Let It Flow: Why Flow Is The Secret Sauce of Pilates
“Contrology is designed to give you suppleness, natural grace, and skill that will be unmistakably reflected in the way you walk, in the way you play, and in the way you work.”
Three reasons to work on flow:
Move gracefully: The control and grace your body learns from Pilates exercises and the transitions will be carried over into your daily activities, allowing you to navigate your daily tasks with comfort and ease.
Reduce injury: Fluidity in movement decreases clumsiness, stumbles and falls — making you less prone to injury.
Increase cardio: You will burn more calories and increase stamina if your workout flows seamlessly from one exercise to the next, with limited rest and set-up time.
“Time spent resting is time spent not exercising.” (I love this quote, from my Real Pilates trainer, Alycea Ungaro, who would encourage trainees to pick up the pace of set-ups with these wise words.)
What Makes Pilates so special?
It is hard to put your finger on what exactly it is about Pilates. People become OBSESSED! A first class leads to daily classes, leads to a workshop, then a teacher training … next thing you know they’re kissing the professional life goodbye and leaving a successful career as a marketing and communications director to play Pilates all day (ahem-hem … guilty!)
Sure, you become stronger, more flexible, and maybe even find relief from pain. But that special something, the je ne sais quoi of Pilates, is so much bigger than a greater range of motion or restored alignment.
People describe feeling calmer, happier and more comfortable in their own skin. I have heard people say that their life has become better, easier. They’re just happier.
READ: My Pilates Story: Pilates Saved My Life.
But why?
Pilates doesn’t teach coping skills, or even meditation to calm an anxious mind. It’s movement … resistance training. So why do people experience such extreme mental and emotional change from their Pilates practice?
Sure, it is mind-body. But there’s more to it.
Think about the fact that your body is with you every moment of every day. It is one of the only things you simply cannot escape from.
Everything becomes harder and more uncomfortable if you are moving through life with awkward posture and choppy movements. I mean, everything: from putting your shoes on in the morning to getting out of the car. It’s just a little bit harder … a small pain in the bum that has an very large effect on your psyche.
The way your body is feeling has a major effect on your mental state. And we are very aware when things are hard, uncomfortable, or especially painful.
However, in contrast, if you seamlessly flow through life with grace and balance, as Pilates teaches, you approach your tasks and activities with comfort, confidence and ease. It’s a lightness. It allows you to just be. And we aren’t necessarily aware when the machine is running smoothly.
READ: Why Does Pilates Make You Shake
The magic Might be in what’s not there
If you wake up thinking about your pain or discomfort, you don’t have the room to think about how you’ll spend your day, how much you will enjoy your coffee, and all the tasks you might accomplish. No, you are just like “$#!&, my back hurts!” Nobody wants to start the day like that.
As you progress through the Pilates system, you go from unconsciously incompetent (inefficient movement patterns you are not even aware of), to consciously incompetent (you are aware that you need to make changes), to consciously competent (your movement patterns are more efficient when you make a conscious effort to improve them), and finally to unconsciously competent (moving freely through life with comfort and ease without even thinking about it).
Unconscious competence is the goal.
We don’t notice when we wake up without discomfort or pain, nor are we completely conscious that we are moving with flow. We just are. We are free to think about the other things.
When we are reaching up to get the coffee cup out of the cabinet, we can think, “This is going to be delicious coffee!” instead of “Crap, it hurts my shoulder to reach that high.”
Or if you drop something, you don’t have to worry about hurting yourself while bending down, or whether or not you are going to be able to get back up if you kneel down to pick it up. You just do it.
We don’t bend down to pick up a box and think, “It felt so good to pick up that box without any anxiety about throwing out my back.” No. You do it and move on. There’s a lot of freedom in that.
The indescribable, overarching comfort in our own skin, which comes from a dedicated Pilates practice, is in part due to the flow of movement Pilates teaches.
The Pilates principles
Flow, along with control, concentration, centering, precision and breath, is one of the six Pilates principles, and it affects every aspect of our being.
Flow positively impacts the quality of each and every movement we make in our daily lives, from the moment we roll ourselves over to get out of bed in the morning to when we crawl back in at night.
It is this ease of movement that gives us so much comfort and peace with our being.
Joseph Pilates said: “Correctly executed and mastered to the point of subconscious reaction, these exercises will reflect grace and balance in your routine activities. Contrology exercises build a sturdy body and sound mind fitted to perform every daily task with ease and perfection, as well as to provide tremendous reserve energy for sports, recreation, emergencies.”
Basically, if you can do Pilates, you can do anything. And that, is living.
READ: Because Of Pilates: Just Say "Yes!" To Life Through Pilates
The secret is in the transitions
Flow is not only accomplished through the actual exercises (it is present in every exercise), but also in the way we transition from exercise to exercise.
In Pilates, the exercises are all connected by transitions, so that the entire sequence becomes not a group of separate activities, but a seamless, single fow from the beginning of the session to the end.
All the Pilates Principles are important and, when combined, present a uniquely holistic approach to health and wellness.
But flow might be the secret sauce that makes Pilates so different.
And while this flow and ease of movement helps one to move gracefully through life and improve athletic and physical performance, it can also have major impact on injury prevention.
READ: When The Going Gets Tough, Go To Pilates: 5 Ways Pilates Keeps You Centered In Times Of Stress
Flow and injury prevention And Longevity
Falls are one of the biggest threats to the health of the elderly; the ability to go from sitting to standing has been shown in several studies to have a direct impact on life expectancy. (2, 3) Studies, such as the Effects of Pilates on The Elderly, have shown time and time again that practicing Pilates improves balance and reduces risk of falls among the elderly. (3)
Alycea Ungaro, PT MS, believes that Pilates transitions play a major role in keeping people healthy and young.
Alycea Ungaro, PT MS, believes that Pilates transitions play a major role in keeping people healthy and young. “For the everyday person, injuries happen when we transition from one activity to another. Often without us even being aware....Pilates training focuses in on transitions between moves and within moves, training the body and the mind to control your movements no matter what. With less haphazard moves, you'll avoid unwanted incidents and injuries. Less medical intervention will most certainly keep you youthful.” (4) (“5 Ways Pilates Keeps You Young” on Verywell.com.)
It’s about the journey
Flow is one of the reasons that a dedicated Pilates practice has such a profound effect on the quality of a person’s life.
Joseph Pilates used a car as a metaphor for the body:
(Wouldn't you rather ride in a) “perfect-running automobile with a good driver at the wheel, knowing that his gradual acceleration and deceleration and his skillful negotiation of even sharp curves and abrupt turns are all accompanied so smoothly that we never give a conscious thought to his fine driving but rather concentrate on enjoying the passing scenery.”
(Compare this to a) “neglected car driven by a bad driver whose jerky starts, sudden stops, and dangerous turns not only upset our balance constantly but also rob us of the pleasure of the trip.”
So there you go. Do Pilates. Enjoy the ride!
What do you think about flow? Leave your comments below!
*An earlier version of this article was published on October 12, 2017.
References
Pilates, Joseph H et al. Pilates' Return To Life Through Contrology. [Place of publication not identified]: Presentation Dynamics, 2012. Print.
de Brito, Leonardo Barbosa Barreto et al. "Ability To Sit And Rise From The Floor As A Predictor Of All-Cause Mortality". European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 21.7 (2014): 892-898. Web.
Costa, Letícia Miranda Resende da et al. "The Effects Of Pilates On The Elderly: An Integrative Review". Revista Brasileira de Geriatria e Gerontologia 19.4 (2016): 695-702. Web.
Ungaro, PT, MS, Alycea. "5 Ways Pilates Keeps You Young". Very Well. N.p., 2016. Web. 15 June 2017.