Boost your body confidence with Pilates

Like many people I was not a fan of the way my body looked when I was growing up. I danced and did gymnastics when I was young and, as teachers regularly told me, my body did not fit the typical ballerina mould. As I got older I would compare myself to friends, celebrities, even strangers in the street, and generally find a way to judge my body as less than theirs. Now in my forties I realise that all the time I was doing this other women and girls would have been looking at me and doing exactly the same thing.

Over the last decade the thing that has really helped me appreciate my body, and the way it looks, has been learning to appreciate what it can achieve. Finding Pilates and getting into organised sport are what finally showed me the light. In my teens and twenties exercising meant going to the gym, lifting weights or using resistance machines, perhaps doing a group class, I would feel good afterwards, having had a rush of endorphins but I didn’t particularly enjoy the activity and I never really saw a great deal of change in my body. Then I met my husband and after much cajoling (I was very reluctant) he encouraged me to try running with a local athletics club. It was at this point that I started to be much more aware of what my body could achieve, exercising with a real purpose, that purpose being getting faster.

Unfortunately it wasn’t long after this that I was also introduced to how my body could fail. Over the course of about five years I experienced a couple of knee injuries that stopped me running and eventually led to several surgeries. Suddenly not being able to move in the way I wanted to and at times being pretty immobile, after surgery, my body confidence took another dive. It is during this period that I found Pilates, in a very small way at first, just practicing at home a few times a week with a home workout DVD but I started to feel very different about my body. Focusing on how I moved, what I could control and what I couldn’t helped me get back in touch with myself.

After finding out that running was not going to be a good option for my knees once again my relationship with my body deteriorated. Forced to face its limitations I started to focus more on what it looked like, convincing myself I had fat arms! The truth is that I just never really used my arms to do anything so understandably they were not especially toned (I blame Madonna’s deltoids circa 1999 for this particular hang up)

Picking up Pilates again, first with mat classes and then apparatus, put me back in touch with my body’s potential. Pilates has helped me to get in touch with every fibre of my body from feet to finger tips in a way that nothing else has. The method demands that you use your whole body, learning to coordinate the efforts of every muscle like a symphony.

In time it becomes a self affirming cycle. As you use the method to work your whole body you feel proud of its achievements and begin to believe in its potential. At the same time the exercises are working their magic on your body and it begins to look and feel different, maybe firmer or more toned, more agile or responsive, it’s different for everyone. But feeling great about your body is achievable, it just takes time, patience and the right opportunities to show us how great it is.