Hold That Pose
The Age
Monday September 1, 2003
Yoga? So last millennium? A new exercise combines the best of Eastern and Western disciplines. Wendy Tuohy reports.
Attempting to improve on a discipline as time and tradition-honoured as yoga takes courage, but Byron Bay fitness instructor Louise Solomon believes she has managed it.
Solomon took up yoga for stress relief around 12 years ago, in her late 20s, and became a devotee. But after suffering a groin injury while attempting a position she now believes was too advanced for her, she gave it up, "disappointed and disillusioned".
She turned instead to Pilates, the core strength and flexibility-building method pioneered by German former boxer and circus performer Joseph Pilates (pronounced pe-lah-tees).
Pilates was born in Dusseldorf in 1880 and suffered childhood illnesses, including rickets, asthma and rheumatic fever. Seeking to improve his resilience as a young man, he experimented with traditional Eastern disciplines, including yoga and Zen meditation. Pilates adapted elements of those, and added a series of his own floor and equipment-based exercises into his eponymous discipline.
His first studio opened in New York in the '20s, and his clients included accomplished ballet dancers seeking postural and stability-enhancing advantages. The exercises earned widespread fame in the past decade, thanks to popularity among celebrities.
Now, as any women's magazine reader knows, Pilates is very much the form du jour of the exercise cognoscenti, and has a huge fan base among gym and boutique studio-users.
Solomon was introduced to Pilates, a precision method where alignment is everything, by a friend, and immersed herself in it for two-and-a-half years. "I was never a gym girl, but I went in (to a Pilates class) and tried it out and within a couple of sessions I just felt taller, longer, leaner and stronger in the core," says Solomon, who formerly worked in the restaurant industry in northern New South Wales.
She trained to teach Pilates with instructors who included long-time Sydney teacher Allan Menzies. Solomion says she has deepened her understanding with overseas study.
But while Solomon was convinced of the total body benefits of Pilates, she says she still craved the spiritual serenity of the yoga room and the deep relaxation of its breathing techniques.
She resumed yoga and trained with ashtanga teachers, before deciding to pioneer her own method, a blend of yoga and Pilates work.
Her method, dubbed yogalates, has evolved in the past 10 years from Solomon's Byron Bay base. She has released a series of books and videos for home-tuition (and classes are offered at one South Yarra studio).
Her system incorporates many standing yoga positions - much Pilates mat and "reformer" machine work is done in lying positions - and stretches. It also uses yoga-style breathing (in and out through the nose) instead of Pilates-breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Solomon sums up yogalates with the line: "I've taken Pilates' core stability into the yoga room". She believes she was the first instructor to define a fitness regime blending the two forms.
"We use all the basic, standard yoga and Pilates moves, plus we have created and developed a lot of our own," says Solomon.
For example, her book Yogalates (Total Body Toner) features several series of moves derived in part from each discipline. One, the "spinal wave", is Solomon's modification of yoga's classic salute to the sun series, and her "body flow" series also borrows heavily on flowing Hatha yoga-style vinyasas (linked series of positions).
Solomon alternates between English exercise names favoured by Pilates ("the clam", "single leg crunch") and sanskrit names for yoga positions ("virabhadrasana", "garudasana").
For example, her "upper body flow" series starts with the pose Pilates lifted from yoga and called "child" (Solomon has used both its English name and the Indian word "balasana" in her description), then moves to a yoga uttanasana pose, then Pilates tricep squat, a yoga utkatasana move and then a Pilates spinal roll down.
Purists from the yoga or Pilates schools may wonder if it is really possible to blend the two disciplines effectively - indeed many Pilates practitioners believe a studio-conducted class with fewer than four students to each teacher is the only way to learn it properly. But Solomon says she has not had negative feedback from either community.
Moina Bower, the president of the International Yoga Teachers Association and administrator of its Sydney teacher-training course, says the idea of taking basic yoga postures and adding the extra core stability elements is a safer beginning point for home-learners than buying an advanced yoga book and attempting to self-teach.
She points out that Pilates was heavily influenced by the abdominal strengthening work in yoga, and based many exercises on it, and that the idea of moving the body to prepare for poses, adopted by Solomon, is also one used in styles of Hatha yoga.
Celeste Bruce, an accredited Pilates teacher and owner of South Melbourne's popular Pilates-based Physical Minds studio, says there is no problem with mixing methods as long as learners realise they are being given a hybrid form of both, rather than a pure form of either.
"You're not going to get the true philosophies or method of either, but if you can still mobilise your spine and get some physical awareness and inner focus, that's great," says Bruce. "I'm of the belief that any movement is better than no movement."
Yogalates - Total Body Toner, by Louise Solomon, is available through Virgin Books. $29.95.
Fusion fitness
This series is an example of how Yogalates blends Yoga and Pilates regimes. It aims to mobilise the spine and stretch the back of the body. According to Solomon it "brings about balance and efficient functioning of all bodily systems, creating an inner radiance." Exercise programs should not be attempted without first consulting your doctor.
© 2003 The Age