Pilates Cueing: Making Your Workout More Visceral

One of the first things that really engaged me when I began doing Pilates was what you might call a “kinesthetic” experience. If you look this up online, you may find the definition: “relates to learning through feeling such as a sense of body position, muscle movement and weight as felt through nerve endings.” In layman’s terms it means feeling like you are in your body when you move. This was something I originally felt from a young age in dance class that continued to make me want to move. This may seem like a fairly abstract concept, but I had a number of great teachers that helped me to increase my body awareness through strong verbal cueing. In addition to gentle hands on feedback for a client, the art of cueing can make all the difference to getting the most out of your Pilates workout.

I took a fantastic class for Pilates teachers about cuing at Body Harmonics that really rang true for me and taught me how to create dynamic cues for my clients. The class included the task of writing lists of verbs to describe movement, an incredibly helpful way of thinking about it. Chose actions to put to movement. Pull. Push. Slide. Slice. Swing. Stir. Move. Melt.  This made the movement seem that much more visceral to me. A call to action works. Dynamic cuing can have that profound effect of creating that aha moment where everything just connects and you feel a movement all the way from your head down to your toes. It’s what continues to make me want to move and teach movement.

I would urge new teachers to get creative with their verbiage.
Make a list and begin to test it out…

Pull up the inseam of your legs.
Push through the floor.
Slide across a sheet of ice.
Swing through the air.
Stir your leg in the back of your hip.
Move from your bones.
Melt your back ribs into the mat.

The more you experiment and practice your cuing, you will see your words begin to take shape in the way people move. It’s exciting to be able to see movement become more and more refined with both precision and fluidity.  As my clients movements’ progress and their bodies change, I know I’m in that kinesthetic zone.