Week 26 — “It’s a Practice”
Hello Pilates People!
Happy Sunday friends!
Just a quick little exercise before we get into it today:
What's one thing you're looking forward to in the future? (near or far)
What's one thing you felt deeply this week? (good, bad and in between all welcome)
What would you do today if you had every option available to you?
Is there any way to get close to that? Even kind of close? If not today, what about tomorrow? The next day?
Take a moment to think on and answer those questions - I promise it's going somewhere and it's worth your while.
In the meantime, we have a lot of scheduling updates for you this week! Please click here for the full run down of our updated LIVE class schedule and then JOIN US!
We also have some new student specials available to any FIRST time Pilates People adventurers! So tell your friends to check us out on Mindbody to take advantage of these deals ASAP! Curious about what we're offering? Click here to check it out
And finally, our FREE Quickies are back in action! You can find them on our Instagram, our website, and our YouTube channel! We'll be uploading weekly so squeeze it in when you can!
Permission to speak freely? We're talking about self-care this week because I needed to, and because my sense is that we all need it right now.
At the end of August, I took a week off because I realized I hadn't taken a day off since March. And then that week accidentally bled into another 5 days, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy my time away. But I'd also be lying if I said I didn't find out why I'd been putting time away off for so long.
Because when you slow down, you have time to look at what's really going on, and sometimes that's somehow a little more complicated than starting a new business from nothing in the middle of a global pandemic.
What I'm trying to say is that self-care is often seen as this beautiful moment of relaxation or release and is often correlated to the same five activities , and it absolutely can be that, but it's also without question so much more than that.
This isn't a one size fits all situation.
We live in a world that has both glorified and undermined the notion of self-care. We're told to indulge, to take the bubble baths, treat ourselves to a night off and find the balance between having that drink and waking up to sweat it off the next day. Take the trip. Go to therapy. Take care of you.
But we're also told to go and do and work and be and hustle and stay strong and support everyone we know and educate everyone we know and go and do and work and be while we're being overloaded with information from our phones - social media, the news, friends and family, all conveniently located in one little box that never leaves our sides.
So how do you do it? How do you reconcile both worlds? Because they both exist and we are simultaneously living in both realities.
When we got to talking about it, the answer that Jenni and I arrived at is that there needs to be an understanding that self-care isn't always glamorous, but it is still essential. We need to treat self-care as an ongoing practice and process just as much as we do our movement practice.
Because, as Jenni put it on Friday, "You can't just take the bubble bath with the glass of wine or go on that long run and say, 'Okay, I did it! Problem solved.' That's not how this works."
And between the two of us, I'm not sure who has tried and failed to prove that we can band aid ourselves into a state of complete self-care and say, "Okay I did it!" more. We're very lucky to have each other and the support of everyone around us continually checking in to say, "Hey, you're done for today, okay? How are you? What's going on?"
So take it from us - the people who would rather take on as much work as they can than take a moment to sit still and breathe because oh my god what am I going to find if I sit still and breathe - self-care is important, valuable, necessary and an ongoing journey that isn't always pretty but, you still need to do it.
And we're here to help you make it feel as good as it can.
This week, we want to focus in and find tools we can use to help us take care - of ourselves. Our goal is to keep this simple to help us all with our practice and make it something approachable.
For example: those questions you answered at the top? Those were loosely based off a game Jenni and I played at the beginning of quarantine. We would text each other every Saturday morning, answering two questions, as a way to check in with ourselves and each other.
So find your way in, friends. Take a moment with and for yourself, and know that you have us to support you and say, "Hey, you're done for today, okay? How are you? What's going on?"
Let us help.
We're still here.
And so are you.
All our love,
Cassandra + Pilates People
(9/13/20)