Sevenoaks Pilates Studio is a fully equiped apparatus Pilates Studio. With world class Balanced Body machines, an extensive range of small equipment and mats, we offer individually tailored sessions to all of our clients. At Sevenoaks Pilates Studio pilates can be beneficial for everyone, irrespective of ability or age. The studio offers a comfortable, friendly and calm environment, with safe exercise taught by our expert and highly trained Pilates Foundation certified teachers. 

We are members of the Pilates Foundation, which is the UK's only not-for-profit organisation dedicated to quality and excellence in the practise of the Pilates Method. 

'Pilates develops the body uniformly, corrects wrong postures, restores physical vitality, invigorates the mind and elevates the spirit.' - Joseph Pilates

 

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BENEFITS

The extensive benefits of Pilates include:

  • Increased health, fitness and sense of wellbeing
  • Greater core strength
  • Muscle conditioning, increase strength and flexibility
  • Long and lean muscle tone
  • Enhancing pre and postnatal health and wellbeing
  • Improved posture and alignment
  • Improved balance and co-ordination
  • Pre and post operative support and rehabilitation
  • Enhanced performance in your sport whether tennis,football, golf, dancing, running or horse riding
  • Gentle rehabilitation after injuries
  • Reduced stress and tension

THE JOSEPH PILATES STORY

Joseph H. Pilates was born December 9, 1883 in Mönchengladbach, Germany.

Pilates was a sickly child and suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever, and he dedicated his entire life to improving his physical strength. He was introduced by his father to gymnastics and body-building, and to martial arts like jiu jitsu and boxing.Pilates came to believe that the "modern" life-style, bad posture, and inefficient breathing lay at the roots of poor health. He ultimately devised a series of exercises and training-techniques and engineered all the equipment, specifications, and tuning required to teach his methods properly.

Pilates moved to England in 1912, and earned a living as a professional boxer, circus-performer, and self-defense trainer at police schools and Scotland Yard. He was Interned during World War I along with other German citizens, first in Lancaster Castle where he taught wrestling and self-defence, boasting that his students would emerge stronger than they were before their internment. It was here that he began refining and teaching his minimal equipment system of mat exercises that later became "Contrology". He was then transferred to another internment camp on the Isle of Man. During this time, he began to intensively develop his concept of an integrated, comprehensive system of physical exercise, which he himself called "Contrology". This related to encouraging the use of the mind to control muscles, focusing attention on core postural muscles that help keep the body balanced and provide support for the spine. In particular, Pilates exercises teach awareness of breath and of alignment of the spine, and strengthen the deep torso and abdominal muscles. He attached bed springs to the hospital beds to help support the patients' limbs, leading to the development of his famous piece of equipment- the Cadillac. 

After World War I, he returned to Germany and collaborated with important experts in dance and physical exercise such as Rudolf Laban. He left his native country, and emigrated to the United States in the early 1920s. On the ship to America, he met his future wife Clara. The couple founded a studio in New York City and directly taught and supervised their students well into the 1960s. The studio featured much of the apparatus designed by Joseph to enhance his rehabilitation work.

Joseph and Clara Pilates soon established a devoted following in the local dance and performing-arts community of New York. Well-known dancers such as George Balanchine, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, and Martha Graham, became devotees and regularly sent their students to the Pilates for training and rehabilitation. His exercise regimen built flexibility, strength and stamina. 

Joseph Pilates wrote several books, including Return to Life through Contrology and Your Health.Joe and Clara had a number of disciples who continued to teach variations of his method or, in some cases, focused exclusively on preserving the method, and the instructor-training techniques, they had learned during their studies with Joe and Clara.

Joseph Pilates passed on in 1967 at the age of 83 in New York. 

It was only after his death that it became known as the Pilates Method.