Getting Your Own Dog's Nose

"When I introduced the joint concepts, especially the Wing Joints, clients started responding — there was a real change in how freely their shoulders moved." – zen place pilates Educator @ PILANDES Trial

Did you know that a dog's nose is 1,000 times more sensitive to smell than yours?

It's another universe you know nothing about...

Imagine what it must be like for a dog to roam around your home – smelling everything, knowing everything. All your personal odours, those of everyone who lives there – the kitchen, the toilet, the bedroom – smells full of infinite flavours from which you are entirely excluded.

But you do have another kind of dog's nose.

Another universe of delightful and unexpected experiences awaits you on the other side of PILANDES. The door into this new universe of sensation is the 5 Postural Joints, and the things that swing around them.

The 5 Postural Joints introduce you to Alexander's concept of "giving directions or orders" to your postural movements. These directions or orders can take many forms, but they all represent the gentle conversation you discover is possible with your Postural Movement System (PMS).

But postural movements differ in a radical way from voluntary movements.

Pilates is all about voluntary movements i.e. what to move and where to move it, whereas PILANDES is all about postural movements – how you move and how you support it. Whereas Pilates movements are multidirectional, PILANDES movements are unidirectional. Postural movements always move in the same direction – this is what Alexander discovered as he spent many years watching himself recite Shakespeare in front of a mirror.

I was at Ginza this week, doing a PILANDES Trial for 20 zen place Pilates educators, when I heard my Self saying something I had never said before:

"Becoming sensitive to postural movements involves a whole magnitude of difference in the calibration of your awareness. They are very subtle."

What I meant is that we are normally not sensitive to postural movements, but when we do awaken to their existence, it can be quite exhilarating. This is your new universe, getting your own dog's nose: sensitivity to movements happening all the time, never ceasing in the same way as breathing.

The work of PILANDES is awakening to these subtle postural sensations...

FM: "You can't tell a person what to do because the thing you have to do is a sensation."

To discover your dog's nose, come to my workshop in London or New York.

2026 Workshops
LONDON: August 8 | 23
NEW YORK: October 24 | 25

Information and Bookings

NEXT: A Two-Day Holiday from my (sometimes) PILANDES Daily. Try to catch up!