The beginning of the Pilates Mat Order

Cynthia Young

Half term is approaching and for my clients, this means a break from me!

However, a break from your teacher should not be a reason to stop your Pilates practise.  One of the very reasons for the website is to give people access to high quality Pilates when they are away from their teacher, their teacher is away from them or you just want to do more than the 1 class you can get to each week.

With Pilates, like any discipline, you will reap far more benefits and rewards for yourself if you practise.  It is this practise that enables the good movement you are learning through practising the exercises to infiltrate your movement every day.  You will feel more flexible, stronger, more connected to and aware of your body.

"Correctly executed and mastered to the point of subconscious reaction, these exercises will reflect grace and balance in your routine activities." Joseph Pilates

If you can practise the full mat from "Return to Life", with modifications if you need them as appropriate, you will have moved every joint in the body and worked through all planes of movement testing flexibility and strength.  If you can practise this with flow, you have a moving mindful meditation!

So the challenge has been set to my clients to practise and learn over this half term, the first five exercises of the order, committing them to memory!

 

To help, I am providing you with a class which literally refers to the exercise name and that's it.  There is then a second video offering some modifications which you may find appropriate.  But remember, challenge and pain are two different things.  It  is OK to feel challenged, it's not OK to feel pain.  If you feel pain, modify to a range or level that is acceptable to you for now.  Things change, be patient with yourself.

 

This class is just the exercises with no modifications and takes less than 5 minutes, sorry I cut my legs off in Roll Over.  You roll over 3 x with feet flexed and legs apart, once overhead, point the feet, bring the legs together and return the spine to the mat.  You then reverse this 3x.  On the Pilates ABC page https://sharepilates.com/pilates-abc/ there is a full explanation for just this exercise and all the others.

Some of you may use or need a modification for the time being.  So here are a few suggested modifications you could use.

Enjoy and let me know how you get on!