Tag Archives: Pilates

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Gainful employment, what larks

Wednesday was the first day of my new job. I went to the studio in the morning, and taught clients at 7, 8, and 9, and then I did a bracing Advanced Reformer workout with one of the other teacher/apprentices. It was smashing, actually: the first full Advanced I’ve done since I broke my ankle, and I left out only the Arabesques and the kicks in the Control Push Ups Back. I did Snake and Twist and stepped off in Balance Control and all sorts. Then, I went home and changed, and caught a bus to Mairangi Bay. The truth is that Windsor Park buses are rare and flighty creatures — I’ll be walking up Hastings Road many times yet, I suspect.

When these bods say induction, they have their minds made up. They started me out as they mean to go on by producing a training supervisor with practically the same name as another supervisor, who I was expecting; while I was still reeling from the dissonance, she started using a cunning technical-difficulty manoeuvre developed experimentally at Guantanamo, and when I was good and stonkered, she gave me a 60-page PDF about divergent models of mental health care. It was written in academic jargon, however, and contained a joke by a PACT alum about narrowly escaping a life “running for Clubhouse president”, so sucks to her: I survived the reading time with wits to spare and finished the day with a meeting. Meetings and acronyms, that’s where it’s at.

So. Thursday. More of the same. Obtained keys, drop-files, photocopier logins, and the lay of the carparking situation. Began the more interesting and useful orientation to various mental health disorders and diagnoses, treatment models, clinical teams and care responsibilities — I had a brief moment of doom when the supervisor asked me, for the purposes of analogy, to name people involved in a long-distance car rally. “The driver…?” said I, racking the remaining quarter of my brain; but she was kind enough to tell me, and this may interest readers, that someone sits next to the driver during these rallies. I was surprised, frankly: surely, in this modern age, such an arrangement represents an unnecessary risk that will inevitably lead to tyre and suspension wear, higher petrol costs, social awkwardness, helmet-hair — the list goes on. It’s fortunate that nobody has yet revolutionised this, however, in a way — I doubt that the mental health sector would take kindly to having to replace their navigator (family support, for anyone who’s still reading) with the equivalent of KITT or a GPS device. KITT, incidentally, is one of only eight remaining acronyms in the world (two of them undiscovered, like dvi-lanthanum) not in use in the mental health sector. Fascinating.

Anyway the point is, after lunch, I went back for three more meetings. Client perspectives, other services, and health and safety. Doting relatives may rest easy: there are plans for every hazard from stress to tsunami. Do not drink the floodwater, it may be contaminated.

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Doomy thought of the day, courtesy Joseph Pilates

The fabled Joseph Hubertus Pilates, father of modern Contrology, inventor of numerous exercisical gizmos, trainer of boxers, dancers, and POWs alike,  had something on his mind one day in 1934. He put it in his book. English was not his native tongue, but, as readers will soon appreciate, he had by even this early stage mastered the gist of the language, with the help of a co-writer and an ego the size of his chest. He tackles the problem of modern molly-coddled unnaturally-nurtured children.

These children grow up lacking normal initiative, appetites, passions and the stress of competition. Figuratively speaking, they slowly sink to a low level, never experiencing the thrills of life, never experiencing the glory of successful accomplishment, and never enjoying the fruits of over-flowing vitality and health that should be theirs if taught the problems of life and the proper control of the body.

Later on, when their vitality is at a low ebb, they begin to shrivel at their extremities, their blood pressure is either subnormal or abnormal. Their heads get too warm, their feet and hands get too cold. Their mentality waxes and wanes and they are, so to speak, more or less animated clothes racks. This is a mighty serious problem. Think it over. It is deserving of every person’s consideration.

Joseph H Pilates, Your Health, 1934, p. 25

This is a mighty serious problem. Think it over. Keep that in mind and you can’t go wrong.