The other day a client, let’s call him James, reported experiencing a bit of low back pain after returning home from a work trip. He joked, “It’s probably because I sneezed too hard; I just have that kind of body.”
James had two sessions scheduled that week. During his first session, PiC teacher Nicole worked with James on his breath, lateral hip (the side butt), and deep core. During his second session, PiC teacher Destinie worked with him on his breath again, posterior hip (the butt), and his front-to-back core connection.
At the end of this second session, James remarked, “I’ve never thought to work on my breath and my butt when I have back pain, but now it makes sense.”
It’s no secret that as we age, the potential for little aches and pains and feeling stiff and vulnerable in new places increases. But identifying the source of pain becomes less mysterious when we understand common truths about pain:
- Where you feel pain in the body is not necessarily the source of the pain
- Your autonomic nervous system plays a significant role in how you feel in your body
You might be asking:
“How do we identify the source/s of pain?”
or
“How do we address the autonomic nervous system if it's autonomic?”
We can add MELT® to our Pilates practice!
The MELT Method® is a revolutionary self-care system designed to help you improve performance and eliminate the mental and physical stress that accumulates from daily living before it causes persistent pain and dysfunctions.
Using soft rollers and balls, MELT® blends mindful meditation and breathwork techniques to help boost the body's natural healing mechanisms with self-myofascial restorative techniques that simulate hands-on therapeutic practices to:
• Calm the mind and ease pain symptoms
• Improve heart rate variability
• Target fascia's supportive qualities
• Restore joint centralization and stability
• Improve sensorimotor control
This preventative, proactive approach known as Hands-Off Bodywork® is a simple, daily self-care practice anyone, at any age or activity level, can use to effectively improve their sense of wellbeing and live a more active, healthy, pain-free life.
Pilates in Common thinks MELT® is one of the BEST ways to warm up before Pilates. Destinie loves MELTing before Pilates to ignite her mind-body connection. She also MELTS before lap-swimming and before a day on the ski slopes. Imagine starting Pilates less stiff and more warm and connected to your unconscious mind and body. MELT® accentuates the benefits of Pilates which is why we offer MELT special events like this one at our studio.
MELT® techniques taught in this special event:
- The Rest Assess: we can’t address pain, tension, and stress in the body without first identifying what we feel and where. The Rest Assess examines our static posture. Void of movement and of our common senses of touch and vision, you’ll learn how to use this technique to quickly identify what common imbalances feel like in the body using your “body sense–” your body’s “sixth sense.”
- The Tuck and the Tilt: if you have a regular Pilates practice, this skill will seem familiar to you, however, the MELT® method has a unique perspective on how to move the pelvis and greatly emphasizes the fact that your body’s center of gravity is located in the sacrum. By carefully reconnecting your mind to your center of gravity, all of your joints locate where they are in space more efficiently.
- The 3-D Breath Breakdown & The 3D Breath: these two techniques are the stars of this special event. Learning to breathe properly positively impacts our anatomy and is the secret to tapping into your autonomic nervous system. Did you know that your lungs have the capacity to hold SIX liters of air and that the total surface area of your lungs would spread to the size of a tennis court? Most of us never take a genuinely FULL, six-liter, six-sided breath during the day unless we have a regular breathwork practice. We’ll teach you how to get the most out of the breathing organs and in turn how breathwork can calm the nervous system and MELT tension out of the body.
Destinie will be there to guide all of you through this transformational work, providing individual feedback and plenty of opportunities for questions. By the end of this series, our goal is that all participants feel confident in performing the MELT® Rebalance sequence with confidence and precision.
Have questions? Email us at [email protected]!
