It’s the mind itself which shapes the body
I have been teaching online Pilates since March 2020. And I am pleased that I was able to move many people despite the social distancing.
For some time now studios are open again and the Corona crisis is over.
But many Pilates students want to continue to train online – for very different reasons.
For me as a participant (yes, Pilates teachers also go to Pilates teachers) it is a great advantage that I can now train with teachers in London, Los Angeles, Dubai, etc. without having traveling to all these far places.
Training and teaching Pilates online is of course very much different to Pilates offline. And in the last few months I have had a lot of experience both with teaching online and with training online.
What is missing online is the possibility of tactile corrections – the so-called “hands on”. Thus, audio-visual communication is given more weight in the virtual classroom. For me as a teacher, this means being very precise with the language and also finding images that can convey the exercises.
For me as a trainee, it means listening with concentration and abstracting what I have heard in such a way that I can bring it from my mind into my body. This means that I perceive my body carefully and my proprioception is trained more intensely.
But this is Pilates too. Especially in classical training, when each trainee trains his “own” program, these properties are important prerequisites and training goals.
Joseph Pilates wrote, “It’s the mind itself which shapes the body.”
