The story of structure

 

Frederick Matthias Alexander was an Australian singer and stage performer who lost his voice but noticed by looking at himself in a mirror, if he moved his body into better structural position, his voice returned stronger and more powerful than before. Repetitive moving bodies into better structural positions became the Alexander Technique powerfully changing lives.

 

Joseph Pilates was a sickly child, pushed outside by his parents, who experimented with lots of activities and the wrought iron beds from the hospital he worked in as a German living in the UK during WW1. None of his patients got ill during the 1916 flu epidemic that killed millions of people, at which point he knew his “methods” worked.

 

Unfortunately, the moves were too complex for many people and also for science’s measures and controls and his method was kept outside of medicine, even though it worked for most people.

 

Lynn Robinson was a schoolteacher who alongside her physiotherapist, broke these movements down to enable more people access. Body Control Pilates was born and is the only Pilates institution used by the world leading, publicly funded and truly objective healthcare system because of the commitment to high quality professional standards.

 

As a Body Control Pilates teacher, for 15 years, I have noticed people’s problems worsening over the years and as a result, have had to break the movements down even more. Which is what you see in this platform.

 

Moshe Feldenkrais was a Ukrainian-Israeli engineer and physicist who working on hazardous submarines after WW2, aggravated old injuries. But refusing operations and instead using his knowledge on his body to conduct an exploration and self awareness of his structure recovered and developed his method: thought, feeling, perception and movement are closely interrelated and influence each other.

 

Puksto method, structural integration and Tom Myer’s anatomy trains are further examples of structural practices delivering life transforming benefits but that lie on the outsides of practice, while science catches up.