Episode 35: Pilates, Mindfulness and Coaching for Chronic Pain

Again, I know relatively little about the exercise component for patients with chronic pain.

I always think of Pilates as specifically core, working on your core muscles.

And I always think of it in the context of back pain, rightly or wrongly.

So other than strengthening core muscles, Is strengthening core muscles, stabilizing them, the main outcome of Pilates? Or are there some additional benefits?

I would say it's one of the aspects of Pilates for sure.

The core strength, even separate from the stability part of the pelvis and the lower back.

But Pilates, and I can understand why someone correlates the two.

And that's especially if you follow the research in any way.

Most of the research around Pilates is around lower back pain.

I think because of that correlation, idea that's out there that core strength people with low back pain have low core strength or poor stability which is actually not an idea I subscribe to anymore because the research doesn't really support that piece but that can be a different thing we can explore but Pilates has so much to it so yes there is a lot of work around strengthening the core and this is probably what most people see when they look online as to what Pilates is so a lot of crunch based exercises, planks, things along that nature.

But it's also about mobility of the spine and all of the joints of the body, at least the way I teach it and the way it's designed, it was designed in the first place, the very whole body type of exercise.

So we've got that spinal mobility, some movement of the spine movement of all the different joints, and It also has a body awareness piece.

So there's a lot of focus.

One of the foundations is kind of your alignment when you start an exercise and your alignment as you do an exercise.

So there's precision is a word that's used quite a lot.

So doing quite precise movements.

So there's that body awareness, that mind, body, mind, muscle connection as well, which is a very big benefit.

Flexibility is another one that falls in under Pilates.

Coordination is worked on quite a bit.

So it's really so many different things.

So when I teach a class, I'll teach exercises lying on the back.

And some of those might definitely be abdominally focused exercises.

So I'm strengthening our abdominal core.

There might be also glute strengthening exercises.

We might be working in a sideline position.