Belly Button Kissing Spine and Other Improbabilities

July 22, 2022
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

“OK, now, make your belly button kiss your spine.”

Delivered in a firm but friendly fashion, this outlandish instruction exemplifies the nature of Pilates. Ordinarily I’d scoff—no part of anyone’s belly can kiss any part of their spine, there’s a digestive system in the way—but in this case the directive has been issued by my wife Nicole. And she means it metaphorically.
Pilates tables in a pilates studio with the view of a forest out the window

Joseph Pilate's Gratz Reformers

Furthermore, a few years of such instruction has taught me that there are obvious benefits. Tangible, physical ones, which is more than you can say for other very worthy improvement exercises, such as prayer and meditation. Meditation does not alleviate my half a lifetime of lower back trouble; Pilates does. And it’s the attempt to join belly button to spine that counts.
Pilates tables in a pilates studio with the view of a forest out the window

Joseph Pilate's Gratz Reformers

Joseph pilates in newspaper

Joseph Pilates

Sports Illustrated

12 February 1962

Joseph Pilates designed his system of physical rigor to create core strength, flexibility and balance in practitioners. That’s why it is so popular with dancers (Pilates’ first fans in New York), actors, athletes and such. But anyone can benefit, as I’ve been learning; and the equation between Pilates and wellness, though it has tangible results, contains intangible elements that are worth contemplating.
“It’s the mind itself which shapes the body,” Pilates declared, which seems confounding from the creator of a physical discipline. But that word—discipline—is the key. No, I can’t make my belly button kiss my spine. I cannot stand against the wall and grow two inches taller. Do a reformer squat using my back? Nope, those are completely different muscles. But the impetus behind these things, both mental and physiological, is what bears results, just as much as the physical doing. Over time, that is. Regular repetitions. Thousands of attempts. Implicit belief in them.

“Everyone is the architect of their own happiness,” Pilates also said. I guess a kiss is the key to that, even if it seems impossible. Everything’s improbable until someone makes it real.

—Eric Lucas

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