By in Yoga & Pilates

How Pilates Can Help Your Mental Health

Many of us start practising Pilates because of an injury or physical discomfort, that we aim to remedy with Pilates. Almost all Pilates practitioners I know, who choose to turn their passion for Pilates into a career, have a personal experience of injury rehabilitation through Pilates themselves. When I underwent my second round of Pilates teacher training, I started asking myself why I had chosen this career path when I did not have such an injury recovery success story myself. In fact, this question really bothered me for a while. I felt like I had nothing personally to show for the power Pilates could have.

When I started to practice Pilates I was in my mid 20ies and I just “kinda liked it”. That’s what I would tell friends and colleges anyway. I just like it. I didn’t know why. Sometimes during those early years of teaching Pilates I asked myself: Could I really be a good Pilates teacher, if I did not have the personal experience of Pilates fixing my back or getting me back to health after a complicated pregnancy.

As time went on I actually did experience the odd injury and I was finally able to use Pilates for my own injury rehabilitation. And yet there was the fact that I was hooked on Pilates years before this experience and I did not know why. It was very recent, that thanks to some inspiring mentors and my continued studies in the area of neuroscience, I began to understand why I craved Pilates so much.

When I was younger I was no stranger of depression and crippling anxiety. I struggled with self-hatred and low self-esteem. Today I am a confident, relaxed, outgoing person and comfortable with who I am. When I feel depressed, I know it is because I feel stuck and a deep need is not met. If I feel anxious, I know I need to slow down, if my old destructive eating habits show up again I know my life balance is off.

This awareness naturally developed while I was spending time with my body in an inquisitive, non judgemental way that felt settling, empowering and connecting, always leaving me feeling better.

Rather than chew over my problems or beat myself up over all the things I could not do and push my body hard to overcome all those limitations I felt, I would just spend time with me and my body and find out what I could do and what made me feel better. I would listen into my body and what it was saying to me by way of sensations, tension, shivering, restricted breath or feeling of weakness. I would begin to use breath, or awareness of gravity and grounding in order to calm my body, allowing it to change from a fight or flight state into a more restful one.

When we do this, hormone production literally changes within us. As our body begins to feel saver through grounding, breathing and moving in a mindful way the production of hormones like adrenaline decreases and neurotransmitters like acetylcholine are released. This change has a massive effect on our body and how we experience life. Our body is more able to focus on rest, digest and repair, as well as learning and accessing memory. The triggers that caused my distress may still have been there, but I was able to physically intervene in the process of panic or depression, which in turn made me feel less overwhelmed with what ever the situation was. With regular practice I began to see and feel my body change. I felt stronger and more in control. Successes of finding myself able to achieve physical challenges suddenly without even having to try so hard added to my new body confidence.

I was unaware for a long time that this was happening. I just kinda liked Pilates. It was when I learned more about the brain and the nervous system, during my NLP Coaching and Somatic Experiencing training, that I realised what had been happening for me and how far I had come without even realising it.

It makes complete sense to me now. Our mind and our emotions are all part of our body. How we feel is based to a large degree on our hormone balance, which is controlled to a large degree by our nervous system. It is our nervous system that detects danger, stress and joy. Just think of your posture when you are sad or nervous, compared to when you are confident and relaxed. Our body and our movement ability is closely linked with how we feel.

There is a real power in Pilates and its practice of body and movement awareness. Yoga and other somatic movement methods have this too. Which one you are drawn to depends on many factors. Experts in the field of Psychology and Psychotherapy have also recognised the powerful healing potential that the body provides for mental health.

Somatic Experiencing is a form of trauma therapy, developed by Peter Levine, which gradually heals trauma and trauma related illness through the felt sense in the body, rather than dealing with the content of the traumatic memory or event. Bessel van der Kolk, author of “The Body Keeps The Score” also has acknowledged the link between body and mind, when it comes to mental health. Many other methods have been developed to make use of the body and mind connection to aid mental health.

It is the very essence of practices like Pilates that give us the very important basis for positive change. I recommend to start with your felt sense in your body and if you need more support, seek help from CBT or NLP coaches or Psychotherapists who have a body- oriented approach and combine this work with a movement oriented therapy like Pilates, Yoga or Feldenkrais.

Work with your body! It is a lot of who you are and it can help you if you reach out to it!

If you would like to learn more about how your body can help you feel better or you would like to start Pilates in order to counter anxiety, depression, eating disorders or low self-esteem contact Kristin at The Body Matters on 01702 714968.

Kristin Loeer
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