Dinosaurs Still Live (really)

Dinosauria to be exact – but who’s going to quibble with me on that?

Dinosaurs are not extinct – I’m not sure why many of us think they are.

In the morning, as you listen to the birds chirping, you are listening to dinosaurs. Yes, birds are the surviving lineage of theropod dinosaurs, which is the same lineage that produced the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex!

More precisely: birds are members of Dinosauria, but today when we say “dinosaurs” we mean Dinosauria. Quibble, quibble, quibble.

Every single bird without exception – eagles, sparrows, parrots, pigeons, swans – all descend from those famous creatures that fill our cinemas, cartoons and storybooks. We became so invested in some types of dinosauria that we neglected to credit the power of another type to survive and flourish in our midst. I can hear a dinosauria right now – even in the concrete jungle of Tokyo. Their natural sounds are my music.

230 million years – can you imagine how many cups of tea you could drink in that time? How many sleepless nights you could fit in.

What’s my point? It’s sobering to recognise how the power of one idea can smother the existence of another. The more we cherish the idea that dinosaurs are extinct, the more inconvenient it is to realise that they endured to rule our skies!

What has this got to do with PILANDES?

***

Thinking about your shoulder smothers the reality of your arm.

In 2023, over three months, I visited 39 zen place studios in Tokyo and Osaka and worked with over 500 Pilates educators and their clients. In every session, I asked people to point to the joint where their arm joins the torso: 95% of the time, people pointed to the wrong place.

Where would you point? The tip of the shoulder, always the shoulder.

However, the real arm – the human arm that Nature engineered – starts at the base of your neck. It’s not my opinion, it’s just a fact. In zen place – because of PILANDES – now on average only 50% of my class get it wrong. Ideas don’t change quickly because they are based on our experience. Alexander put it this way:

“Sensory appreciation conditions conception – you can’t know a thing by an instrument that is wrong.” – FM Alexander Aphorism #106

In this case, the thing that is “wrong” is your internal “conception” or map of your arm. The “instrument” is how you coordinate your arm based on this wrong conception. This has real-life consequences…

I’ve worked with a lot of social dancers in Japan, and they often complained to me of excessive tension and discomfort in their shoulders. When I asked them what they were doing, they replied:

“I am trying to keep my shoulders down as I raise my arms.”

That’s like saying – I am going to kick my foot forward while I move my knee back.

It’s trying to go in two different directions at the same time.

But the dancers tried – based on their faulty bodymap.

When I update the social dancers’ bodymap with an accurate conception of the arm, suddenly their discomfort evaporates. Because they are no longer at war with their arm. Are you still trying to keep your shoulders down?

To remedy these misconceptions – and devise an action plan for your Pilates practice (or anything else) – you first revise your consciously and unconsciously held bodymaps. We call this process “PILANDES BodyMapping” and it is one of the three Pillars of PILANDES:

1. PILANDES BodyMapping
2. PILANDES Cueing
3. PILANDES Touch

I will be writing about each of these – and how you can use them – in the coming weeks. When you join me in PILANDES, for the BodyMapping component, you gain access to an online course I created to update your brain’s internal Body Schema – that’s where you store all your maps. There are 64 short videos that aim to cleanse your brain of any misconceptions that can have real-life consequences in the way you practise Pilates. Even those who join my one-day PILANDES events in London and New York will be granted permanent access to this teaching resource.

It’s the human design manual you never got as a kid.

So remember – dinosaurs are birds, and shoulders are arms.

NEXT: The 3 Pillars of PILANDES

2026 Workshops

LONDON:
August 8 – PILANDES
August 23 – Trauma-Informed AT

NEW YORK:
October 24 – PILANDES
October 25 – Trauma-Informed AT

Information and Bookings