Reclaiming Stillness
The title of this post is somewhat vague but the purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of slowing down.
There are numerous studies around exercise and female hormones that have linked over exercising and too much strain on hormone imbalances and inflammation.
It may feel like an impossible fete when you are living in a world that overstimulates you with information day in and day out, from our social media feed giving us FOMO about missing every party and every trip and every new restaurant we weren’t invited to, to the unlimited choices we have when we sit down to watch Netflix, Hulu and HBO. To the amount of options we have to choose from to buy a box of pasta at the grocery store, or the seemingly overwhelming amount of apps and studios that promise to give us the results we are looking for in our bodies.
At some point you just have to stop all of the noise.
One of the greatest gifts of Pilates is that this form of movement literally forces you to slow down. Not only will you not feel the exercise as deeply if you speed through it, but you can very well just fall off the reformer and the story ends there.
We always talk about the mind body connection in exercise, but do we really know what that means? It’s the feeling when you are on your 90th ab curl, when you feel your abs so deeply they feel like your entire body is burning, or when you have been pulsing your leg to oblivion, and it’s shaking uncontrollably. Those are the moments when the body and mind have clicked- when you have pushed through what you thought was not attainable and made it to the other side. Those are the moments that make us want to get out of bed the next day and do it all over again.
When we ask you to slow down, to feel every stretch and every contraction, it is because your body is learning new muscle patterns, new waves of movement, and is truly connecting to the mind. These lessons are then translated off the reformer, and allow you to distinguish between being hungry and tired. They allow you to prioritize yourself over saying yes to every invitation that you don’t even want to accept but feel like you have to.
When you learn to slow down and connect to yourself, picking a box of pasta at the grocery store no longer feels like a chore, because you already know exactly which one you are looking for.
My advice is to pay attention to your movements, and be choosy with your exercise regimen. Speeding through 20 lunges instead of doing 10 intentional ones won’t get you to see results faster, it will actually slow you down. Focus on your form, on your breathing, and make every movement intentional- not only will you reduce inflammation and feel more accomplished after class is over, you will see the results speak for themselves.