We’ve talked many times about the numerous benefits of PilatesIn previous blog posts, I never realized how much a thinker this was Joseph PilatesIt was.
Although he is best known for his exercises today, he was an influential and often quoted thinker right up to his death in 1967.
“I’m fifty years ahead of my time,” he once said with confidence.
Here are 19 of his most renowned quotations and the meanings.
1. “A man is as young as his spinal column.”
TheFor spine Joseph PilatesThis was key to emotional and physical well-being. It is essential to have a neutral spine alignment.
“If your spine is stiff at 30,” he once said, “you are old. If it is flexible at 60, you are young.”
PilatesTo support your spine, the exercises strengthen the abdominal and back muscles. They also focus on improving posture through breathing.
2. “We retire too early and we die too young. Our prime of life should be in the 70’s and old age should not come until we are almost 100.”
Practice what he preached Joseph PilatesHe exercised up to the time of his death, at age 83. His perfect posture was no match for his 15-a-day cigar habit!.
TheHe believed that the longer we live, the better our chances of improving our health.
3. “Breathing is the first act of life and the last. Our very life depends on it.”
PilatesIt teaches breathing techniques that can be used to relax, lower blood pressure, or activate specific muscles to improve posture.
Joseph PilatesHe believed that breathing was essential. “It is tragically deplorable,” he once said, “to contemplate the millions who have never mastered the art of correct breathing.”
4. “Pilates is complete coordination of body, mind and spirit.”
PilatesIt is more than a great posture and a strong core. It’s more than a physical exercise. It can also significantly improve mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
5. “Civilisation impairs physical fitness.”
The modern lifestyle – sitting at a computer all day, bending over desks and stressing about deadlines – has a significant impact on our posture. The result is a decrease in our physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.
PilatesAlmost 40 years later, our natural decline in physical strength is reversed Joseph Pilates’ death, his methods still offer a potent antidote to 21st civilisation’s sedentary, screen-fixated ways.
6. “Through the PilatesMethod of Body Conditioning This unique trio of body, mind, and spirit balance can be achieved. Self-confidence follows.”
TheBenefits PilatesThese are widespread. Practitioners of Reiki are able to develop and maintain the whole system of body and mind, as well as the spirit. PilatesYou can literally and figuratively walk higher.
7. “A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion.”
However Joseph Pilates did not entirely dismiss the aerobics boom in 60’s America, he nevertheless maintained that his methods offered a more targeted and efficient route to physical and emotional well being.
With a deliberate nod to the relatively mindless routines offered by aerobics, he once said: “Pilates is not a fatiguing system of dull, boring, abhorred exercises repeated daily ‘ad-nauseam’.”
8. “TheMy exercises should be done by the entire country and world. They’d be happier.”
You may feel like the entire world is doing it. PilatesToday, but when Joseph Pilates opened his fitness studio in 1920’s New York (in the same building as the New York City Ballet), his teachings were known only to a rarefied few, most of them ballerinas.
It is a testament to both Joseph Pilates’ energy, and to the efficacy of his methods themselves, that PilatesMore than 10 million Americans practice it, with millions more worldwide.
9. “Not only is health a normal condition, but it is our duty to not only to attain it but to maintain it.”
Joseph PilatesBelieved that, although we start our lives in good physical and mental health, modern living can lead to a decline in our health.
He felt it was crucial to address issues of posture and breathing to stop or reverse this decline.
10. “Lazy breathing converts the lungs, literally and figuratively speaking, into a cemetery for the deposition of diseased, dying and dead germs.”
Even when we’re when exercising hard, only about 50% of the air in our lungs gets expelled when we breath out. Joseph Pilates believed that the air left in our lungs was a “haven for the multiplication of harmful germs,” and sought through his exercises to purge lungs, thus cleansing our systems.
This, he said, “is the equivalent of an internal shower.” Elaborating on the theme, he once said: “As a heavy rainstorm freshens the water of a sluggish or stagnant stream, so does the Pilates method purify the bloodstream.”
11. “Contrology is not a system of haphazard exercises designed to produce only bulging muscles.”
Joseph PilatesCharles Atlas wasn’t there. HisThe exercise program was not about bodybuilding, but health.
“Contrology,” he said, “was conceived to limber and stretch muscles and ligaments so that your body will be as supple as that of a cat, not muscular like a brewery-truck horse or professional weight lifter you so much admire at the circus”.
12. “Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness.”
Josephs PilatesIt was believed that physical health and emotional well-being were inextricably connected.
13. “Concentrate on the correct movement each time you exercise, lest you do them improperly and thus lose all vital benefits.”
PilatesIt is about re-educating the body and undoing years of immobility and stress. Our musculature will retain the feeling of corrective positions by repeatedly holding them. They will then adopt them over time, without our having to think about it.
“Correctly executed to the point of subconscious reaction,” Joseph Pilates said, “these exercises will reflect grace and balance in your routine activities.”
14. “You will feel better in ten sessions, look better in twenty sessions, and have a completely new body in thirty sessions.”
Joseph PilatesHis methods were able to transform lives and he was living proof. As a child, I suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatism fever. PilatesA combination of weight lifting, yoga, gymnastics, martial arts and weight training transformed him into a fourteen-year old who was strong enough to pose for anatomical charts.
15. “Physical fitness can neither be achieved by wishful thinking, nor outright purchase.”
PilatesThis is not aerobics. It takes practice to master certain techniques. You need to keep at it to reap the benefits.
A majority of people find that just a few sessions suffice to make them feel fitter and more strong. However, most people can stick with the program for at least 10 sessions and they will see significant improvements in their lives.
16. “Change happens through movement and movement heals.”
All day long, we are glued to computers. Our muscles adjust to this position and we end up sitting down. PilatesThis can be corrected by focusing your attention on specific movements. PilatesYou can stretch the muscles around your spine to make yourself taller.
17. “Everyone is the architect of their own happiness.”
As a sickly kid, she became a name and a byword for fitness. Joseph PilatesWe realized that everyone can effect personal radical change if they are open to doing so.
18. “Every moment of our life can be the beginning of great things.”
However Joseph PilatesHe discovered the transformative and redemptive qualities of exercise early in his life. A lifetime of teaching his methods taught him that even elderly people could significantly improve their physical and psychological well-being through exercise. Pilates.
19. “Man should bear in mind and ponder over the Greek admonition: Not Too Much, Not Too Little.”
Invoking Hippocrates the Greek physician, who is the founder of medicine Joseph Pilates was keen to stress that one should not become fixated with exercise: a body-builder’s obsession with exercise, for example, was for Joseph PilatesIt is unhealthy
He believed in balance.
For someone who quite literally revolutionised the entire health & fitness industry, it is quite fitting that Joseph PilatesHe is also a brilliant thinker.
If you don’t feel inspired, take up PilatesIn your locality, or go on an PilatesIf you are looking for holiday under the sun, we recommend that you read about the Numerous benefits PilatesCan have on your body and mind.
