Power up your core with Pilates

MSN Diet & Fitness:

Pilates is a form of exercise for everyone—young or old, fit or flabby. Like many other kinds of exercise, Pilates increases metabolism, promotes respiratory and circulatory function, and improves your bone density and muscle tone. Like yoga and martial arts, it can help you to "get centered" and calm your nerves. Unlike many other forms of exercise, however, Pilates balances out muscular asymmetries, streamlines your silhouette, and improves your balance, coordination, and breath control. Pilates does all this because the exercises work to simultaneously develop your muscular flexibility and your strength. The exercises also help you to awaken a new body awareness, or what I call your "inner eye."

With all that said, what makes Pilates so pertinent to the way you live your life today?

Well, Pilates is all about breathing and moving more fully—both of which we need to do more often. Over the last 50 years, our lifestyles have become increasingly sedentary, while our bodies, which were built for action, haven't changed in design.

We call sitting still for long periods of time "discipline," but it can be a kind of tyranny. If you sit at work or on an airplane for an extended time, you know how stiff and tired you can become. Getting up for a short stretch or a drink of water feels great, doesn't it? That's because you're satisfying your body's natural instinct to move—and moving around pumps more oxygen to your brain and your body.

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Benefits of the Pilates Method