Let’s play a game. I give you a list of words and you figure out the common thread.
Russian Splits, Teaser, Snake, Star, Front Support, High Bridge, Control Balance
Yes, all of these are Pilates exercises (you got that, I am sure) and all of them demonstrate muscular balance and control in a human body.
The idea of “balance” attracts many people to Pilates. Without even thinking hard, you can probably give me about 10 Pilates-related businesses that use “balance” in their name or tagline.
“Balance” was exactly what attracted me to Pilates more than a decade ago. Finally, I didn’t have to work on my body piece by piece, I could treat it as a whole and enjoy a harmonious flow of movements that made me look and feel good even as I was working out.
I went on to become a Pilates teacher but something was still missing for me.
While I was going through my teacher training program I was still working with my husband on our web development and marketing business. I felt that I was cheating on my “Pilates love” behind the screen of a computer.
The moment that I closed the door in our home office and opened my laptop I was in another world. The world of HTML and JavaScript, CSS and PHP, – languages that weren’t meant to be spoken but to be typed and executed in a perfectly organized manner. I actually experienced the thrill when I had a new web development challenge or discovered a new cool trick that I could implement on one of our websites (total “geekness”, I know.)
I was struggling to find out who I was. Pilates that struck me as the most balanced form of exercise was destroying my personal life balance.
Was I a passionate Pilates teacher? Or was I a quiet computer geek? Both hats fit and felt so natural.
Do you wear a “polymath” hat?
A couple of years ago I came across an interesting term – a “polymath” or a “Renaissance man” (“woman”, in my case.) The term was first used in the seventeenth century to describe a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems (thank you Wikipedia for this description.).
A simpler description of a polymath is a person capable of both rational/logical and experiential/intuitive thinking.
According to psychologist Seymour Epstein’s cognitive-experiential self-theory, humans have two parallel but interacting modes of information processing. The rational system is analytical, logical, abstract, and requires justification via logic and evidence. In contrast, the experiential system is holistic, affective, concrete, experienced passively, processes information automatically, and is self-evidently valid (experience alone is enough for belief).
In my case, being a Pilates teacher nourishes the experiential system, while web development satisfies the rational one. Most people are inclined to use one system more than the other but then there are some (like myself, Brett Miller, Kimberly Mills to name just a few) who activate both systems at the same time.
Each system has its positives and negatives.The experiential system is associated with creativity, intuition, great social skills, good sense of humor and empathy that are undermined by naive optimism and unrealistic beliefs.
The rational system is associated with intellectual thinking, low anxiety and depression, high self-esteem, conscientiousness and most often poor social and relationship skills.
According to professor Epstein,
“people who are high in both thinking styles are Renaissance people. They have the brains of scientists and the sensibilities of poets. In other words they have the positive features of both thinking styles and do not have their negative features because they are kept under control by the other thinking style.”
In Pilates we have a lot of opportunities to develop both thinking styles. Fostering our relationships with the students and sharpening our “Pilates eye” are the best ways to develop our experiential system while learning biomechanics and anatomy as applied to Pilates (instead of using pure intuition and “I-was-told-to-teach-this-way”) will really challenge the rational mind.
It is also possible to funnel the rational mind into the business aspect of running a Pilates studio, into equipment engineering or prop creation, into Pilates web applications or into something completely unrelated to Pilates.
I would dare to assume that Joseph Pilates was a polymath since he used mostly intuition to develop Contrology and his rational mind to engineer Pilates equipment as well as create an ordered and well-organized system of exercise. He was able to harness the power of both thinking systems to give us the ultimate exercise system.
Finding the Perfect Balance
I got tired of trying to find the perfect balance between Pilates and web development, instead I morphed them into one all-encompassing passion – PilatesBridge community.
I realized that as a Pilates teacher I can affect lives of a handful of people who live in my area but there are thousands of people worldwide who would love and need to experience the power of Pilates.
There are thousands of amazing Pilates teachers out there whose heart and soul are devoted to Pilates but they lack technical skills to connect with new students. I help them by creating beautiful and functional websites, by promoting their classes and workshops on the pages of PilatesBridge, by publishing their articles and videos.
I finally feel balanced in my occupation!
Your Turn
If you feel torn between Pilates and another occupation, you are not alone. You are a polymath and your brain is capable of using both rational and experiential thinking systems to make you a well-rounded person. Instead of fighting it, embrace these great capabilities and use them to your and world’s advantage.
How do you “polymath”?
Anastasiya Goers is following her passion for Pilates and website development by running a community-based Pilates website – PilatesBridge.com (http://www.pilatesbridge.com ) that unites Pilates professionals and Pilates students. PilatesBridge features an interactive world-wide Pilates Finder directory where any Pilates teacher can list their services for FREE – Click here (http://pilatesbridge.com/join/) to add your listing and connect with more clients. Anastasiya also helps Pilates business owners create authoritative web presence, design/redesign their websites with the new goals in mind as well as come up with creative ways to connect with new clients. You can email her with your web questions directly at core@pilatesbridge.com.