What can you expect from your first Pilates class? While later sessions are filled with you moving, a lot of crucial information is conveyed in the first few sessions. How quickly you integrate this new Pilates information into your movement, and how much movement occurs in your first class, depends primarily on the time you have previously spent with your body, whether playing sports, dancing, doing yoga three times a week, walking every morning for 20 minutes, or through some other activity.

Each person's experience will be different, but in your first class, you will most likely learn :

• the muscles you want to use with each movement
• specific ways to breathe while doing Pilates
• how to safely move your body in four different directions - forward, backward, side to side, and twisting.

A simplified way to explain Pilates is that you use the muscles closest to the spine before using any other muscles. The result of this kind of organization is the ability to move the body freely on a stable spine. It also means stronger stomachs and hips which means pain free backs and more energy and vigor!

To simplify, you can think of these muscles as a cube from the base of your pelvis to the middle of your rib cage. The top of the cube is the diaphragm, which attaches underneath the rib cage and helps you to breathe; the sides of the cube are the transversus abdominus which attach at the connective tissu of the spine from the low to mid back and wrap around to attach at the midline of the abdomen; the back of the cube is the multifidi and quadradus laborum muscles; the bottom of the cube is the muscles of the pelvic floor which attach from the pubic bone to the sitz bones at the base of your pelvis. If anatomy is not your strong suit, you can feel these muscles by using the following imagery : imagine you are zipping up a tight pair of jeans, (pelvic floor), then that you attach a wide belt around your waist (transversus abdominus, multifidi, quadratus laborum), then from there you button up a vest to just underneath your solar plexus (diaphragm). After a few classes you can confidently call on your Pilates muscles to help you lift boxes, walk up stairs, sit up tall, and enjoy any physical activity.

If you are reading this, you are already breathing. We hope! If not, please take a deep breath right now... Try this experiment - stick out your chest like a soldier, breath into your chest so that it rises and falls, and place your hand on the muscles at your lowest back rib. What does it feel like? Do the back muscles move with your breath at all? Do they feel stiff? Supple? Does it feel like you can take a deep breath? Now try this - place one hand on your sternum (solar plexus, breast bone) and the other at the lowest back rib. Can you send the air into the hand on your back and keep the hand in the front still? Imagine you are filling your lungs with air like you would fill a glass with water, filling the bottom of the lungs first. Now can you do this with the imaginary belt wrapped around your waist? If the answer is yes, then you have taken your first official Pilates breath! You have kept the abdominal wall engaged and sent the air into the back and sides of your lungs. Where you send the breath influences the muscles you use-- breathing like this helps encourage plumb line posture, and helps you to uniformly develop the muscles of the entire torso*.

It may sound ridiculous, but sometimes we forget all of the movement possibilities we have. We become like pac men only moving and folding forward - walking, sitting, running, even the position in which you sleep, it all goes in one direction. In each Pilates class we will have you and your spine gently move in all of the healthy ways you can. One of the goals of Pilates is uniform development, or balancing the front, back and sides of the body*. With the teacher's verbal and physical cues we can help you to bend backwards and still use your stomach muscles, to bend to the right but still use the muscles on the left side of your waist. The result of this is Joseph PIlates' definition of "physical fitness" - "the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body with a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily, and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneous zest and pleasure." Who doesn't want that?

One last thing to keep in mind for your first class, there is a very good chance you will not feel any muscles soreness during or after your class. In Pilates, we do a small amount of repetitions with many different muscles, and one of the results is very little soreness. You will feel taller, your chest may feel more open, you may feel more ease of movement in your back and hips, and there is a very good chance that you will leave class breathing more deeply. With time, you will have more energy, less pain, and may even grow as much as an inch taller.