How Pilates has Changed my Life

Pilates has been my saving grace in so many ways.   After having a 10.5 lb baby boy a couple of years ago, my small framed body and alignment was a wreck! I had hip and lower back pain with walking and I began to worry that it would be a lifelong problem.  After a series of visits to the chiropractor with no relief in sight, and after X-rays and MRI, the chiropractor said she could not help me.   She strongly recommended pilates because of it’s ability to alleviate my alignment issues and build core strength where I needed it.    My first visit to Ishbel for my postural analysis was a very humble one as I was not even stable enough to try the leg stirrups.    Each visit was better and better, and I added “homework” prescribed by Isbhel consisting of 3 specific pilates exercises at home -slowly, after about six months, the pain in my lower back and hip subsided.  It was a gradual improvement but one that I am forever grateful for.  Walking with pain is never something I could imagine having to just live with.   Now, about 18 mos. after my first introduction to Pilates, I am enjoying taking reformer classes, jumpboard plus, a mat class here and there, and the occasional pilates seminar.    Thank you to all of you at Pilates NW for caring so much and helping me become active and fit again.

Tonya

How Pilates Changed My Life

My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Nelson, sternly warned me that I was going to be sorry if I didn’t learn to stand up straight. This was both confusing and horrifying. I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to stand up straight, but I understood the dire necessity of doing so. A deep dread of a doubtlessly benighted future filled me.  I’d already thrown a fit and refused to go to the physical therapist a few years earlier. The mats smelled funny, and it was all so creepy.
Decades later, I can proudly say that Pilates has enabled me to finally stand up straight. Even my mother said she’d never seen me look so straight, and she’s been watching the whole time. Dance and yoga gave me strength and flexibility, but my body evolved its own quirky ways of working with its dysfunctional spine. I’m here to say that Pilates has straightened me out, Mrs. Nelson.
Pilates has helped me find and use essential supportive muscles that I had never really located before. Pilates has shown me how to push the marble with my nose and that’s been the beginning of it all for me. The upward extension of a spine trained from childhood to curve down down down is a glorious and difficult movement. Upward is not natural for a myopic bookworm. As I’ve struggled to feel wide across collarbone, I’ve moved into an unknown dimension. And Pilates has given me the abdominal muscles that save my poor back from doing all the work. And I’m grateful. If I’m away too long, my back complains, but now there’s a way to fix it. Pilates is forever.

Sherry Charles

Pilates Positive Impact!

As you know, Pilates has certainly made a difference to me.

A masseuse told me several years ago about one of her clients saying that Pilates had transformed her body.  I went to that Pilates studio because I had been having trouble sleeping from pain in my shoulders, hips and legs and when gardening I would end up with hobbling lower back and hip pain.  I was also having pain from yoga postures even though I had practiced for years.  The Pilates studio helped me understand how my posture and walking were causing me problems.  My sleep improved and I no longer had pain when gardening.  But they were unable to answer many of my questions, I still had many physical issues, and I felt more was possible.

A chiropractor referred me to the Pacific Northwest Pilates studio and I found my answers.  Now I am stronger, feel better, and understand more about my overall body structure, alignment and posture, and how those affect how I feel.  I also know what exercises will help my particular problems and what to avoid.  At first I had great difficulty even comprehending how certain body movements could be made and Leslie would not only have to demonstrate them to me, but also she would have to move my body as apparently my mind and body had lost all awareness of how to do it.  Fortunately, it would usually take only a few weeks of practice for my body to remember.

I came to realize that the root of my problems were the results of major surgery in 2000-2001, along with chemotherapy, radiation, and a PIC line in the right arm for 6 months, and probably also from birth trauma, childhood habits, and major surgery in 1976.  My body had found ways to compensate but I had never realized exactly what was happening and what were the lingering effects.  Pilates is giving me that awareness and the means to work on changing how my body functions.  I have a long way to go, I still have some pains, and some of my structural restrictions limit how much strength I can gain yet, but I now have the tools and the help I need to improve.  I am more able to feel how my body should move and I get results when I do my home exercises.  I take a reformer class that helps me practice using my body correctly.  The class also brings to my attention any restrictions I have not yet dealt with and when that happens, I have found that a private session focused on that issue always provides me with the answers for the problem.  I no longer feel at the mercy of the unknown, I have some control over how my body feels.  To me, it’s a miracle.  One that would not be possible without the guidance of the Pacific Northwest Pilates studio.

Thanks You.