Now, more than ever, it’s important to be and stay centered. Centering is at the “core” of what we do, literally! For some of you who have been around the Studio for a while, you may still have your Body Works t-shirts saying, “get to your core,” with an image of a green apple core. While the term “core” is a popular buzz-word in the fitness world, in Pilates it means much more than just working on developing your abdominal muscles; it means finding your center and organizing around it – just as an apple develops around its core, or a tree organizes around its inner trunk.
The intention is to develop an awareness of our central axis as a strong, flexible and articulate place from which we can organize our movement and develop our muscles in a uniform and balanced way. By organizing around, and moving from our centers, we allow our extremities to be free to perform each task and movement with greater ease. So when you hear a teacher say, “organize around your midline,” “pull into your center,” or even “exhale completely,” these are cues to help you center your body into its “core” and free up the rest of the body to move simultaneously with more freedom and control.
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