Pilates, Alexander and the Health of the Human Race

Joseph Pilates and F. Matthias Alexander were important pioneers in thinking about how the human body functions, and how to improve that functioning. Their ideas, carried on today as the Pilates Method and the Alexander Technique, have had a profound influence on many other fitness training and somatic education programs.

One of the most striking parallels between these two men’s work is the sweeping view they had of the health challenges facing mankind today, and of the wide-ranging benefits that would come about if their ideas were put into practice. They both spent many years experimenting and working on themselves, making their own bodies as laboratories, as it were, for testing each new idea. They both also acquired considerable experience in working with others to improve their functioning and they both repeatedly offered to demonstrate their methods to anyone in authority who would take the time to investigate them.

In each of their first major publications, they express frustration with the direction the human race is taking and make urgent calls for remedial action based on their discoveries. At the start of “Your Health”, published in 1934, Joseph Pilates writes:

“Daily, from sunrise to sunset, radio, newspapers and magazines broadcast to the world how to maintain health, how to regulate health, what to eat, what to drink, even what to think.

“This conflicting information… (has caused) nothing less than confusion (to those) who are so unfortunate as to hear or read the diametrically opposed viewpoints of our so-called guardians of our health, since it is rather the exception than the rule, that these instructions are in agreement in their ideas and methods.

“To one who has devoted the major portion of his life to the scientific study of the body and, to practical application of natures’s laws of life pertaining to the natural development of coordinated physical and mental health, and to the prevention rather that the cure of disease, the misinformation I have so often listened to or read borders closely on the criminal. Why? Because the acceptance of many of these popular yet bogus theories not only results in the squandering of untold millions of dollars, but, more seriously, can and does actually shorten the lives of uncounted millions.”

Apart from not mentioning television or the internet, one would have no way of knowing this was written over seventy years ago. We continue to be subjected to conflicting advice about almost everything related to health – nutrition, exercise, posture, prescription drugs, to name but a few examples.

Clearly Pilates was addressing major heath issues, issues that are not susceptible to any kind of quick fix. The same is true for Alexander. In the opening pages of his first book, “Man’s Supreme Inheritance”, written in 1918, Alexander devotes a great many pages to the same concerns voiced by Pilates. Some idea of the flavor of Alexander’s writing can be found In his Preface to the First Edition of the book. Here Alexander explains why he feels the need to put forward his ideas immediately, even though they were still in a preliminary state of development:

“…there are many reasons why I should hesitate no longer…chief among them being the appalling physical deterioration that can be seen by any intelligent observer who will walk the streets of London or New York, for example, and note the form and aspect of the average individuals who make up the crowd. So much for the surface signs. What inferences can we not draw from the statistics? To take three instances only: What of the disproportionate and apparently undeniable increase in the cases of cancer, appendicitis, and insanity? For that increase goes on despite the fact that we have taken the subject seriously to heart. Now I would not…say that because the increase in these evils has gone hand-in-hand with our endeavours to raise the standard by physical-culture theories, relaxation exercises, rest cures (and therefore) the one is the result of the other; but lacking more definite proof on the first point, I do maintain that if physical-culture exercises, etc., had done all that was expected of them they must be considered a complete failure in the checking of the three evils I have listed.”

n their analyses of the sad state of human affairs, on occasion both men veered into the realm of the bizarre. Pilates, for example, viewed masturbation as “the curse of mankind” and Alexander had some strange ideas about vaccinations and about “primitive peoples”. I think it’s fair to say that these were aberrations that did not take away from the important discoveries these men made.

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Pilates and Alexander put forth a number of suggestions about how the serious health crisis facing modern modern man could be alleviated. They both advocated a reasoned approach to the problem: find out precisely what is going wrong, why it is going wrong, and then think out and apply a rational solution.

Both men emphasized the unfortunate role of faulty childhood education and training which, in their views, inevitably led to harmful habits of thought and action. To overcome this, proper education (or, more accurately, re-eduction) was needed. As Pilates put it, in a statement that could easily have been written by Alexander, “..incorrect habits are responsible for most of our ailments, if not all of them. Equally true is the statement that only through proper education is it possible to replace bad habits with good ones…”

Both men felt that this re-eduction had to be based on a clear factual understanding of how we function and a clear-headed approach to improving that functioning. As Pilates writes, “…in order that one may receive the maximum benefit and resulting normal health from one’s daily activities, one should understand at least some of the rudimentary underlying principles governing the mechanism of the human body in motion, rest and sleep. For example, knowledge of the leverage possibilities of the skeletal framework, the range and limitation of proper muscle tension and relaxation, the laws of equilibrium and gravity, and last but not least, how to inhale and exhale (i.e. how to breathe properly and normally) are essential if we are to benefit from any exercises.”

This corresponds closely with Alexander’s belief that it is important to have some knowledge of how we are designed if we wish to make useful changes. Some of these ideas have been elaborated on in recent years by Alexander Technique teachers and termed “body mapping” – a simple, systematic, process by which one can discover some some very basic, practical, anatomical information about yourself.(1)

It’s telling that both Pilates and Alexander had occasion to make disparaging comments about anatomists. Pilates castigated them for failing to understand what he perceived to be the true mechanism of the spine and proper methods for training it. Alexander once met with a group of anatomists and later commented that their studies had done nothing useful to enhance their own posture and movement patterns. For Alexander it made no sense to study anatomy if you weren’t going to use your knowledge to improve your own functioning.

Both men were self-trained in the field of anatomy and, for the most part, their understanding of human form and functioning was accurate. On occasion, however, they both were guilty of profound anatomical misunderstandings. Pilates made a very serious error when he insisted that the ideal human spine should be straight – that any spinal curvature at all is not natural. Alexander, for his part, put forth an odd test designed to quickly determine the level of someone’s quality of functioning (“use” in his terms) based on hand positions – a test that has subsequently been completely discredited.

In the grand scheme of things, these failings are of minor significance in evaluating the overall importance of these two men’s’ approach to health and fitness.

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