How the Pilates breathing principle delivers better muscle tone, can relieve stress and anxiety, and bolster your overall physical and mental health. Your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) comprises two parts, sympathetic and parasympathetic, all housed in the mammalian part of the brain. These parts are called the “fight or flight” and your “rest, digest, and relax” states. The body needs to seamlessly and efficiently transition between these two states to help you navigate the world and its challenges. But what…
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How Exercise Benefits Your Brain Function Have you ever had to jog your mind? Or pick someone’s brain? Perhaps, some days, your mind feels like a sieve! Or you can’t wrap your brain around something? Exercise can benefit your brain! As young as 8, we know exercise benefits brain development. But across our lifespan, physical activity is so vital for our brains to help with cognition, reduce anxiety and depression, and improve our quality of life and sleep patterns. Here…
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The difference between range of motion and length of muscle tissue. The distinction between mobility and flexibility can be confusing. Many of us walk into the studio knowing we have pain, but we might not know if it is because of joint inhibition or muscle tightness. Following, we break down the difference between mobility and flexibility related to Pilates. Mobility What it means: Mobility is the ability of a joint to move freely. It’s the lubrication of a joint and…
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When it comes to building a healthy body, there are benefits to intense sweaty workouts as well as rest, relaxation, and recovery sessions. But where does “release” fit into the balance and what does it mean? At Pure Movement, release work means using a soft prop to gently manipulate and relax the fascial connective tissue to improve blood and lymphatic circulation, whole body alignment, and relieve pain. So what is “release work”? Release work is the gentle manipulation of the…
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Exercise is one of the best ways to build bone mass and improve posture and alignment. Pilates develops balanced muscles through weight-bearing and whole-body exercises that are joint-friendly and build strong bones. What does joint friendly mean? Our sedentary lifestyles and underlying postural habits developed from our activities, or lack thereof, accumulate and affect our overall health. We’ll look at how this creates compression on our joints and makes it difficult, if not painful to move. We’ll look at how…
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Breathing is necessary for life and is not consciously something we have to control. In fact, it’s a good thing that it happens automatically, freeing our minds to do other things! But some of us learn to breathe in different ways and we may not be properly coordinating our muscle movement to optimize our fullest breath. So we’ll take some time to discuss how breathing is important for overall health and posture. So what’s happening automatically? The primary muscle we…
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