Pilates healing

Hello Marjorlein,

I purchased your Pilates machine in January of this year, on the Canadian shopping channel, and have been using it faithfully (three times a week). Excellent machine, and wonderful exercise system.

Let me tell you something about myself, and why I came to Pilates in the first place. I have been practicing and teaching Old Yang Style Tai chi and Pa Gua for twenty-five years. They, too, are healing systems (and fighting systems as well). I contracted Rheumatoid Arthritis during my third pregnancy, and have used these systems to help me deal with my disease, very successfully. I am not currently on medication, nor have been for many years. 

Besides these forms themselves, I do weapons, push-hands, free style sparring, striking, and chi Kung. However, I had always been doing the traditional resistance training, which, although helpful in some ways, is, counter to the spirit prevalent in my internal arts.  For they emphasize whole body motion, movement from the center, called the Dan Tien, the axial which moves the spokes of a wheel, very similar to the Pilates. Similar, but not same, since the Dan Tien is not necessarily a group of muscles that form the structure of the power house, but more an energy point, that regulates all the energy systems of the body (in Chinese terms the meridians).  I felt I still need a form of resistance training that was more in tune with this philosophy, and I discovered you on the shopping channel. 

Actually, I discovered you many years ago, when you were pregnant with your son. I spoke to you on the telephone, and you struck me then as being a lovely person, with good energy, caring, and intelligent. And these are the things which kept me watching you, and considering the Pilates, which you represented so well, for personal use. Thank you very much, for I feel, down into the marrow of my bones, that the Pilates completes my training in a way that the traditional for of weight training could not. 

Yours sincerely,

Josephine