How does Pilates reduce stress levels?

Pilates can reduce stress levels both mentally and physically.

Stress can manifest itself in both the mind and the body in many different ways.

In the mind, you could have ‘monkey mind’ where thoughts are battling and crashing around inside your head constantly, you may be worrying or ruminating. You may have difficulty focusing, remembering, brainstorming or making decisions. You may have a lot of difficult or challenging events happening that you need to deal or cope with.

In the body, stress can show up as tension or pain. Your heart is under more pressure, your immune system falters, your hormones struggle to cope, you get exhausted. Your nervous system will be in the ‘fight or flight’ mode instead of the desired ‘rest & digest’ mode. Physical stress can lead to sickness and health issues within the workings of the body.

While we do need stress in our life, it’s important to keep this at manageable and helpful levels!

You can do this by adding Pilates into your lifestyle. Learning how to incorporate it into your daily routine is even better. As Pilates is adaptable you can do long sessions of full workouts or just use it as a short break for a couple of minutes in the middle of something. Both ways will help boost your energy levels, and make you feel like you’re floating, lighter, taller, rejuvenated and revitalised.

If you’re feeling that your stress levels are getting overwhelming and damaging you, below are ways in which you can use a Pilates workout to help relieve some stress.

Mentally: Pilates and the mind

·        A mindful workout – Pilates keep you in the present moment as you must think about what you are doing and concentrate. If doing it correctly, you don’t have a chance to think about anything else! This means that for the entire time you’re doing Pilates – you are not stressing about anything, you clear your head of everything but Pilates. You’re totally focusing and concentrating on feeling the movement and ensuring the right muscles are doing the right thing to produce precise moves.

·        You’ll slow your mind down – Pilates is a precise controlled set of movements which are never rushed. Using deep breathing and total focus you’ll flow smoothly through the different actions. Moving rhythmically in time with your breath brings a sense of control and calm.

·        Improve cognitive function – exercise, breathwork and mindfulness (Pilates!) can help to grow the little grey matter, building new brain cells. Pilates trains you to focus, to notice, and to control. This in turn helps you to notice and let negative or worrying thoughts go, to focus on priorities and make clearer decisions, to concentrate on your projects, enabling you to become more creative and productive again.

·        You’ll train your brain to be able to control many things simultaneously, thus enabling you to cope better when things build up in your mind, splitting out the things that need attention compared to those that don’t. Pilates is not about just going through the motions, but about paying attention to correct form, and adapting when things don’t feel quite right, a great skill to help with daily tasks and decisions, making general life easier.

·        Exercise releases endorphins – it makes you happier! It will also boost your confidence and self-esteem, because you will feel, look and move better. Anxiety and depression levels will lower as you trust and like yourself more. You’ll begin to think more positively, relationships will improve and become easier. If you’re doing your Pilates in a class environment, you’ll also get the support of your peers and build a social network.

Physically: Pilates and the body

·        You will reduce aches and pains, and improve mobility and sleep. Pilates focuses on releasing tension, through mobility, flexibility, breathing and relaxation. You will move more freely and be able to do things more easily.

·        You will strengthen your core! This total body, low impact exercise provides you with a stronger core which in turn supports the rest of the body more effectively. The stronger your core the easier you find not just everyday life, but also recovery from any injuries, operations or illness. Using your ‘powerhouse’ (core) to create energy, transferring this into movement throughout the whole body, will help to make your body strong with effective lean muscles, and healthier joints and bones.

·        You will increase blood and oxygen flow around the body. Over time, Pilates can help control and reduce the risks of things like high blood pressure and blood sugars, variable heart rate, arthritis and osteoporosis.  Looking after your physical wellbeing with regular Pilates exercise can help to keep disease and illness away.

·        You will stabilise joints, improve posture and balance muscles. Pilates principles focus on precise movement. Most of us unknowingly use incorrect muscles, but training your body to use the correct muscles for movement reduces stress on the body, as well as addressing imbalances in muscles which cause problems. Movement lubricates joints, and Pilates focuses on stabilising and realigning joints, and improves your posture too. Both these things put less strain and stress on the body.