Michael Miller Pilates

Yoga ain't Yoda

Pilates cannot be assimilated.

The beauty of pilates is
that you can embrace the ideal of our existence
without submission to interpretation.

Yesterday's dust

I've often said that gyro is fancy frosting to the cake of pilates. Gyro juramentados would have you believe pilates is passe, that gyro is better, bigger, replaces, and surpasses pilates. Nothing could be further from the truth IF you really understand pilates.There is no way you can appreciate pilates, and how significant it is compared to the frosting of gyro, unless you can understand the essence of pilates, which unfortunately, most people (especially pilates teachers) don't.

Gyro is a brand, of what already exists in pilates as an idea.

Gyro has to be an extension of pilates. The big difference is one of money, naturally. Gyro is heavily controlled and charges a lot of money to participate--as a client, or as a teacher. So it's attractive to teachers because they can make more money teaching it than pilates. But to say that gyro eclipses pilates is wrong.

If you really want a handle on gyro, you need an understanding and appreciation of pilates.

To paraphrase from Top Gun: Gyro's ego is writing checks its substance can't cash.

I don't know what the heck gyro is, but my regard for pilates forces me to take exception to the way gyro is falling all over themselves on the way to the bank to sweep pilates under the carpet as yesterday's dust.

Equipment has to start "at ease" in order to facilitate "eccentric"

Tthe more you travel the more you see equipment with design flaws.

In this video you get insight about this and get a hint of the difference between pilates and gyro equipment.

How do you resolve conflict in the pilates world?

Here is the video that question comes from.

When there's two ways of doing something how do you evaluate them?

You use the idea to give them relative significance. And the idea is straight from Joe.

The target is control.  Which way is easier to control? I'm usually up for reaching for control in the easier way first, then control the harder way.

Neck Pull hands touching head or not?

Here  is a video that comes from the question of making contact hands to head in doing the Neck Pull and related exercises. The idea is the framework for the discussion. You could always pick a different framework but not one that comes closer to the original method. And the framework is just the basis of the discussion, it gives perspective to different ways of doing things and how they relate.

Up Stretch on the Reformer

for me, the Up Stretch is one of the hardest to do, and certainly for me, hardest to teach.

I just added a video of someone new learning the Up Stretch.

Notice how my foot on the reformer carriage controls when the client can open it.

What would be the effect of setting the foot bar on a lower setting?

Long Stretch on the Reformer

http://www.hermit.com/michaelmiller/courseware/reformer/ref118.htm

when you look at the fourth image in the stills you see a line in the back.

New menu options show performance and instruction of the Long Stretch. The distinction between performance and instruction: performance has no instruction.

There is a lot of information in the eye test.

My main question after watching it several times is whether or not to have made correction at all. It was very good to start with, I could have said nothing, but the session was one of corrections and cuing. So given that, I went for a better sense of tension between the ears and neck, and then shoulders to hips.

My cuing gets bad. Bad. Too much, too quick...don't do that.

My willingness to move on to the next exercise is a good example. Remember, flow to get fusion.

Her unwillingness to move on, is an example of a good student, knowing there is a feeling to be had and not wanting to move on without having some connection to it.

My tactile cuing was the right hand drawing the tension of the rib cage through the body into more tension of tuck in the hips, which is what my left hand was guiding from the sacrum.

The Eye Test is: could you see a difference in the first couple repetitions, to the last couple repetitions, alignment being the primary focus?

Breathing

In this video clip a mime walks across the stage in one state of breathing and adjusts to another.

Note how the more fluid the breath, the more the breath leads the rest of the movement. The breath begins first, either in the inhale or the exhale, and the rest of the organism follows.

The idea of Michael Miller Pilates give you the confidence

to teach

what matters for me

the depth of the clarity you have of the idea

because the idea is something you can understand that is really clear

and you can take a lot of questions, and teach a lot of different bodies, with the confidence the idea gives you.

Michael says this in a video clip subscribers can view here.

Michael talks about the basis of the idea

The three things direct from Joe that are the basis of the idea.

The sequence of the mat, his definition of his method, and his promise.

To view video click here.