The Relationship Between Positive Psychology and Pure Classical Pilates

One shared objective of traditional instructors and psychologists is to assist students in becoming aware of internal blockages toward progression and fulfillment. Over time, it is possible for students to increase understanding of how their faulty beliefs can impede overall fitness and well-being. As instructors, we start working with students from the “outside”, then move “inward,” because we must concentrate on the conscious before we try to tackle the subconscious. Individuals often show a amount of awareness of their problematic emotional conflicts. For instance, some students do not feel good about themselves due to a lack of ample physical fitness or inadequate mental focus; as a result, they feel uncoordinated or unable to complete particular exercises. After becoming more familiar with a particular student and establishing a good working relationship, traditional instructors steadily introduce stage-appropriate combinations of stability and instability to assist students’ growth, both physically and emotionally. Sometimes students seek a traditional instructor or health psychology consultant when they are in a condition of psychological deflation. Certain persons have emotional or physical injuries and, as a consequence, may experience undercurrents of self-criticism, even failure. From the start, we need to be conscious of the student’s wounded pride and hurt. Yet, we should hold firm to the structure and definitions of our qualified role. By doing so, traditional instructors and psychologists enable students to work at creating deep constructive individual change, while they grow beyond disturbed feelings, conflicts or problematic character trends. As we assist students to escalate their self-awareness, they start working through and then resolving areas of inner struggle and conflict. Only then is it possible to develop higher levels of emotional-conceptual organization into a healthier equilibrium of selfhood. Sometimes, when a student is experiencing inner disturbance, there is increased motivation to constructively alter behavior and problematic attitudes. This student is frequently more open and more capable to decrease conflict and work towards improvement. When students embark upon their initial psychotherapy session or Pure Classical Pilates lesson, they occasionally desire immediate relief from pain or a solution to an untenable situation. Both positive psychology consultant and instructors, however, aid students reclaim themselves in a larger, more general,way. Although we attend to specific problems as professionals, we also acknowledge our students’ positive attributes, their inherent abilities and natural endurance, in spite of all the difficulties. Naturally, we support these strengths, while attending to specific, contextual and immediate concerns. This approach was directly paralleled by Joseph Pilates himself in his original New York City studio. When teaching students, first he reinforced a student’s healthy physical aptitudes to strengthen the whole body, while concurrently protecting the negative or injured part of the body from worsening symptoms. Then Joseph Pilates gave stage-appropriate attention in treating someone’s particular injury or physical limitation. Because most people have rivulets of mild self-criticism, one of our significant roles is to aid students practice self-compassion, appreciation and love. In order for more self-compassion to emerge, it is essential for the person to become conscious of disturbing or painful feelings. With respect to Pure Classical Pilates, obsessive emotions are sometimes associatively connected with compulsive movements, no matter how subtle or obvious. Students can gradually learn how they are emotionally driven-to one extent or another-by unconscious compulsions to assuage basic anxiety; how we are propelled to “live up to” unrealistic expectations of the idealized self; or how we strategize to evade painful realities of the rejected self. Either explicitly in the psychologist’s office or implicitly in the Pure Classical Pilates studio, helping students become aware of unconscious compulsive feelings is a useful task with advantageous results.