PILATES FOR THE PROFESSIONAL WOMAN
Standing in your Power:
We know your mind is brilliant but what is holding you back? The core issue for professional women begins in the body. Here are their stories.
Coffee shops, fast food joints, and Pilates studios– what do these three things have in common? They are the redundant landmarks of today’s thriving metropolis. But despite their instant appeal, the benefits of a Pilates practice are profound and far-reaching. In the downtown core of Toronto, professional women discuss the dynamic effects that a weekly Pilates practice has on their busy lives.
Many beginners are astounded by the focus and effort required during a Pilates session - attention to alignment, form, and execution are stressed in each class. But perhaps the most challenging element is the emphasis on the breath. Breathing and Pilates are symbiotic in nature. The breath informs each of the 34 exercises in the mat repertoire, and the success of each movement and each transition is contingent on the quality, and rhythm of one’s breathing.
Freelance Interior Designer, Del Weale must at times be forthright and headstrong when dealing with competitive male sub-contractors present daily on the job site. She credits Pilates with helping her keep her cool by using the principle of breathe as a key tool in staying grounded: “You know you breathe, and [think] okay guys. All the people I have to deal with within my trade are mostly men… These are tough guys, know it all, European macho, they know more than I do [sarcasticly], they’ve been doing it all these years, they know more and I'm thinking: I don’t think so”.
The breath as a centering device is no longer regarded as a foreign concept or esoteric principle. Mary Vachon, a psychotherapist who works primarily with people with cancer and the bereaved, sheds light on this: “Well I think the issue of centering is important. I think we need to be centered. I need to be centered in the kind of work that I do, and certainly the breath is a part of centering. And in Pilates I often am realizing I’m not necessarily working with my breath in the way that I might best work with it. So I become conscious – Oh, I don’t seem to have as much breath as I think I should have”.
Dedication to a weekly Pilates practice is all it takes for students to reclaim their natural posture - what I consider to be the outward manifestation of alertness and confidence. Posture is a skill that must be learned (or relearned) and Pilates instructors are sticklers for enforcing this basic principle. How we present ourselves has a direct affect on how others perceive and judge us, and therefore good posture is a factor in the formula to success. Weale credits Pilates for her improved posture and recognizes its importance: “You have to emanate power or authority I should say, or knowledge with back up. You have to prove yourself constantly with people. They like to question.”
Pilates is the pillar of the workday for some. Mary Aitken, Founder and Managing Director of Verity – a private business club for female professionals and entrepreneurs - shares her experience: “I think that it makes me feel stronger and more flexible and makes you feel you can rely on your body as a resource when you need it. Which means when you’re really tired you can be confident: It’s ten o’clock and I’ve been here since six in the morning and still going. But nothing bad is going to happen; if I’ve got a stronger body, it’s a resource that I can rely on.”
The gains of a Pilates practice, two to three times a week, have both long and short term affects. The core support it develops can sustain us throughout the entirety of each busy day. Aitken is able to bring the focus she learns on the mat into other situations demanding the same intensity: “There’s a lot going on in Pilates - because you’re having to focus on certain muscle groups and that’s a transportable skill. If there’s a room full of people and you’ve got to make a speech to a hundred people and everyone is talking and running around, and somebody needs something from you but you know that in three minutes you have to pull yourself together, you need to block everything out and in your mind roll through everything you’re going to say. I don’t like to use notes, so you have to really center, focus, and reduce everything. And I think that’s a little bit of what we’re doing in Pilates: you’re focusing on that muscle that you’re trying to connect with…”
As a Psychotherapist, Mary Vachon can appreciate from a holistic perspective the ways in which Pilates has given her a new awareness of her body: “It’s given me a different sense of my body and a different sense of being in my body. And so it makes me conscious of being in my body in that way and thinking in terms of various aspects of my body and becoming conscious of the way things work - the way the muscles work in a way I wasn’t conscious of before”.
It takes time to master the three-dimensional breath that is used in Pilates: the abdomen stays contracted during the inhalation and the ribs expand fully in an effort to increase the lung capacity. Vachon speaks personally of its importance in her practice: “And another one of my reasons for wanting to do exercise is because I think in some ways my lung capacity - perhaps my cardiovascular capacity was somewhat compromised with chemotherapy. So I want to make sure that I really worked with it because I literally went through phases that I couldn’t breathe. It’s important to me the centering breath, and so I go back to that”.
Professional women consider Pilates a sensible choice for their well being and also find it complements their weekly fitness regimen. Despite their busy schedules, they make time to squeeze it in, eager to reap its rewards: an improvement in self-esteem, a trim and mobile body, and a strength that reaches out from the inside and inspires those around them.
