Clinical Pilates

As physiotherapists, a large part of our role is helping clients to keep their bodies moving – pain free and optimally.  Our bodies are incredibly resilient and what we take for granted is that it is constantly working. It is a 24/7 job that happens without conscious thought, in a well-functioning system. But a little too much, a little too soon, sustained load, previous injuries, or just plain old accidents and the system is off balance. Suddenly the movements or even the stillness that was operating on autopilot requires a lot of effort, concentration, and fear. 

Pilates can be utilized in a physiotherapy setting for injury prevention, postural correction, and performance enhancement. It is a tool to support your rehab – pre-habilitation journey. It is grounded in establishing stability while enhancing movements in your body. Using postures and exercises, it is an incredible tool to develop body awareness and encourage movement optimization. With that, movements or postures that brought you pain can now be accessed efficiently and efficaciously which allows you to develop improved capacity and tolerance of load. It helps you gain a deeper understanding of how your body responds to an injury process and why certain things may cause you discomfort. 

How Can Clinical Pilates Help?

Some ways that Clinical Pilates help is that it helps you find a neutral starting point – your resting position in space if you will. From this, we help you develop methods to dissociate (separating components of movement so that you don’t use every muscle there ever was to complete a simple task) and integrate (putting together these components so that your body can work synergistically) movement. It helps with muscle firing and pattern activation, which is the foundation of purposeful muscle movement. It is especially important when recovering from injury or surgery, when recalibrating the body to restore range, strength, and confidence in our bodies.

We help you with your posture – yes, the P word.  Contrary to popular belief, it is not about being rigid and puffing out your chest like a penguin; we want you to be able to move and return to your start position. There is no “perfect” posture or “best” way to move or sit. As humans, we move to live and we all move differently  – perfect posture is the ability to get into and out of them. 

As physiotherapists, we use both verbal and hands on cues to enhance your understanding of the way your body creates and connects functional movement. Because at the end of the day, it is your body and the movements that you create are uniquely yours.