PILATES AND PLAY
An Ongoing Journey To Discover The Body's Wisdom
by Deborah Marcus
From The Thinking Body, by Mabel Ellsworth Todd, 1937
The mechanisms for breathing, locomotion and mechanical balance are deeply tied in all bodily tissues and structural adaptations for these functions are closely interrelated. (Preface)
The spine remains the fundamental basis of support and movement for all of the various vertebrate structures. The strength of arms and legs depends upon their closeness of association with the strongest parts of the spine. Thus the great muscles binding the pelvis and legs to the spine extend deep into the trunk, and some reach high up into the thorax, where they are attached at a level opposite the lower end of the sternum. These are the important muscles for support and movement in walking, so that we walk with the help of our lower chest structures as well as by the more obvious muscles of the thigh, calf and foot. Shoulders and ribcage are likewise connected with the lower spine and with the pelvis through the strong muscles of the lower back and sides. Strength of movement of the arms, in throwing or grasping, or in lifting outside weights, is dependent upon the underlying support and strength of the loins and thighs. The essential structures for the support of body-weight and for the control of movement are thus to be looked for in the lower spine, where the oldest and best-established patterns of neuro-muscular activity are found, as well as in the legs.
(Chapter 1, Function and Form in Human Dynamics, page 17)
Definition of Ideokinesis as taught by Andre Bernard at New York University, 1985
Ideokinesis is a discipline that employs the use of images as a means of improving muscle patterns.
****************************************************************************************************************
BEGINNING
I became familiar with these words while taking a class back in 1985. I was working on a Masters in Dance from New York University's Tisch School of The Arts. The teacher was Andre Bernard, and I believe the class was called Ideokinesis for The Dancer.
Little did I know at the time that these words and this class would have a profound effect on my work with students and with my own body as my dancing and Pilates Practice evolved over the next twenty-seven years. At the time I lacked the maturity to realize the power of what I was being taught. As a dancer and choreographer making art in New York City, my focus was on the creative process for the theater and pushing hard to improve my dance technique and physicality.
I lived in NYC from 1983-1993, where I performed with an eclectic mix of dance and movement theater companies, choreographed for my own multigenerational company of actors, dancers and singers, (aged 25-82), and taught weekly movement workshops in nursing homes and psychiatric facilities throughout the NYC boroughs for an arts organization called Hospital Audiences.
For six years I also worked as a Personal Trainer for Susanna Weiss Personal Fitness Training where I was introduced to the Pilates Mat work and the fundamentals of Pilates. Susanna had been a long-time student of Kathy Grant, a Pilates Elder.
My earliest understanding of Pilates began with the teachings of Susanna and Andre. It was also informed inadvertently by some of my dance teachers both in NYC and San Francisco. They included Aaron Osborne, Alonzo King, Christine Wright, Lawrence Rhodes, Liz Lerman, and Kari Margolis and Tony Brown
of The Adaptors Movement Theater. My work with this company involved training that was greatly influenced by the teachings of the French mime artist, Etienne Decroux.
Throughout the 90’s I took various Pilates and Pilates related workshops with Jean Claude West, Elizabeth Larkam, Eric Franklin, Frances White, Wendy Le Blanc, Brent Anderson, and more recently with Sherri Betz, and Catherine Anderson. These teachers are all leaders in their field, continually exploring, researching, synthesizing, and practicing. My deepest admiration and thanks go out to these individuals. (I have provided a list of links for all of them at the bottom of this essay. Please check these out when you have a moment.)
THE CORE
Fast forward to 2011. Pilates, the craze, has come and gone. For about 15 years, the most prevalent perception of Pilates was that it would strengthen ones abdominals, the “abs” generally defined as the core.
Pilates is thankfully much more than that. But I find it interesting that the fitness seeking public latched onto this one aspect of the work. And I don’t think it was just a yearning for the washboard abs or the overall slimming of the body without losing weight. We all want to feel better, to whether stress, injury, and the daily challenges of life with more grace and with less pain, maybe even no pain. This is the function of a well-integrated and toned core.
In The Thinking Body, Mabel Ellsworth Todd gives an eloquent description of “the core”, and it is clearly not a thing that stands alone. Rather, it is an organization of many structures and systems tied together in one’s body through the breath.
After twenty years of learning, practicing, and teaching Pilates, I find that this is the most challenging aspect of the work to teach precisely because understanding this process and this organization is dependent on each individual’s highly personal learning style and body history, and it changes over time. I have become increasingly interested in how we learn to move.
THE ROLE OF “PLAY” IN THE PRACTICE OF PILATES & THE PROCESS OF AGING
What is the role of “play” in one’s Pilates practice? Perhaps it is the willingness to follow internal or external cues given to your own body, to find the path of least resistance as you continually allow yourself to push into the unknown, taking more risks, increasing range of motion, strength, stability and ease of balance. This can be done at any age with any number of structural or even neurological limitations.
A look into the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary will present you with 80 definitions under the word, “play”. Here are a few of my favorites as they relate to the practice of Pilates: “action of a specified kind”, “elusive change”, “to move freely within a space, as a part of a mechanism”, “freedom or scope for activity”, “to amuse oneself”, “to pretend to cooperate or concur”, and “to maneuver opposing groups in order to benefit oneself”.
This last definition, if one “group” is the crown of the head and the other is the feet, is a great way to access spinal length or axial elongation while doing the Footwork on the Reformer. Allow your body to simply maneuver up through the head and down through the feet as you do your Footwork, and you have participated in a playful act. This doesn’t mean that you ignore any of your previously discovered insights into this exercise. You have simply added to the whole of your experience.
This idea of play has me thinking about the aging process and how to keep learning when the brain may be willing, but the body increasingly leans towards habits and known movement patterns, even if they are faulty and the cause of significant discomfort. Most of my students are over the age of fifty, and therefore have at least fifty years of patterns and habits and body history with which to contend when trying to change a movement pattern.
The challenge of my job is to communicate something that can only be understood in the most personal of terms. Of course the sequencing of the exercises is important to the experience of each exercise. But the words I choose to use, my tone of voice, where I am in the room, if I leave the room for a moment, whether I am moving or not, whether I use tactile cues on certain individuals, and any number of other variables will only be as effective as an individual’s learning style and past experience is keyed in to a specific moment. In a large group setting this is particularly complex.
As a student and as a teacher, to enter a room and know simply that “action of a specified kind” will take place is the nature of play. And I would suggest that it is the perfect state of mind to adopt when taking, and to a certain degree teaching, a Pilates lesson. Other than change, hopefully pleasurable and beneficial change, no other outcomes are promised.
But if you are judging yourself to be good or bad, strong or weak, flexible or inflexible, if you predict an outcome, or are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that your pain or the nature of your pain is permanent, every cue, whether it be verbal, tactile, full of rich imagery or not, your experience will remain remote.
Of course, familiarity with the Pilates choreography is also part of this process. Learning what to move, when to move it, etc. may be enough for one to handle the first few months.
But little by little, you can insert brief moments of “play” into your practice. Picture your hands like feathers floating on the ends of your arms when doing Swimming. It may alter your experience of your shoulders and of your “core”. What once felt restricted may feel suddenly free.
Then again, for that moment, it may not.
PLAY, CHANGE, AND PROBLEM SOLVING
With each passing year, I try to enter a state of play, free of judgment, to discover again, each day, what it means to move with control and ease, even during difficult periods of rehabilitation after surgeries or injury. Some people might refer to this state of play as “letting go”.
When I was in my twenties and in my early years of learning to dance, I sometimes would hear this cue from dance teachers. I had a problem with this notion at the time. How could I “let go” if I was working so hard just to “hold on” to the coordination of the exercise or piece of choreography?
I think my students might sometimes feel like this as they listen to or feel my cueing while I guide their Pilates practice. The use of imagery to lead an experience of movement either for oneself or for another person asks the student to enter into a state of “play” where there is only a specific “intention”, or “action of a specified kind”, and to participate with all of one’s being in the direction of the playful move. One doesn’t really know if it will work, and better yet, doesn’t really care.
If it’s the wrong cue or intention for that moment, just move on. In a group class this is particularly true. In a private or semi-private session, it is my responsibility as a teacher to tailor my cueing system to the individual to the best of my ability. But it is also the responsibility of the student to recognize when an external or internal cue has been helpful, and then to play with it the next time she/he performs that exercise, to see if it will work again. In this way, one becomes increasingly more knowledgeable about one’s own body. Over time, movement becomes more integrated.
One of the best things about my job is to see a complete transformation in a student’s face when they have discovered something new and undeniably perfect in their own body. It is an instantaneous expression of joy and relief, and occasionally, even surprise. Surprise at one’s own ability to change is perhaps the end result of a great Pilates session.
LINKS IN THE ORDER MENTIONED ABOVE
Mabel Ellsworth Todd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Todd
Andre Bernard
http://www.ideokinesis.com/dancegen/bernard/bernard.htm
http://www.yogascope.com/blog/2007/01/quotes-from-andre-bernard-out-of.html
Hospital Audiences Inc.
http://hainyc.org/
Kathy Grant
http://pilates.about.com/b/2010/05/29/pilates-elder-kathy-grant-has-passed-away.htm
Alonzo King
http://www.linesballet.org/lines/alonzoking/
Christine Wright
http://www.beyou.tv/Christine-Wright
Lawrence Rhodes
http://www.juilliard.edu/newsroom/kit/articles/Lawrence-Rhodes-mobile.php
Liz Lerman
http://danceexchange.org/
Kari Margolis and Tony Brown
http://www.margolisbrownadaptors.org/news.htm
Etienne Decroux
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b2Q8LVqVfY, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Decroux
Joseph Pilates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pilates, http://www.google.com/search?q=joseph+pilates&hl=en&biw=1440&bih=747&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=JxUdTuKWDYP0swPg5_2iDA&sqi=2&ved=0CDMQsAQ
Jean Claude West
http://www.jeanclaudewest.com/
Elizabeth Larkham
http://bbu.pilates.com/gamma/faculty/certified-pilates-instructor-details.aspx?FacultyID=83, http://www.pilates.com/BBAPP/V/community/podcasts/elizabeth-larkam-podcast.html
Eric Franklin
http://www.franklin-methode.ch/content-n9-sE.html
Frances White
http://www.thecornerstudiosf.com/trainers.html
Wendy Le Blanc
http://www.pilatescenterofaustin.com/staff.html
Brent Anderson
Polestar Pilates
www.polestarpilates.com
Sherri Betz
Therapilates
http://therapilates.com/index.html
http://vimeo.com/5323300
http://www.therapilates.com/osteonews
Catherine Anderson
http://www.studio4pilates.com/Staff.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPy6xGNAIk0
The mechanisms for breathing, locomotion and mechanical balance are deeply tied in all bodily tissues and structural adaptations for these functions are closely interrelated. (Preface)
The spine remains the fundamental basis of support and movement for all of the various vertebrate structures. The strength of arms and legs depends upon their closeness of association with the strongest parts of the spine. Thus the great muscles binding the pelvis and legs to the spine extend deep into the trunk, and some reach high up into the thorax, where they are attached at a level opposite the lower end of the sternum. These are the important muscles for support and movement in walking, so that we walk with the help of our lower chest structures as well as by the more obvious muscles of the thigh, calf and foot. Shoulders and ribcage are likewise connected with the lower spine and with the pelvis through the strong muscles of the lower back and sides. Strength of movement of the arms, in throwing or grasping, or in lifting outside weights, is dependent upon the underlying support and strength of the loins and thighs. The essential structures for the support of body-weight and for the control of movement are thus to be looked for in the lower spine, where the oldest and best-established patterns of neuro-muscular activity are found, as well as in the legs.
(Chapter 1, Function and Form in Human Dynamics, page 17)
Definition of Ideokinesis as taught by Andre Bernard at New York University, 1985
Ideokinesis is a discipline that employs the use of images as a means of improving muscle patterns.
****************************************************************************************************************
BEGINNING
I became familiar with these words while taking a class back in 1985. I was working on a Masters in Dance from New York University's Tisch School of The Arts. The teacher was Andre Bernard, and I believe the class was called Ideokinesis for The Dancer.
Little did I know at the time that these words and this class would have a profound effect on my work with students and with my own body as my dancing and Pilates Practice evolved over the next twenty-seven years. At the time I lacked the maturity to realize the power of what I was being taught. As a dancer and choreographer making art in New York City, my focus was on the creative process for the theater and pushing hard to improve my dance technique and physicality.
I lived in NYC from 1983-1993, where I performed with an eclectic mix of dance and movement theater companies, choreographed for my own multigenerational company of actors, dancers and singers, (aged 25-82), and taught weekly movement workshops in nursing homes and psychiatric facilities throughout the NYC boroughs for an arts organization called Hospital Audiences.
For six years I also worked as a Personal Trainer for Susanna Weiss Personal Fitness Training where I was introduced to the Pilates Mat work and the fundamentals of Pilates. Susanna had been a long-time student of Kathy Grant, a Pilates Elder.
My earliest understanding of Pilates began with the teachings of Susanna and Andre. It was also informed inadvertently by some of my dance teachers both in NYC and San Francisco. They included Aaron Osborne, Alonzo King, Christine Wright, Lawrence Rhodes, Liz Lerman, and Kari Margolis and Tony Brown
of The Adaptors Movement Theater. My work with this company involved training that was greatly influenced by the teachings of the French mime artist, Etienne Decroux.
Throughout the 90’s I took various Pilates and Pilates related workshops with Jean Claude West, Elizabeth Larkam, Eric Franklin, Frances White, Wendy Le Blanc, Brent Anderson, and more recently with Sherri Betz, and Catherine Anderson. These teachers are all leaders in their field, continually exploring, researching, synthesizing, and practicing. My deepest admiration and thanks go out to these individuals. (I have provided a list of links for all of them at the bottom of this essay. Please check these out when you have a moment.)
THE CORE
Fast forward to 2011. Pilates, the craze, has come and gone. For about 15 years, the most prevalent perception of Pilates was that it would strengthen ones abdominals, the “abs” generally defined as the core.
Pilates is thankfully much more than that. But I find it interesting that the fitness seeking public latched onto this one aspect of the work. And I don’t think it was just a yearning for the washboard abs or the overall slimming of the body without losing weight. We all want to feel better, to whether stress, injury, and the daily challenges of life with more grace and with less pain, maybe even no pain. This is the function of a well-integrated and toned core.
In The Thinking Body, Mabel Ellsworth Todd gives an eloquent description of “the core”, and it is clearly not a thing that stands alone. Rather, it is an organization of many structures and systems tied together in one’s body through the breath.
After twenty years of learning, practicing, and teaching Pilates, I find that this is the most challenging aspect of the work to teach precisely because understanding this process and this organization is dependent on each individual’s highly personal learning style and body history, and it changes over time. I have become increasingly interested in how we learn to move.
THE ROLE OF “PLAY” IN THE PRACTICE OF PILATES & THE PROCESS OF AGING
What is the role of “play” in one’s Pilates practice? Perhaps it is the willingness to follow internal or external cues given to your own body, to find the path of least resistance as you continually allow yourself to push into the unknown, taking more risks, increasing range of motion, strength, stability and ease of balance. This can be done at any age with any number of structural or even neurological limitations.
A look into the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary will present you with 80 definitions under the word, “play”. Here are a few of my favorites as they relate to the practice of Pilates: “action of a specified kind”, “elusive change”, “to move freely within a space, as a part of a mechanism”, “freedom or scope for activity”, “to amuse oneself”, “to pretend to cooperate or concur”, and “to maneuver opposing groups in order to benefit oneself”.
This last definition, if one “group” is the crown of the head and the other is the feet, is a great way to access spinal length or axial elongation while doing the Footwork on the Reformer. Allow your body to simply maneuver up through the head and down through the feet as you do your Footwork, and you have participated in a playful act. This doesn’t mean that you ignore any of your previously discovered insights into this exercise. You have simply added to the whole of your experience.
This idea of play has me thinking about the aging process and how to keep learning when the brain may be willing, but the body increasingly leans towards habits and known movement patterns, even if they are faulty and the cause of significant discomfort. Most of my students are over the age of fifty, and therefore have at least fifty years of patterns and habits and body history with which to contend when trying to change a movement pattern.
The challenge of my job is to communicate something that can only be understood in the most personal of terms. Of course the sequencing of the exercises is important to the experience of each exercise. But the words I choose to use, my tone of voice, where I am in the room, if I leave the room for a moment, whether I am moving or not, whether I use tactile cues on certain individuals, and any number of other variables will only be as effective as an individual’s learning style and past experience is keyed in to a specific moment. In a large group setting this is particularly complex.
As a student and as a teacher, to enter a room and know simply that “action of a specified kind” will take place is the nature of play. And I would suggest that it is the perfect state of mind to adopt when taking, and to a certain degree teaching, a Pilates lesson. Other than change, hopefully pleasurable and beneficial change, no other outcomes are promised.
But if you are judging yourself to be good or bad, strong or weak, flexible or inflexible, if you predict an outcome, or are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that your pain or the nature of your pain is permanent, every cue, whether it be verbal, tactile, full of rich imagery or not, your experience will remain remote.
Of course, familiarity with the Pilates choreography is also part of this process. Learning what to move, when to move it, etc. may be enough for one to handle the first few months.
But little by little, you can insert brief moments of “play” into your practice. Picture your hands like feathers floating on the ends of your arms when doing Swimming. It may alter your experience of your shoulders and of your “core”. What once felt restricted may feel suddenly free.
Then again, for that moment, it may not.
PLAY, CHANGE, AND PROBLEM SOLVING
With each passing year, I try to enter a state of play, free of judgment, to discover again, each day, what it means to move with control and ease, even during difficult periods of rehabilitation after surgeries or injury. Some people might refer to this state of play as “letting go”.
When I was in my twenties and in my early years of learning to dance, I sometimes would hear this cue from dance teachers. I had a problem with this notion at the time. How could I “let go” if I was working so hard just to “hold on” to the coordination of the exercise or piece of choreography?
I think my students might sometimes feel like this as they listen to or feel my cueing while I guide their Pilates practice. The use of imagery to lead an experience of movement either for oneself or for another person asks the student to enter into a state of “play” where there is only a specific “intention”, or “action of a specified kind”, and to participate with all of one’s being in the direction of the playful move. One doesn’t really know if it will work, and better yet, doesn’t really care.
If it’s the wrong cue or intention for that moment, just move on. In a group class this is particularly true. In a private or semi-private session, it is my responsibility as a teacher to tailor my cueing system to the individual to the best of my ability. But it is also the responsibility of the student to recognize when an external or internal cue has been helpful, and then to play with it the next time she/he performs that exercise, to see if it will work again. In this way, one becomes increasingly more knowledgeable about one’s own body. Over time, movement becomes more integrated.
One of the best things about my job is to see a complete transformation in a student’s face when they have discovered something new and undeniably perfect in their own body. It is an instantaneous expression of joy and relief, and occasionally, even surprise. Surprise at one’s own ability to change is perhaps the end result of a great Pilates session.
LINKS IN THE ORDER MENTIONED ABOVE
Mabel Ellsworth Todd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Todd
Andre Bernard
http://www.ideokinesis.com/dancegen/bernard/bernard.htm
http://www.yogascope.com/blog/2007/01/quotes-from-andre-bernard-out-of.html
Hospital Audiences Inc.
http://hainyc.org/
Kathy Grant
http://pilates.about.com/b/2010/05/29/pilates-elder-kathy-grant-has-passed-away.htm
Alonzo King
http://www.linesballet.org/lines/alonzoking/
Christine Wright
http://www.beyou.tv/Christine-Wright
Lawrence Rhodes
http://www.juilliard.edu/newsroom/kit/articles/Lawrence-Rhodes-mobile.php
Liz Lerman
http://danceexchange.org/
Kari Margolis and Tony Brown
http://www.margolisbrownadaptors.org/news.htm
Etienne Decroux
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b2Q8LVqVfY, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Decroux
Joseph Pilates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pilates, http://www.google.com/search?q=joseph+pilates&hl=en&biw=1440&bih=747&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=JxUdTuKWDYP0swPg5_2iDA&sqi=2&ved=0CDMQsAQ
Jean Claude West
http://www.jeanclaudewest.com/
Elizabeth Larkham
http://bbu.pilates.com/gamma/faculty/certified-pilates-instructor-details.aspx?FacultyID=83, http://www.pilates.com/BBAPP/V/community/podcasts/elizabeth-larkam-podcast.html
Eric Franklin
http://www.franklin-methode.ch/content-n9-sE.html
Frances White
http://www.thecornerstudiosf.com/trainers.html
Wendy Le Blanc
http://www.pilatescenterofaustin.com/staff.html
Brent Anderson
Polestar Pilates
www.polestarpilates.com
Sherri Betz
Therapilates
http://therapilates.com/index.html
http://vimeo.com/5323300
http://www.therapilates.com/osteonews
Catherine Anderson
http://www.studio4pilates.com/Staff.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPy6xGNAIk0