’ve felt Spirit while I’ve been practicing Pilates it’s almost as if I was possessed (but in a good way). A few times I’ve had an almost out of body experience but other times it’s been the opposite, as if I’ve been 100% encompassed by myself and I am deeply, deeply enveloped within. The things that are the same in both instances is that my judgemental interior voice is non existent, my mind is quiet, and I can fully embrace the most physically physical feeling ever and simply go for a movement ride. It’s almost dreamlike when it happens which isn’t very often, btw, but when it does I’m def connected to Flow.

Phew, didn’t know that was going to come out of this writing but there you go…

The last thing I want to say about control is not really Pilates based but LIFE based.

I think we all know that the only thing we ultimately have any control over in life is ourselves. We can control our thoughts, how we react to people, and how we respond to situations.

There was a truly excellent reminder of this about an hour ago. You see, in the process of writing this post I somehow inadvertently erased most of it when it was 99% finished.

Of course it was so good, so pithy, and such amazing writing!! Waaaaa

So what happened?

First I yelled and yelled and yelled some more in disbelief at how unfair it was, and then just for good measure, I let out a big old agonising scream of despair (it helps that I don’t have any neighbours so could fully express myself!)

Once that was done then I stomped around for a couple of minutes. Mature, I know…

Finally I realised that I couldn't pull any of that great content out of the ether so I sat back down and began to recreate this blog. 

All I can say is, thanks Universe for the kick up the back-side, forcing me to live in alignment and embody what I write about.

Don’t you just love when you have to practice what you preach, hahaha

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Be well!

xBec

The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this blog are not intended to amount to advice and Rebecca Forde disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this post

cover & social photo by Dustin Humes