Improving Body Balance With Pilates

Pilates provides high impact results with low-impact exercises. The practice is done at home, with a minimum of equipment and is proven to have many positive health benefits. Lowered blood pressure and heart rates, lowered stress and anxiety and even weight loss are among these results, but Pilates chief improvement is body balance.

Essence of Pilates

With Pilates, practitioners help you develop control over muscles and tendons by use of repetitive movements and concentration. By concentrating on the body during the entire range of motion (without music or television in the background), you develop a better awareness of your body's movement. Movements involve light weights or balls or bands to make you aware of your body, not add extra resistance.

Control and precision

By centering your body, you achieve perfect balance necessary for each exercise. In the beginning, you might find it difficult to maintain poses, but as time goes on, it gets easier. This benefit of muscle memory is the core of Pilates. In addition, slow, steady breathing aids in balance. The gasping, fish-mouthed breathing of high-impact exercises only ruins balance and control.

To get started

To improve body balance with Pilates, little is needed. Professional instruction is best, but if that is not available, many instructional DVDs and web seminars teach proper technique. Since Pilates needs so little equipment, the investment is negligible.

Since its inception, Pilates has proved so successful that those suffering from Parkinson's disease practice it as an effective method of improving muscle control. Like yoga, Pilates seeks to improve not only your body but mind as well, and studies have shown that it does just that.