By Amy Taylor Alpers
What Is Classical Pilates?
Most of us in the field of Pilates have tried to answer this question many times but have often fallen short. As one who has committed to a deep exploration of Joseph Pilates’ original work for nearly 40 years, I’m still struggling with this question.
Is it simply a philosophical idea?
Is it a collection of interesting, unusual exercises?
A group of unique pieces of equipment?
Or more?
To me, it is definitely more. Much, much more. But how do you describe it?
Tensegrity and the Body
When the concept of “tensegrity” became more ubiquitous, familiar, and better understood, a major lightbulb went off for me. In nature, the organic integrity of an entity is created by being suspended in a connective force of energy.
Picture our solar system. Is it a random set of rocks haphazardly floating around in space? No, it’s a system of planets organized around a center via a suspension force of connectivity. In this way, it becomes a singular whole, held together as one thing, and separated from all other planets, stars, and galaxies by its own unique and powerful organic connection force.
Remove or change any one part of this perfect design, and all parts must reflect that change. Its integrity is altered. You can’t simply remove the earth and have the solar system continue as it once was. It would reorganize into a new structure and become something else entirely. Every atom would be affected by this change. It is a complete, integrated whole created by the suspension of its parts in a tensile force.
The human body is also a tensegrity structure. Joseph Pilates innately understood this long before the term was coined. He knew deep in his cells that the body’s ultimate, true, organic health existed in the ideal balance and integrated suspension of all its parts into one singular whole.
Pilates developed a systematic approach to enabling this journey back to tensegrity. His method comprises incredibly unique and specifically designed whole-body movements and perfectly engineered equipment that, step by step, if used correctly and done as he described, produces health. It “returns” the body to life.
The Classical Method as a System
To me the classical Pilates method is a tensegrity system, a complete, integrated whole. It’s an organically evolved, uniquely designed set of exercises and specialized equipment held together by a powerful organizing force: its foundational philosophy.
Change any one aspect of this complete whole and you dissipate its intention and power. It becomes something altogether different. Pilates developed and expanded his method over decades of exploration and creativity, with his unique and singular mind, to achieve a very intentional result: whole-body health, complete body, mind, and spirit oneness.
The Importance of Order, Rhythm, and Tempo
One of the key hallmarks of the classical Pilates method is the set order in which the exercises are performed. This order is a perfectly, intentionally, and specifically designed set of movements done in the same sequence each time to produce a clear result.
In addition, the exercises are done with a steady rhythm and tempo. This warms the body up, raises the heart rate, and pushes blood through the cells to both detoxify and rejuvenate.
Keeping the sequence at a rhythmical pace requires set transitions to ensure smooth, continual flow between successive movements without losing the beat or the breath. This ensures that heat is generated within the entire body and oxygen is pumped through every cell.
This is how the method achieves its goal of deep cleaning the body and rejuvenating it: the “internal shower” Mr. Pilates describes in Return to Life.
“The exercises have stirred your sluggish circulation into action and to performing its duty more effectively in the matter of discharging through the bloodstream the accumulation of fatigue-products created by muscular and mental activities. … Soon the entire body is abundantly charged with fresh oxygen.”
Why Form Matters
When not constrained by a form, teachers may have no incentive to use what’s available to them in novel ways. They just come up with something new instead.
Limitations can actually boost brainpower and creative learning. They force you to dedicate mental energy to acting more resourcefully. When challenged, you have to figure out new ways to be a better teacher for a defined goal: to understand the method, understand the individual, and help them do what the form was designed to do. Return them to life through uniform development.
An effectively designed, intentionally motivated form leverages its limitations to push your teaching further. The limitations of a form demand a mental license that would otherwise remain untapped.
What the Pilates method is not is a bunch of interesting exercises and equipment that can be applied however the teacher desires.
Resource abundance can actually be counterproductive. It can take you down the path of creating just to create, keeping clients busy and entertained, instead of helping their minds and bodies return to natural, healthy movement.
Are you simply teaching interesting exercises? Or are you healing people by returning their bodies back to the way they are ideally designed and organized so they can be healthy?
The latter is what Joseph Pilates created his system to do.
When you are clear on the form and its intention, you can devote your teaching energy to applying it toward a specific end. The form is not for form’s sake. It is for its mission. Know the mission and you’ll understand the necessity of the form.
Embracing the Design of the Classical Method
Limitations can broaden your perception and open your thinking processes. Consistent constraints help you improve at connecting unrelated ideas and concepts.
Embrace the design of the classical Pilates method. The form’s strict, intentional approach is provocative. It challenges the teacher to dive deeper into its meaning and value. Its perceived limitations can wake up the power in you. They can make you more creative. They can make you a better teacher and a better healer.
As Romana Kryzanowska, one of Pilates’ main protégées, often said, “Pilates was a genius of the body.” George Balanchine, himself a genius of movement, agreed wholeheartedly. He coined the phrase.
I believe this too. I am not a genius. I simply strive to better understand his genius. I’ve been working on this since 1987. Are you a genius of the body? If so, great. Create your own system and call it by your name. Do not change something you really don’t understand. Strive to understand it instead.
The Power of a System
What makes the Pilates method so powerful and effective is its systematic and intentionally designed form created to achieve a very specific goal: returning the body back to its automatic primal movement choices, just like a wild animal or baby.
The exercises, the order, the sequences done on the right equipment, at tempo, repeated and repeated and repeated, enable the client to get a much deeper mind-body connection and an innate understanding of how to move healthily.
Originally published in the August 2025 issue of The Pilates Journal.
[Read the original article here.]