Dear Reader,
I just rose from bed out of a dream
that so engaged my mind I could not go back to sleep.
Dreaming I was giving a workshop
I got asked what is "the core."
My mind so raced in the dream to provide the answer
that I woke up running in my mind with the explanation
to the point I haven't been able to fall back asleep.
You have asked me for more information
about what will be in my workshops.
Because of my dreams,
I would say a deeper delving into
the meaning, understanding, and sensation of "the core"
will be high on the list.
Because my aim is to make the workshops highly participatory
and I have been flooded watching the Olympics with the nature of competition
I see started off the workshop like this:
Form two lines with each line of participants facing each other.
Each couple facing each other competes at "Indian Wrestling"
and then after a winner is determined, everyone move one person to the left,
the left most turns around and becomes part of the other line,
and the competition goes again.
This is an immediate test of strength and risk of injury--to the wrist.
Because Indian Wrestling is holding out your palms face up,
lacing your fingers into the fingers of your opponent,
and after a one-two-three-GO whomever can curl their wrists into flexion
and force their opponents wrists into extension wins.
Unless the opponents are very evenly matched in strength, it doesn't take long
to see who has the stronger grip. "The grip" is an involution of fingers into the hand.
It is what gives strength to the muscles. It isn't just a squeeze of muscles, one against the other (like pads of fingers pressing against ridge of palm); it is a coordinated use of muscles around an axis, a rotational, involutional, energy that has a sensational superiority to a flat squeeze.
By starting everyone off with participation, everyone has fun, everyone gets to listen to their own sensation, and I've delivered the essence of what I want to teach before I've uttered a word of explanation. (Hopefully, that typical Michael Miller Pilates teaching.)
So, with advance warning, you can now start training those who plan to come to my workshop to fare well with practice at Indian Wrestling. (That's American Indian, just in case you are wondering.)
By the way, it was in Zurich that I was teaching a regular student of Joseph Pilates' (back in the day) who was a professional pianist. I was using Indian Wrestling prior to having worked with him, but what does he show me when we talked about his experience with being taught by Joe? Indian Wrestling! This gentleman had big hands with massive fingers and he crushed me with delight. He said, "Isn't this a wonderful exercise? Joe used to give it to me all the time." And that makes sense after seeing home movies of the way Joe used to wrestle with Ted Shawn. ((Just imagine how that exercise would improve playing the piano!))
So, now, to the point--what is the core? The core is a condition, not a location. I have my house for sale. What matters about the value of my house is "location-location-location" not "condition-condition-condition". No matter what the condition of my house, it is its location that matter most. The "core" isn't so much about a location in your body, but a condition that exists in your body. The core is the grip at the hips. The hips are no different than your fists. What gives the core its "condition" is the involution of its grip. Stomach and buttocks don't just squeeze together like pads of fingers against the ridge of the palm. It is the engagement of inner thighs that facilitates the involution of grip at the hip. This grip establishes
"the core."
This is what very smart people, people with PhDs in exercise physiology, miss about the essence of Pilates. Even some expert Pilates instructors who know about disengaging the rectus, and using more transverse miss the physics of why we are doing that.
And without "the core" there can be no endpoint of tension for the rest of the body to play off of. This is why my trademark is such a gift, because it illustrates the dynamic tensions in the body when one grip around one axis is played off another grip at another axis, say at the shoulders, to create the tension that triggers uniform usage--what you need to fulfill Joe's promise of uniform development. (I've never heard anyone with any common sense argue against needing uniform usage in order to get uniform development.) ((And it continues: you need uniform development to survive in the jungle of uniform gravity.))
You could easily rename the Pilates method, the "inner thigh" method, because engagement of the inner thighs to involute the grip at the hip is so essential.
Taking this theme out into the Pilates studio would be the extension of the awareness of target into the accomplishing of objective using exercises on the mat and apparatus. (I'd give everyone assignments, and see what they would come up with.)
You follow?
So, maybe now you have a better idea of what I might be doing in my workshops, and I might be able to go back and get some sleep--but not before I post this to you, and to my blog, so I have a chance of sharing it with everyone.
Looking for a dreamless sleep,
Michael
