Kindness is a Mat Exercise Too

I realised I had been too trapped in “the shape,” and my sense of the body’s possibilities—and my own possibilities—expanded.

zen place educator, PILANDES Trial Japan

Every month or so, I visit the Futakotamagawa studio in Tokyo to teach a group of young (20s) Pilates Educators in Zen Place. It is kindly organised by senior teacher Yayoi, and it has been one of my key research opportunities for PILANDES.

After doing a PILANDES "5-Postural-Joints" warm-up, I ask for individual requests. That day, one of the requests came from Momo-chan, a sincere, but worried-looking Educator:

"I get too tense all the time. I don't know how to stop it."

She picked Chest Lift to explore, and I immediately saw what she meant. As she rose higher off the mat, her whole upper body literally began to shake...

Then her tears came.

I can only imagine what prompted her tears: frustration with her effort, the repetition of a pattern that would not change, maybe even a sense of public failure? However, under all that was something simpler — shame about her practice.

There was one thing missing from her mat practice:

Kindness.

She pushed her Self really, really hard. She pushed so hard that her postural system started shaking. It was brutal. If the postural system could speak, it might be saying:

"I can't do this anymore. Please stop pushing. It is so hard to do."

And with her shaking, shame quickly followed, producing her tears...

***

This kind of thing happens in PILANDES. Why?

FM explains it through the term "psycho-physical unity" which he coined because, back in the 1890s, there was no recognition of this unity. Today, pain scientists refer to us as being "biopsychosocial". Both terms embrace the recognition that anything you do involves not only your muscles, joints and movements — it involves your emotions, your aspirations, your fears and worries about your Self and of those around you.

When these aspects of a movement are all resolved, your movement becomes truly whole. There is deep, satisfying pleasure in movements like that. The way chest lift was being performed by Momo-chan involved recruiting masses of fatiguable white muscle fibres.

Non-fatiguable red muscle fibres love PILANDES.

***

Once the tears subsided, I asked her to do Chest Lift one more time, being kinder to herself. Could she move with kindness in her heart?

"Instead of trying to do it well," I suggested, "find out how you can enjoy doing it?"

This time her chest lift was free of shaking and — amazing! — she lifted it higher. Kindness gave her the movement she wanted; brutality had left her in tears.

In PILANDES, we teach that movement gets easier when you stop trying to be the person you feel everyone wants you to be — your partner, your parents, your boss — and instead become the person you truly are.

You are your movement.

NEXT: How to Find A Little Bit of Nothing

Stay tuned.

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