stressmanagement – The Lifetonic Club

Let’s talk about the unseen benefits of pilates for a moment.

We hear words like strength, toning, flexibility all the time when it comes to pilates. And whilst they are all incredible benefits, they tend to focus on the physical aspects of it.

But what about the things that are perhaps not as immediately obvious but just as important?

Using pilates as a stress relieving tool is actually the number one reason I practise.

After losing Dad, I learned just how stressful caring for someone can be and how important it is to stay healthy in body and mind, so as you can be the best carer you can.

Back then I wasn’t running my own business.

Since mum’s double surgery and chemotherapy, let’s just say I’m definitely experiencing some new challenges when it comes to staying on top of my stress levels.

I’m noticing that I need to work twice as hard to strike a balance between being the best support I can be for her whilst also balancing my own needs and the needs of my business as it continues to grow (I’m quickly learning it’s like having a small child!).

We all have caring roles to some degree so here are just 3 ways that pilates can you help you be the best carer for whoever needs you too (and that includes your business!):

Pilates helps release physical and emotional tension from your body
Suffer from back pain? Or maybe you’re prone to holding tension in your shoulders and jaw? Tight and tense muscles are stressed muscles. We also store a lot of emotion in our body; for example, in somatics, the psoas muscle is well knowns as a site that stores trauma, especially for woman. Pilates helps you to ease tight and tense muscles by stretching and releasing them, helping you to get rid of unwanted tension from your body.

Pilates helps to slow your mind down, which can improve your thinking
When your mind is always on the ‘go’ it means that sometimes you don’t always chose the most helpful response to a stressful situation. In pilates you are encouraged to become present by moving your body in a slow and controlled way; a more mindful way. In that moment, it can help create the space you need to choose how you respond to stressful events or situations in your life, rather than just merely reacting and making a situation worse.

Pilates promotes the rest and digest stress response
Breathing and movement are two proven ways you can use to regulate your stress response. In as little as 10 minutes of movement, you can shift your entire physiology from fight or flight to rest and digest. If you having caring responsibilities, this is an important step you can take to help prevent burnout.

I’m curious, did you know that pilates could help you in this way?

Let me know in the comments or come and say hello over on instagram.

Abdominal Breathing

Belly Breathing

I often use this in teaching right at the start to help everyone to relax down, release tension and focus the mind. You breathe in a pattern of 4-2-6. Give it a go – great to do at the end of a busy, stressful day or whenever you just need a moment to reconnect to life.

Sit in a comfortable seat or lie in relaxation position
Place 1 hand on your belly and 1 hand on your chest
Breathe normally and noticed the movement of your hands. What moves the most? Does the hand on your belly move as much as the hand on your chest?
Start to deepen the breath by breathing smoothly and fully into the hand on the belly. Don’t force anything, just let the belly rise into your hand softly. Do this for a count of 4
Hold for a count of 2
Exhale for a count of 6 allowing your belly to gently fall away from your hand.

Repeat this as many times as you need encouraging your body to relax and your mind to calm. Let the warmth of your hands represent a caring, friendly support. You can repeat “Inhale belly rises, exhale belly falls.”

Pilates Breathing

Fogging the Mirror

You can do this seated, in relaxation position or moving in any form!

Take a full Inhale through the nose
Exhale slowly with the jaw relaxed and mouth wide open
Make a sound as if you were fogging up a mirror
Close your mouth then inhale again
Repeat 10 times

The focus in fogging the mirror is on the exhale, which helps minimise tension. The relaxed jaw also helps let go of tension and helps to get the abdominals to engage properly.

Imagery for Breathing

Glass of Water

Imagine your torso was a drinking glass. Start with the glass empty and abdominals relaxed. Inhale slowly through your nose and fill the glass with water from the bottom to the top. Exhale slowly emptying the class from top to the bottom. This imagery focuses on relaxing the abdominals for better diaphragm movement and the initial action of the pelvic floor and focuses the attention on your abdominals rather than breathing using your shoulders and neck, which is what we tend to do when we shallow breathe. If you think you shallow breathe then give belly breathing a go (see above!).

I hope you find these helpful. Will you let me know if you try any of them?

Julie

P.S. Have you read my Pilates for Breathing blog post? There are some great breathing tips in there that I wrote with you in mind!

Did you know I ended up in pilates because I suffered chronic low back pain for over 2 years when I was in my mid twenties? It’s true. I was 25 and couldn’t even bend over to tie my shoes.

I had over 30 physio sessions, took prescribed sleeping tablets, had 2 MRI scans and a set of injections in my lumbar facet joints and not one single thing made a difference to the pain I felt day in and day out. It was truly debilitating in every way. I spent hours in the dead of night reciting Philip Larkin poems, willing the day to come. When it did, I spent hours lying on the floor stretching. I had to trade my beloved heels for not so beloved flat shoes and had to alternate between standing and sitting everywhere I went, and yet no position felt comfortable. I had to have a zillion adjustments made at work and used a wedge cushion for driving.

And then along came a newly graduated, fresh faced physio from Down Under who took one look at me and said, “you need to do pilates.” At that point in time, the only person I’d heard of who did pilates was Madonna and the only place to do it was in LA! However, if he had said get yourself and on a plane to Arizona and jump off the Grand Canyon to sort it, I would have done it! As luck would have it, I didn’t have to do that, nor did I have to go to LA to hang out with Madonna. Instead the gym at RBS Gogarburn, where I was working like a dog, was about to launch a run of pilates classes so I immediately signed up.

I remember every single thing about that lesson. There was a total of 5 exercises with the rest of the class being structured around learning completely alien things to me like spinal alignment, finding a neutral pelvis and how to make best friends with your ‘corset’ of support to support your back (corset = your deep abdominal muscles). I remember having to do a curl up and was shocked to find that I could barely lift my head off the mat, let alone my back! But in that 60 minutes something magical happened; for the first time in 2 years, I left that room with zero pain. How could that be? After everything I’d done to try and manage my back pain in 2 years, including a medical intervention, how could 60 minutes of 5 exercises melt it away? It left me feeling light and happy and I was hooked. The pain came back but the more I went to pilates the less and less it came back until eventually it didn’t come back at all!

That was way back in 2005. It’s a true story and, fifteen years on, is the reason I still do pilates everyday – be in 10 minutes or 60. I never want to feel that pain again – anyone who has suffered chronic low back pain will get my drift here. It is the pitts and effects everything in your life.

I felt stronger, calmer and more able to enjoy life with each and every class. I started to live my life in a different way and as time went on, I also started to notice things that were out of kilter with my new found way of living, particularly the fact that I had been spending faaaarrrr too long chained to a desk all day, working in a high performing team for a high performing company and busting a gut to keep up. It was stressful, fast paced and – dare I say it – cut throat at times. Recognise it? Yip, all of that contributed to my back issues too. In fact, within a year of conquering my back pain through pilates, I quit my high performing job and went to work for a smaller business that still had high expectations of delivery but without the competitive, internal politics of the big global corporation I was slogging away for. It was also handily located within the city centre which meant I could ditch the 1 hour commute to work each way and actually walk to work (and also meant I could fit in 2 pilates classes a week instead of 1).

Pilates really has been the only thing that has helped my back – it has been worth every penny of investment I have made on it. It is so easy to slip it in to your day – spending just 10 minutes on 4 or 5 exercises every day, or every other day, will leave you feeling stronger, calmer and better about everything; do if for long enough and you’ll start to see those little magical shifts in how you go about your every life stuff. I promise.

It is incredibly difficult to truly ‘damage’ your back but like any living thing (yes your spine is a living, breathing thing!), if you don’t look after it, it will stop working. There is lots of medical research to support the fact that you no longer have to hold an anatomical position and work the back mechanically; movement in all directions is best. Here are my 8 go to pilates exercises to help loosen off a stiff or sore low back – do all 8 or pick and choose a few. Aim for around 8 -10 reps of each 2 or 3 times a day if you can; they are truly magical for your back:

Sore back? Feeling stressed? Looking for a way to exercise that fits neatly into your every day life in a way that will build strength, reduce stress and will 100% leave you feeling better than before you rolled your mat out? Then join the other 100+ people signed up to my newsletter for hints, tips and guides on how the magic of pilates can help you every day too.

FREE Midlife Self Care Plan: DOWNLOAD HERE.