Transitioning in Heat Spikes, Life, and Pilates: Also Known as ‘Getting up off the Floor’

Are you coping okay with the heat? Are you prepared for it when it comes back? May was our 1^st heat spike of the year, we have already had more and I’m sure there will be others over the coming summer. Did it make you create a plan for when it happens again?

I did, I’ve invested in a portable air condition unit, partly for me but mainly for the dogs. They are getting older and Ziva has now, at 11 ¾, well and truly transitioned into the Senior Dog Club.

Adapting Life for the Senior Dog Club

She’s still looking youthful but there are tell tale signs. She’s started to have a grey muzzle and is a little bit stiffer as she gets up. I’m sure that she’d make those groaning sounds if she was a human. You can see that there’s stiffness.

We’ve realised we need to transition into senior dog mode. With the motto

Use it or loose it”

More frequent walks but less distance each time, more soft places for her to lay, more hydro to stretch out those legs whilst reducing the load on those joints.

Very similar to dealing with a human body as it ages. I feel we just get more time to adapt as humans than the dogs do.

The downside of us humans having more time to adapt is sometimes we don’t notice the changes in our bodies.

Pilates and Neurodiversity

I went on a course recently about Pilates and neurodiversity.  The usual format for the 2 day courses from Body Control Pilates which I attend are that day one is theory and then day two is exercises. These exercises are either to extend our repertoire or a focus on how to adapt exercises we already know to the special population the course is aimed at. We call groups of people with a common set of exercise needs a special population, it could be:

• people who have never done Pilates before – Beginners
• people who have a specific physical condition – Parkinson’s, breast cancer, low back pain
• people who can be grouped by age – children, older people
• people who experience the world in different ways – sensory seekers, sensory avoiders, dementia

In this case, none of the exercises were new to me as I’ve seen them on previous courses, the difference with this course was how a teacher introduces and uses the exercise for different sensory inputs.

All the information about Neurodiversity was very interesting but right at the end of the exercises, we focused on locomotion: Getting up off the floor

Pilates Should Flow Like the Seasons

All of the Pilates Matwork exercises are based on a book Joseph Pilates wrote in which he included specific instructions on how the exercises should be done. He also included how to transition between the exercises. The idea being that, just like the seasons flow one into the other, the exercises flow one into the other with predefined transitions between them.

The exercises have multiple start points:

• standing,
• 4 point kneeling,
• prone (lying on your front),
• side lying,
• seated,
• relaxation/semi supine (lying on your back with your knees bent),
• supine (lying on your back)

When Getting off the Floor Can Feel Too Much

The last set of exercises on the Pilates & Neurodiversity course was aimed at the floor to standing transition. I’d first seen this exercise at a development weekend a couple of years ago. I had difficulty doing it then and so have been practising, but obviously not enough as I’m still not brilliant at it, especially on my bad leg.

I’ve included it into as many classes as I can after realising that probably everyone I met (regardless of age – except for the small children) aren’t as good at getting up off the floor as they used to be.

Take a look at the exercise on my Instagram.

Have a go and let me know how you get on.