Pilates has some guiding principles that are central to the practice. Applying these principles when training will significantly enhance your workouts. 

Awareness

Focus all of your attention on your body and the movement.  This enables your mind to receive feedback from your body, which will improve your form. Pilates is a mindful approach to exercise.

Control

Raised mental awareness of your body facilitates proper alignment and careful control of movements. A good simple example of this is the pelvic curl. In this move, you tuck your pelvisand roll up through your spine onto your shoulder girdle.  This movement can and will go very deep into the core when you control your movement up through the spine and as you unfurl the spine down. Utilize control to feel each vertebrae touching down, one at a time.  

Balance

Improving physical balance is an important dimension of Pilates. Awareness and control will assist you in establishing equal distribution of weight throughout your body.  Pilates  emphasizes symmetry work such as moving both legs together in hip work. The nature of the movements will enable you to identify strength imbalances, which you can bring your awareness to and correct. 

Breath

The breath is the cornerstone of Pilates. In daily life, it’s easy to forget to take deep breaths. In Pilates, it is the breath that moves you and helps you feel your core. We see this in every single exercise. It is simply demonstrated in rolling like a ball. You are sitting on the mat with your legs tucked into your chest, hands on your shins. Float your feet off the ground, roll back on your INHALE and EXHALE to roll forward. The breath pulls your abs in and assists you in your roll and the exhale brings you back.

Flow 

In Pilates, it is important to align the flow of air moving in and out of your body with the ebb and flow of the exercise.  A very nice example of this is in your footwork on the reformer. You can feel your feet firmly on the footbar as you push out and control your movement back in to the stopper.  Your goal here is to energetically extend your body with flow.  

Precision  

Pilates is not about how many sets you can do in a session.  It is about working your body with integrity and intention. Pilates practice often takes simple movements to ever greater depth and complexity. With focus on proper form, body awareness, and control, you increase strength while fortifying your body against injury

Concentration  

Concentration goes hand in hand with precision because you must concentrate on what you are doing to be precise.  You can leave everything at the door and really push your mind and body.

Harmony

As we teach or practice Pilates, it is about weaving all parts of the body into a strong whole.