Wellness: Is Pilates a Form of Healthcare?

By Daryl Kulak

Heading out to the pilates studio is a nice way to stay fit, right? Is it anything more than that?

It's interesting to hear the stories of people who've used pilates as a form of healthcare.

My friend Cecilia is one of those people. She saw pilates as a way to get better. Here is her story from last year.

One afternoon I was working in the yard, carrying a big bag of mulch, and I felt that I pulled something straddling a shrub.

Later that same night, I felt a searing pain running up both side of my leg. I went to our local emergency room and had X-rays taken. They shot some Demerol into my hip, but it didn't really help. To make matters worse, they didn't really have a diagnosis for me, except to say it might be a herniated disk in my lumbar region.

"Just go up to Columbus," the doctor told me, "to an orthopedic surgeon, and let him do the surgery. You'll be fine."

I went home to think about it. I couldn't even stand up without excrutiating pain! I just lay in bed in a fetal position.

This lasted for a week. In bed, no standing up, no ability to work for a week.

I was scheduled for an MRI after the week. My family doctor told me there was nothing wrong with my disks or lumbar vertebrae, according to the MRI. He did some strain-counterstrain techniques and gave me shots of steroids which did help. I could now sit up and stand for short periods. But no walking.

I can only describe the pain as though an animal was trying to gnaw its way out of my body from my left hip down to my thigh.

At this time, a friend of mine suggested that I talk to Marina, a local Pilates instructor, because she had helped someone get through some back problems. I called Marina and described what I had been doing with the bag of mulch. She said she thought I might have pulled a psoas muscle.

I scheduled a private session with Marina. First she did some tests with me to confirm that I had problems with my psoas. She told me that the psoas muscle takes a long time to heal - as long as a year, and that it might take two years to get the neurological function back on the thigh.

Marina and I did individual sessions every week, and she assigned a set of exercises for me to do at home between classes. Even from the first week, I saw progresss. I regained my ability to walk, and after a few months, I could take full strides. Little by little, I came back to my life of walking, biking, running, yoga, and even gardening!

I continue to do pilates now as preventive therapy. I feel it strengthens my body from the inside out. It works those deep psoas muscles to maintain a strong core for supporting my body.

I am grateful for Marina, because the medical establishment wasn't able to help me, and I feel the surgery would not have been the right answer for me. Now I stand here, healed from my injury, without having to go through the trauma of surgery.

Therapies, yes, therapies like pilates are helping people all over this country. Pilates instructors, yoga teachers, naturopathic physicians, are treated like second-class citizens in the medical world. And yet, they're healing people. In most states, they are not allowed by law to say that they can heal.

But they can. And they do.

Daryl Kulak is the author of Health Insurance Off the Grid, a guidebook to help you afford and live the holistic lifestyle. He feels that all medical practitioners have a place in American society, including licensed doctors as well as unlicensed therapists, instructors and practitioners.

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