How Do You Find A Little Bit of Nothing?

"When I notice I've got stuck in a pattern, or my body isn't open to the movement, or I'm simply braced and tense — that's when I bring the Alexander elements to mind. It brings me back to myself in that moment. And when I see the same thing in a client, I pass it on to them too." — zen place Pilates educator @ PILANDES Trial

On the first day of these 21 PILANDES letters, I wrote:

“It took 500 million years for your postural support to evolve – don’t you think it is worth trusting? Trusting your Self is a big part of PILANDES. It is also one of the paradoxes you confront as you apply PILANDES to your Pilates movements: the best way to control your exercise is to stop trying to control your exercise. Instead, you learn to trust your postural support to do what it was designed to do.”

My precious teacher Marj (Majorie Barstow 1899-1995) said it more succinctly:

“All you want is a little bit of nothing. The trouble with all you people, is you all want something, and that something is your tension.”

Tension is something, so how do you find a little bit of nothing?

This is the essence of control without controlling. It is interesting that Joseph H. Pilates (1883-1967) originally called his work “Contrology.” Yes, Pilates is about control, but FM Alexander (1869-1955) defined control this way:

“Control should be in process, not superimposed.”

Let’s see what this means for Pilates practice...

***

Last week in Takadanobaba, I trained a group of young Pilates Educators in the PILANDES way of doing Saw. For Saw, you sit on the mat with your legs fully extended. This position puts a lot of stretch on your hamstrings - those muscles at the back of your leg between your knee and pelvis.

Initially, when people first take the Saw position, their pelvis rolls back – described as “a posterior tilt of the pelvis” for the technically minded. In other words, they have a rounded back. Of course, this is not “Saw position” – your back must be straight!

Therefore, as most of them got into the Saw starting position, they willfully gave their pelvis an anterior tilt. From the outside, it looks like they are pulling in their lower back. This immediately increases the pressure on the hamstrings muscles.

“Let your pelvis do what it wants to do,” I tell them, “let it roll back.”

They looked at me in surprise, thinking no doubt: “But that’s cheating. That’s not Saw.”

But I wasn’t finished...

“Instead,” I instructed, “move your whole torso – from head to hip joint – in flexion and extension over your hip joints while you are sitting there. Let your knees bend a little too.”

“Bend the knees?!” they must have been thinking, “but that’s cheating even more!”

And yet, a strange thing happened. Their pelvis arrived where they wanted it to be, all by itself. Once they finished rocking back and forth - and came back into upright sitting - their pelvis had naturally organised itself with more of an anterior tilt, without being forced to do so.

Three cheers for the postural system!

Now that their pelvis was integrated, they gently extended their legs while continuing to cooperate with their whole biopsychosocial Self. This is how PILANDES works - it is also what Alexander meant:

“Control should be in process, not superimposed.”

Let’s briefly explore how it works if you do it the other way:

You first “impose” your idea on the pelvis. For that, you must make a voluntary effort in the muscles connecting your legs. This is not your postural system working - this is your voluntary system overriding it.

This is you superimposing voluntary control over the postural system.

This voluntary effort naturally increases recruitment of your white, fatiguable muscle fibres. Not good. As a result, you also lessen the recruitment of your wonderful non-fatiguable red muscle fibres. Now you are working harder, have less stamina, so your enjoyment of the movement becomes less...

***

Which way would you like to practice Pilates?

You can experience the delights of PILANDES with me in London or New York later this year.

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

Information and Bookings

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