Im not a native English writer or speaker. Thanks for accepting my writing mistakes.
Pilates is not only an exercise that we do in the gym... Its much more than that! Many people say that is physical, mental, or spiritual. I say is everything.
I always begin my classes with an explanation of the beginning of Pilates. For the perfectionist persons I always advert that the facts and dates are not consensual. There is a lot of different information about Pilates but lets make an resume for having the big picture.
It all started with one man: Joseph Hubertus Pilates!
Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born in German in 9 of December 1883 in a poor and numerous family. His family suffer from many diseases, and two of his brothers and his mother pass away. So he start to becoming obsessed with health. His father was a gymnaster and one of the first bodybuilder in German and he survived. So we believe that Pilates link this two events and thought that health and physical activity was linked. In order to improve his health he started to go to the gym with his father and later join a small circus. The circus went to England and it was at the same time as the beginning of the First World War. All the kids, women and old mans were sent back to German but the others were sent to concentration camps.
One of the main problems in Concentration Camps was time. There was nothing to do there, but, for Joseph Pilates, he had the time and the resources to start thinking about body culture and improved his exercises. Some people say that it was a lucky strike...
When he come back to German he founded a Boxe Club, work with rheumatism persons and begin to train military police. But he wanted more so he launched himself to another adventure: United States of America.
He built his first studio in the same building as the Royal Ballet Academy of New York. There, he start to treat some injury ballet dancers and with his results others starts doing Pilates too. The partnership of Ballet and Pilates starts here and continues till nowadays.
So we can identified two different stages in Pilates life. The first trying to improve health and the later improving the body skills of many ballet dancers, sports and other people. Normally general people starts with Pilates too reduce pain or improve their posture! But Pilates its much more than that!
I used to say: Give it a try, because Pilates its all about feel and body knowledge.
Thanks for your time!