How to improve your posture with Pilates, 2 steps to get started

Now that you know how deep breathing can have a great impact on your health and psyche, let’s keep that in your mind – not just when you’re practicing Pilates – but as you go about your life. I promise you, if you can teach yourself to remember to breathe daily, your life will be transformed in a bigger way. Since it’s the ultimate goal of your practice, so the main step then is to remove all the obstacles that get in the way. As we move on to this month’s theme – shoulder girdle, which very much correlates to breathing, you know all too well that the shallower the breathing, the more tense you are. And all those tensions usually begin in the shoulders. While this topic could use more than a month of conversation, we’ll do our best to make do with the short time we have. Ready? Let’s do this.

The shoulder and neck have become the hot topic – what the lower back was ten years ago. If you think the reason for this is the increased use of mobile phones and computers, then you guessed it right.

The shoulder and neck have become the hot topic – what the lower back was ten years ago. If you think the reason for this is the increased use of mobile phones and computers, then you guessed it right.

Long hours with the eyes looking down at the phone promotes poor posture forward neck, a.k.a text neck.

Compounding these two reasons is time pressure, something that we all seem to be facing nowadays. As a society, we’re constantly rushing from one place to another to keep up with today’s fast-paced lifestyle. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but sometimes before you haven’t even completed a task, your mind has already begun planning: the next task, meeting, conversation, driving. Basically, we’re always doing something while having one foot outside the door. All those headaches, neck aches, impatience, and irritation that you might sometimes be experiencing are imbalances that occur from the feeling that you never have enough time to do all the things that need to be done. How do I know that? Well, because I’ve noticed it in myself, I’ve caught myself a few times, especially if I’m lying down ready to exercise, straight away my to-do list comes in, or I start having a conversation in my head. I have to intentionally stop myself and bring myself back to what I’m doing at that very moment.

So here are 2 steps that can help you with your shoulders awareness.

1. Dynamically strengthen your upper body.

Computer and mobile phones are not going anywhere, so we will get even more dependent on them over time. The solution then is to strengthen your neck, shoulders, and upper body to adapt to the increased usage of technology. This whole month in the studio, we will be guiding you to pay attention to your shoulder girdle. As you know, Pilates has that inbuilt mechanism that improves and corrects wrong posture. It’s also good to release tension before it gets accumulated. Here is an easy exercise video that you can do on your own after spending long hours at the computer 

..once you train yourself to stop multitasking you will open a new window of space and time that you never thought you had before, @jeaniquepilates

2. Practice good posture.

The second step is a bit harder; for step 1 to work efficiently, you need to take personal responsibility for yourself. Teachers are just guides. Equipment and springs are just extra muscles to support you through the exercises. Your body can only respond, heal, and fix itself when you decide to participate in doing the work mentally and physically. Here is what I mean by that.

(a) Just showing up for the class is only the beginning. You must actively bring your mind into your body so that the exercise becomes more full-body, and that’s because smaller muscles which always need to be targeted first require alignment and centering on firing up, otherwise by default, your body will take over and just do what it does best – use the loudest muscles in your body known as the superficial or larger muscles and that in turn reinforces the same pattern over and over – big muscles overpowering smaller and weaker ones. For that reason, you must make an effort to keep the mind in the class, every single time. Oh! and you must, you must, you must switch off that I watch, as it is quite distracting to yourself and other participants and teachers. If you need to switch your calories counter on, come early and set yourself up, that will also help because you will be setting yourself in the zone.

(b) Practicing good posture doesn’t only happen in class. It’s applicable everywhere: when you’re driving, at the office, in bed while watching the news or movies, when carrying your kid, it’s everywhere. So once you train yourself to stop multitasking, you will open a new window of space and time that you never thought you had before, that will change the way to think about the things that may or may not be your priority, and before you know it, a good posture will become a habit.

I can’t wait to hear your suggestion and thoughts on this topic. If you made it up to here, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment; it’s easy; just scroll below and leave a comment in the empty white box. If you find this video useful, please don’t hesitate to share it around. 

Xo 

 Jeanique

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