"I could go on forever!"

"When the joints are working, the body becomes surprisingly simple. My cues get much simpler too — and there's suddenly time for clients to actually feel something." — zen place Pilates educator, PILANDES Session.

The best lessons are often the ones when someone asks for my help.

After guiding everyone with a quick touch while doing Mini Swan at the Takadanobaba PILANDES Trial last Saturday, a woman asked if I could watch her doing a Chest Lift with Rotation: "It feels hard to do at the moment."

As I have been writing previously, discomfort — just like pain - is what is right about you. When your system starts signalling discomfort: it's time to retrain.

"Let's have a look," I suggested. She lay down on the mat and I watched her do it. Yes, she really did work hard at it and I wondered why…

"What are you thinking about?" I asked her. In PILANDES, thinking and cueing are the same thing.

Then followed a long explanation — not all of which I can remember now — about how she wanted her scapula to move across the mat in a particular way as she did her arm rotation: this was the moment that felt hard. From the way she talked about specific parts, I suspected she needed to zoom out and look at the whole movement, not just the individual bits of it as she was doing at the moment.

This is a key aspect of PILANDES: to bring your attention back to your whole movement.

You can easily lose your Self in specific details: my arm should do this, the scapula that, the breathing starts now, keep my toes pointed. So many different little things crowd around your mind so you eventually lose sight of the entire arc of the movement.

"Instead of thinking about your shoulder blades," I suggested, "think of the elbow as a leading edge."

Leading edge is a term we often use in PILANDES — it cues your Postural Movement System (PMS) to organise where you are going. The leading edge of a ship, for example, is where the water is sliced by the stem of the ship's bow. In the Chest Lift with Rotation, the elbow cuts through the air over your body, leading your ribcage into rotation around the upper spine.

I got her to think like that, while using my touch to encourage this entire rotation. Your elbows lead your ribcage and spine, I told her, move them all together, one after the other…

She started to do it again as I continued guiding her: to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right… As we did this, I asked her: "How is that now?"

She replied:

"I could go on forever!"

***

Freedom shows you that your cueing is working.

Discomfort asks you to retrain your cueing.

PILANDES is the practice of Pilates subjected to the principles and practices that grew out of Alexander's discoveries — those offer new ways to think about your movement practice. Come along to my workshop in London or New York to experience it.

NEXT: My Embarrassing Confession

Stay tuned.

2026 Workshops

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

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

Information and Bookings