Yoga Vs. Pilates
The yoga pilates debate is a useless one. Joseph Pilates took a single portion of the many yoga exercises and converted it to a separate, stand alone routine. Still, the philosophies of yoga remain in pilates up to this day. The only discernable difference in the yoga pilates argument is the use of equipment. Yoga doesn't require any kind of equipment. There are yoga mats for cushioning and Tibetan bowls to increase meditative focus, but all in all, these are peripheral and totally unnecessary with yoga. In pilates, elastic cables and springs act as resistance pieces for use in performing routines. The myriad number of equipment that pilates has nowadays is just the result of technological evolution. If you take the equipment away, pilates, like yoga, is still a viable exercise, if a little weak. Without the equipment, yoga pilates remain similar in philosophy. Another factor that renders the yoga pilates debate inutile is the fact that yoga has been around for more than a millennium. In all that time, yoga evolved to its ultimate form. Pilates had only less than a century to get to where it is today. It was only during the 1980's that Joseph Pilate's third tier students started developing variants for pilates. A testament to this is Winsor pilates and Dynamic Sequencing by Mari Winsor, Moira Merrithew's Stott pilates that was developed through sports training and medicine, and Ron Fletcher with his percussive breathing technique. Put together, that's less than a hundred years of pilates formation. Yoga has had thousands of years to develop. There is no fair comparison to determine the best between yoga pilates. Still, yoga pilates philosophies remain the same. There is no denying that yoga birthed pilates. It is a fact that Joseph Pilates got his ideas from yoga. What Joseph Pilates did was to take yoga and devise exercises that concentrate on certain areas of the body or the core muscles. This focus resulted in a quicker and more efficient method in treating injuries that mostly plagued dancers and boxers and other professionals whose careers dependent on the strength of the torso. In essence, yoga pilates exercises have the same dynamics. The differentiating factor between yoga pilates is the time it takes to achieve the desired results. The time factor has in part, made pilates successful. Think of this; if you're a recovering physical rehab patient, you know that yoga is the ultimate exercise for best results. The thing with yoga is the many forms of its discipline. Should you happen to be in a hurry, yoga simply would not do. Now, here comes pilates which happens to be a derivative of yoga, and whose exercise routines target the exact areas of the body that you need to work on. This gives you an efficient and time saving tool with which to treat your condition. With this kind of choice in mind, which discipline between yoga pilates will you take? Pilates exercises are core muscle specific while yoga is universal for physical and mental discipline. Between the two, indeed among all exercise routines, yoga is the ultimate form. It just requires too much time. This is something that pilates has effectively addressed. As an orderly in a hospital, Joseph Pilates understood the need of patients to get better sooner. For right now, pilates is still a part of yoga that achieves faster results. If you were to take this point of view, then the points between the yoga pilates debates are moot and academic. |
