Michael Miller Pilates Breathing & Core‏

One of my take aways from the convention is how important it is to be familiar with the original work of Joseph Pilates, for your sake as a Pilates practitioner, and for my sake to be able to point to the ideal that exists within that work.

These two books are must reading:

Your Health & Return to Life through Contrology

Greetings,

I was requested by one of my licensed affiliates to write something about breathing and the core.

I will attempt to address both within the context of the idea. Both within the context of Pilates being a state of being in the body in the moment of the doing.

Survival training taught by a survivor

Breathing

A client learning to coordinate breath to effort happens across three stages:
Cannot coordinate movement to breath.
Conscious coordination of movement to breath.
Subconscious coordination of movement to breath.

Breath as a tool
The exhale of tennis players.
The norm is to exhale on the effort.

Strategy: Intentionally triggering instinctual inspiration.

Breathing:
  is an innate rhythm of life.
  is life insisting upon itself.
  comes from within us and is not ours alone to choose.
  is the instinct to survive.
  is the will to live.
 
Knowledge, when put to use is power.

Delaying the inhale and riding the autonomic reflex to breathe in is a definitely grand and effective way to initiate movement. Because it is instinctual. Think of Bruce Lee taunting an opponent in order to get an instinctual response from within himself.

The peak of the inhale yields more uniform usage than the trough of the exhale.
This is something that experience becomes the basis for the belief, not intellectualization.
Think of Swan on the Ladder Barrel.

Directing your attention to your breath and listening. Listening to your breath and moving through it immediately fires up the spirit/the listener/the observer, and gives you much easier access to the complete coordination of body, mind and spirit.

In through the nose, out through a loose mouth, loose throat like you are fogging a mirror. No sound, sound means constriction and that constriction short circuits the connection to the core.


CORE

Core versus eccentric makes for fascinating distinctions.

The Core is generally conceived as out from which you come.
Out from the center, out from the core
And therefore: eccentric.

Pilates is big on being eccentric, n’est pas?
And so here the seeds are sown for confusion.
Because the core is thought to be the pelvis area as a location, somewhere as a place. A place to establish control and work out from there.

Now I came along and said that the place called the core was really a condition that determines a location. The condition I am talking about is the rotational dynamic through the axis of the hips. And that use of the adductors was critical to creating the condition of “core” which I view as an involuting muscular dynamic, just like tightening a grip with your fingers.

Now we come back to the core being the location as of “out from the center” and now a distinction becomes necessary: one point or two?

If you are a Nautilus shell you have one point, or axis; if you are a human you have more.

Control of the body originates at the hips.
(setting aside the participation of spirit for the moment)
The hip axis has long been taken to be the core, and the “scoop” or the hollow is necessary to get the requisite involution of grip.

A BIG QUESTION FOR ME IS:
How does eccentric happen with only one axis?
The only examples I have would be like a tape measure has tension that pulls it back within its self.
A sphincter reflex
A kiss
A twitch

When the organism can establish two points into a Cornu spiral the tension creates eccentricity at the inflection point. Thereby enabling maximum loading through uniform usage.
Until I hear otherwise, I’m going to assume that Cornu tension came into being in order for life to support itself on land. That would be convenient wouldn’t it? Because it would dovetail nicely into Joe’s promise of uniform development. We need uniform usage to fulfill the promise of uniform development. And to get uniform usage requires two points. The tension between two points makes alignment sensational and uniform usage possible.

Rotation at the hips and rotation at the shoulders are the two points. Cornu tension creates the point of eccentricity at the inflection point.

In my view the “core” is the axis of rotation through the hips. (NOT the inflection point, as I had suggested earlier. The inflection point isn’t the core, it is only the consequence of seeking uniform usage.

In my view the point of eccentricity is that axis through the hips UNTIL another point is established.
Then the Cornu tension between the two axis create a point of eccentricity at the inflection point.
But I don’t think these inflection points would be best to be called “cores”.
One core, the central axis of the body.
The core as a condition is an involuting muscular engagement. It’s the decreasing of the Rectus and increasing of the Transverse.
Like fingers tightening into a grip.

This is just one way of looking at it.

Summary:

In Michael Miller Pilates, clarity comes from looking through the ideal within the original work.
Specifically, in the case of “core”, keeping Joe’s promise in mind helps clarify the details within the purpose of the method. “Contrology develops the body uniformly…” MMP assumes to get uniform development requires uniform usage. Cornu tension gets you there.

 

Michael Miller
The most comprehensive body of the original work is now available on your iDevice for the Reformer, Cadillac, Barrels and Mat in the Michael Miller Pilates Library.

Comments

[Mascotas]

A mi el pilates isempre me ha llamdo la atencion, pero no tengo ni la menor idea de por donde comenzar! Asi que no estaria nada mal que nos pusierais por aqui unas clases.

[Core Conditioning]

I've always wanted to start core pilates, but I can't find a gym nearby offering this type of exercises.

[Michael]

Core means many different things to many different people. Core training is everywhere, but Michael Miller Pilates, and how it looks at core is rare. Check out the website and the app. Keep looking and you will find.