Michael Miller Pilates

Breath buoys

Once you learn how to breath while doing pilates, your breath buoys your efforts.

Safety and Risk

My number one priority is safety.

Keeping my client safe is what matters to me most.

Even with safety my number one concern, there is still risk. There is always risk. With anyone, at any moment, there is always risk.

Risk increases over time during a session, especially if the exertion level is high. The more a client fatigues, the more you have to protect them, and even when you think you are protecting them, within arms reach, and paying attention, it can still get away from you.

I had a client almost get hurt in a session of mine recently, we both lucked out, and were poignantly reminded of how fragile the predictability of our futures can be. Which brings us to the subject of survival. Pilates is survival training, even in training, perhaps especially in survival training, there is the risk of injury.

So why do we train? To stay safe; because when we train for survival, we're more likely to be safe.

My view of pilates

I was asked recenty by a student if I considered my view of pilates a philosophy.

I had to say no. I conceded that at one point I believed my view of pilates would be universally acknowledged. Now, I see that there will always be different brands.

My brand is not a philosophy; my brand is a statement. My brands states that pilates is an idea, clearly explained in the original work of the man himself--Joseph Pilates.

Everyone that wants to keep pilates as an arbitrarily intrepreted form either can't understand or accept the truth once it is explained to them, or they choose to ignore the truth for self-serving reasons.

My view of pilates gives the creator his due. My view of pilates acknowledges the truth embedded in the original work. Make anything else out of it you want, it will always be essentially what it is.

So, given everybody has their point of view, and everybody is selling their brand of pilates, I'm selling my brand of pilates.  What does that mean to you?

That means if you really want to know the "why" of pilates you're going to have to know the idea.

Coaching Mat

Last night I was doing an intermediate class, headed towards doing a few of the intermediate exercises and pressing the flow. One student lamented that we hadn't done Jackknife yet. And then she mentioned other exercises that she would hate to leave out.

So I shifted what I intended to do, and worked on execution rather than flow. Everything went grand.

Afterwards, another student said she hadn't gotten all the names yet, and she was still working on just learning the exercises.

What I learned was, that it's ok to take your time learning and doing the exercises just for their own sake. The flow can come later.

The 35 minute mat

My mat, the Michael Miller Pilates Full Mat, done in 35 minutes, is a standard of excellence.

You do the mat to achieve the complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit. That may happen way before the completion of the mat.

You recite the poem to achieve the effect.

Coaching mat

Knowing the objective is different in teaching a mat than in teaching a private enhances your range in what you do.

Learning what you must to teach a good mat, refines your ability to teach a good private.

The idea clarifies everything

What ever you add to pilates, you can never take away from the obvious point that has already been made by Joseph Pilates.

That's my whole point, is that there is only one standard, because Joe's work points the obvious fact that physics is the way through which you reach the complete coordination of body mind and spirit. Without the physics, whatever else you got going for you, is still lacking.

If you don't get the obvious truths apparent in his original work, how are you going to reach for the more abstract?

Ideas and Ideation

It's a big world out there, but not so big in the world if ideas and ideation. At some level there's always what we get and what we don't get. No one has all the answers, but there are those who get the questions better than others.

Teaching & Instructing

The goal of the mat class is to instruct it, not teach it. Not make corrections, or address the individual body. The goal of instructing a mat class is to be the metronome, clear and in cadence.

The cadence is based upon respiration. The impulse in the lungs to breathe, and the dynamic tension that results in the body.

Shoulder Bridge [through Spine Twist] to Jackknife

What you learn in shoulder bridge is amplified my the weight of the body ironing through the spine.

By holding an endpoint of rotation around the axis of the ears, you use the load of your body to stretch your spine as you decend. Hold a long neck and draw your chest away from chin as you lower your body.