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About Joseph Pilates…
Pilates is a body conditioning system created over eighty years ago by German born
Joseph H. Pilates. It has since become an intensive training regimen for athletes,
dancers and everyone in between and widely used in rehabilitation. Pilates was developed
to create a healthy body, a healthy mind, and a healthy life.
As a child, Joseph Pilates suffered from asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever, and
through his determination to strengthen his frail and ill body, he developed the
Pilates’ method. He called his method “The Art of Contrology,” or muscle control,
to emphasize his unique approach of using the mind to master the muscles. He studied
Eastern and Western forms of exercise, including Yoga, martial arts, Zen philosophy,
and Greek and Roman practices.
During World War I, Joseph Pilates worked as an orderly in a hospital where he began
working with no ambulatory patients. He attached springs to the hospital beds to
support the patients’ ailing limbs while he worked in rehabilitating their injured
bodies. These beds became the stepping stone to what is now known as the Reformer
used in Pilates apparatus work today.
At Karmel Pilates we teach using the STOTT Pilates approach, which has built on
the original work of Joseph H. Pilates. With an emphasis on breathing, core conditioning
and body awareness, Pilates is a sequence of exercises developed and practiced to
simultaneously stretch, strengthen, tone and align the body, while eliminating excess
tension and strain on the joints. Workouts are performed on a mat or specialized
equipment. Pilates is a fitness regime for a lifetime, in conjunction with regular
cardiovascular exercise, it is a perfect complement to, sport, rehab and life. Sessions
focus on the quality, not the quantity of the exercise. It is the mind-body connection
that truly makes Pilates distinct.
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