Pilates and Yoga
The term ‘wellness’ is for everyone; but for the sake of this article, it is about feeling good on your own terms. It is no surprise that good health is about balance and stability, but it sometimes is worth discovering further.
There is nothing suggesting that you need to be a professional athlete or a major gym goer not to commit yourself to restrictive diets in order to enjoy your body and life; achieving wellness relates more to feeling healthy and happy.
Along with the COVID-19 pandemic, another epidemic spread globally and continues to do so: the mental health crisis. During the pandemic, both yoga and pilates became an influential part of people’s mental health journeys. Practicing yoga and Pilates helps to allow you to centre both your mind and body and can help people with feeling more present.
Both Pilates and yoga hold their own benefits but when paired together they come with unexpected benefits:
You’ll understand the relationship between relaxation and movement on a physical level.
Whilst yoga focuses mostly on relaxation from a mindful, spiritual and meditative perspective, Pilates focuses on relaxation also, but on a more physical level. Pilates teaches our bodies that we tend make habits out of more negative tendencies due to lack of proper regular movement.
Pilates helps to teach that when our bodies are stressed, they make use of the bad movement patterns, so when we can relax, we gain ability to work through the negative tendencies and replace them with better ones.
You will learn how to build patterns of movement into your alignment.
By repeating the same movement again and again, continuously aiming for proper alignment and adjustment.
You won’t feel as sore…
Pilates focuses on strengthening smaller stabilizer muscles, so your body becomes less prone to overstretching and more resilient if you were to do so.
You will feel strong!
The feeling of becoming more energized and balanced, your breathing becoming more calmed and your confidence being able to soar as you see how big of a difference they can make to your body.
Whilst yoga and Pilates are different techniques, they both focus on helping you to develop a breathing pattern, strengthening your muscles, improving your balance and maintaining good posture. So, not only do these goals help with easing pain, but they also prevent future injuries and the development of chronic pain also.
Overall, one of the best benefits of practising both yoga and Pilates is that both exercises can be adjusted to suit your own beneficial needs and to suit your own personalised goals as each has their own unique benefits.
Yoga instructor, Yvonne Jack, said:
‘I started as a yoga instructor and I won’t lie I used to roll my eyes at those people who claimed that Pilates totally transformed their bodies, I didn’t understand it. It was after I started doing it myself and getting myself into it that I finally got why they said it because of the difference it made to my whole frame, my muscles felt more secure and when doing my yoga, I felt stronger. I almost felt bad for the eye rolling!’
Both exercises also have benefits out with your body; they have been found to relieve the symptoms of mental illness including, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive-disorders, and schizophrenia. This suggests that they have something to offer above and beyond exercise.
‘As an instructor I have trained in a variety of different group fitness styles, one of the best things that I have learned is that incorporating different types of exercises into our routines, the greater the awareness you will gain towards how our bodies move! Not only that, but different exercises are also good at improving your overall wellbeing, mental health included, adapting it into your lifestyle just a few times a week can have dramatic changes”.
Achieving wellness can be easy if you adapt it to suit you!
‘I think exercising is addictive, once you not only see the benefits but start to feel them too it hooks you! And I’m not just being biased because I am an instructor! I’ve saw the changes it has made to people, so my advice is allowing yourself to find something you enjoy and sticking with it until it becomes implemented in your weekly routine’…
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