Keep Your Heart Healthy By Practicing Pilates
A healthy, strong, and happy heart is a flexible heart. Yes, hearts need exercising, too. Do you know that the tonus of the body triggers the tonus of the heart? A refreshing set of exercises will invigorate not only your muscles but also your heart.
Your heart is a muscle. And just like any other muscles in your body, the more you work it out, the healthier it gets. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to do crazy, sweaty, tiring stuff at the gym or to run each morning around the block, sun or rain.
Pilates is a very elegant, gracious, and effective way of exercising with a mindful twist. And you can do it alone, in the comfort of your home, as your heart pleases.
What Is a Pilates Workout?
Pilates is a holistic fitness method designed to find a balance between body, mind, and spirit. It’s a combination of western types of exercises (to achieve strength, muscle tone, flexibility) and eastern techniques (to gain self-control, inner peace, grounding, and serenity). Pilates is a harmonious set of movements that mindfully brings strength and flexibility. It combines physical exercises, with mental focus and breathing.
These exercises are not chaotic and hardcore, but calm and steady, with flowing, long movements that stretch and relax the body. It has an emphasis on breathing control and mental focus.
Why is Pilates Fantastic for Your Heart?
I have some bad news (and then some excellent news) for you. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), heart diseases are the number one cause of death in the USA, which means that 1 in 4 people die of a heart disease every year.
Atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, arrhythmias, angina, endocarditis, heart failure, stroke are some of the conditions that fall into this category of cardiovascular problems. Factors that contribute to heart diseases are poor diet, age, genetics, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, diabetes, obesity, stress, and a sedentary or chaotic lifestyle.
What is the good news? The good news is that with a small change in your lifestyle, as simple as doing physical exercises such as Pilates can regulate your heart beats, reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels, promote calmness, balance emotions, decrease stress, and help with weight loss and get a healthy, happy heart.
Top 9 Rewards of Practicing Pilates for Your Heart
Let’s see what Pilates can do for your heart’s happiness and well-being.
1. Pilates is Adaptable and Inclusive
Pilates exercises are adaptable to anybody, any age, any gender, any level of mobility, and fitness. The beauty of Pilates is that it can change and adapt depending on people’s needs. Exercises can be done slow and peacefully (to relax) or dynamically, with zest (if you want to tone and lose weight, for example).
Pilates is a flexible fitness method that gives you flexibility inside and out. The workout is both exciting and pacifying. It also provides you tonus and grace at the same time.
2. Pilates Improves Your Flexibility
Pilates includes well-designed exercises that make your body move in several planes (not just one plane motion, like most exercises, do). You’ll find yourself extending and flexing the spine, rotating various parts of the body, doing side bending, etc.
Pilates is a proven somatic type of fitness program that increases flexibility, improves the health and well-being of participants, studies show. The more flexible you are, the more you can move, and the more you exercise, and the healthier your heart (and your whole body) gets.
3. Pilates Lowers Blood Pressure
Primarily the focus on breathing is helping your nervous system to calm down, regulates the heart beats and blood pressure. A specific set of exercises called mat Pilates are designed to decrease the heart rate. Studies show that indeed, these mat Pilates exercises are effective in preventing and treating hypertension, and they even reduced the use of hypertensive medication.
4. Pilates Gives You Poise
Pilates improves your posture and helps you regain your healthy physical balance. We are not aware that, with our unhealthy working and living styles, we sit too much in a chair for hours and hours in a row, hunching over our computer or desk. In time, we may develop a hunch (you know, that rounded upper back), the shoulders and upper back become stiff and painful, and we often get a neck pain (the so-called new condition of “text-neck”). Holding the phone between your ear and shoulder for long periods can lead to muscle strain in the upper area of the body.
These bad postures that we keep for hours, our diaphragm and ribs get pressed, our chest doesn’t get enough space to take the air in, so we barely breathe. Plus, consider the muscular imbalances. The result? Not enough oxygen in our blood, brain, heart, and the other organs. What does this mean? We are tired, foggy, sluggish, and inefficient at work, our pulse beats rarely, and our heart (among other parts of our body) suffers and can even get ill.
When you do Pilates, however, you become aware of your body, you stretch, you flex, you focus your mind and energy on your body and breathing, and so your posture automatically improves drastically. You breathe better, you feel better, and your heart gets better.
Also, Pilates helps you become aware of your posture every day, whether you walk, sit, or move. That is why, with Pilates, posture awareness goes beyond the exercise mat and extends throughout your daily life.
When you do Pilates, every move you make is strengthening your heart.
5. Pilates Helps You Breathe Better
One of Pilates’ unique features is that the physical exercises are in combination with specific breathing patterns.
There are two types of conscious breathing exercises in Pilates:
- Diaphragmatic Breathing: Deep breathing allows the abdomen to expand and deflate with each respiration.
- Lateral Breathing: Blocks the abdominal breathing, allowing the rib cage to expand when you inhale air.
Deep breathing brings more oxygen in the lung, bloodstream, heart, and brain. The heart is better nourished, pumps stronger, and is toned.
Studies show that Pilates is an excellent form of cardiorespiratory fitness with benefits for the heart and the whole body. So, with Pilates, every move you make, every breath you take (remember the song?), the heart is thanking you.
6. Reduces Physical, Emotional, and Mental Stress
As you probably know already, chronic stress (whether it’s emotional stress or mental stress) continually triggers the “fight-or-flight” response that usually comes with stressful situations. When a real danger situation appears, our body releases certain hormones to help us react, run, and escape the life-threatening circumstance. And that’s a good thing – the stress hormones help us survive a mortal danger.
But with constant, long-time stress, our body releases a wave of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline continuously. And that’s not good for our health.
There is a continuous increase in blood flow to the heart and muscles (think contractions). In time, stress causes cardiovascular problems like hypertension, high cholesterol levels, chest pain, irregular heartbeats, blood clots, plaque formation, and increases the risk of a heart attack. Studies, too, confirm that stress is messing with your heart.
Stress is one of the factors that may lead to many heart problems, statistics show. That is why, if you can find a type of exercise like Pilates, a method that reduces stress or eliminates it, that you’re heart is safe. Why is that?
Pilates combines successfully and positively physical fitness with mental and emotional competence, and this has a tremendous effect on the psycho-emotional side of your being. Your hormonal levels are balanced, you feel calm, relaxed, and stress goes away.
When you have no stress, the risks of getting cardiovascular problems decreases, and your heart is getting healthier.
7. Uplifts the Mood
Pilates (just like any physical exercise) not only tones your body but your mood, too. How is that? During Pilates’ workout, your body releases endorphins (the so-called “happiness hormone”) into your body. That is why, even if you’re a little bit tired (yet toned) after a workout, you feel happy and satisfied.
With Pilates’ mind-bending techniques that accompany the physical exercises, your mind feels calmer, relaxed, and blissful, too. The result? A happy heart is a healthy heart.
8. Pilates Improves Circulation
Pilates exercises are specifically designed to move not only your body but your blood flow, too. Since your posture improves, as we’ve seen earlier, your body moves and stretches easier, and as a result, your blood and lymph get moving, and so your heart is richly nourished with oxygen and nutrients (and other organs as well).
9. Pilates Helps You Lose Weight
Studies show that during a Pilates session, you can burn up to 8 calories per minute. So, 30 – 60 minutes of moderate workout three times a week is a great option.
Pilates exercises are suitable for overweight or obese people, as it has many movements that are done lying down, sitting, or kneeling. These are perfect for people who can’t stand for long periods. Also, the exercises can be changed to suit various levels of physical needs and conditions.
Pilates improves muscle tone, increases muscular and body strength, and promotes weight loss.
Is Pilates for Me?
Yes, Pilates is for everyone, especially those at risk of heart disease. Now, let’s jump on our mats and try some Pilates exercises for our hearts health.