4 Benefits of Integrating Pilates into your Physical Therapy Practice

This week, we asked Physical Therapist, Jen Gulley, what benefits she sees from integrating Pilates into her physical therapy practice. Jen has been a practicing physiotherapist since 2005. She is an amazing Physical therapist who has helped 1000 of clients, mentored numerous Physical therapists, RMT's, Pilates Instructors. A lot of time on our website and advertising, we talk about the value Jen brings to our training for pilates instructors trainees. Recently, we made a pivot in our NeuMovement Clinics and our Physical therapist team are taking a more active role integrating Pilates into their practice. The results are fantastic!

Here are 4 Benefits Jen has notice when fully integrating Pilates into her Physical Therapy appointments:

 1) Assessment: Sometimes it’s tricky to see the whole picture when you’re inside a little physio room. Working with clients through Pilates exercises offers an opportunity to watch really dynamic movement patterns in a safe and controlled way.  The equipment allows you to break movements down into small pieces, add weight or not, add gravity or not, and you can single out one side of the body and compare it to the other side.  It’s such an amazing tool to dive into the big picture of what’s happening in the body and come up with a diagnosis and treatment plan. 

2) Treatment: Manual therapy treatment combined with exercise has been the gold standard for years in treating most orthopaedic injuries.  The cool thing about Pilates as the exercise modality is that the equipment is perfect for doing manual therapy on in different positions: neutral, stretched, weight bearing, active movement, in traction, etc. After applying the manual therapy treatment on a reformer or cadillac (pilates equipment), we are able to instantly move into the movement patterns that was restricted and limited or challenged.  This is what changes the body "IN THE MOMENT" and gives the clients brain that big “WOW” moment, where dopamine and all the happy chemicals are released from the brain leaving the client motivated to keep that movement and freedom in their body. 

3) Motor Pattern Re-training: I have yet to come across a training method that does a better job of teaching the foundation of movement than Pilates does. And there is no limit.  From acute injury to chronic - Pilates movement and exercise is able to help rewire the brain back to natural healthy movement patterns. Offering clients the ability to move between closed kinetic chain and open kinetic chain freely is amazing. To add and subtract weight to every move is amazing. To be able to move the body through every plane of motion in non-weight bearing and weight bearing positions is amazing. To be able to replicate every motion in sport is amazing.  As physios - we can’t just provide manual therapy and think that is the answer.  And we can’t just provide active rehab and think that’s the answer.  Our clients are whole beings with multi-layers of things that need to be looked at and addressed in order to achieve healing and their full potential for health.  Physio hands combined with Pilates movement has been a recipe for success for many clients

4) Nervous system balancing:life has felt harder for a lot of people in the past 4 years.  As a society we’ve tipped into living in fight or flight most of the day rather than our rest and heal state.  Fight or flight for long periods of time can have some big impacts on our body one of which is the healing process slows down or halts all together.  There isn’t a lot of point in doing rehabilitation if your nervous system isn’t in a state that can accept the help.  Breath, movement, and connection with yourself and others have all been shown to help move the nervous system into a more healed state.  Pilates combines all of these points into once session.  It’s really easy to watch people move out of fight or flight when they are doing Pilates - they’re body lets go of tension, their breath expands, color returns to their face, their personality/expression starts to show more, there is a palpable change in the energy.  That’s when I know the body is ready to accept help with the healing process. 

If you are a physical therapist and you are interested in discussing how Neu Pilates Teacher Training can help your practice, Want to watch Jen applying some of her technique on youtube? Follow the link below! 

Watch Physical Therapist Jen Gulley Integrate Pilates into her practice here!