Yoga and Pilates

Are There Any Differences Between Yoga and Pilates?

The body relies on a system of muscles to effect movement. The mind controls this system of muscles to effect targeted movement aimed at achieving given tasks. Through controlled breathing, we can be able to achieve muscle relaxation and focus on our movements to achieve better control. Both Yoga and Pilates exercise programs appreciate the importance of preparing the body to handle the above tasks. Both provide a simple and achievable means of teaching the body how to bring together mind, body and soul in creating focus to achieve healthy exercise.

What is Pilates?

Pilates involves a workout system designed to create more control of the body, and more specifically muscle systems. By bringing the mind and body together through focus, Pilates aims at fine-tuning the body’s muscle system in a bid to produce refined and more efficient movement by creating a system where only the necessary muscles move to effect movement while giving other muscles a chance to relax.

Although Pilates involves more than the physical components of our bodies, it is mostly seen as a collection of exercises aimed at optimizing the body’s functioning capacity; it is primarily defined as a workout. It is not only used as an exercise but also recognized officially in the medical field as a viable damaged tissue or muscle rehabilitation technique.

What is Yoga?

Yoga is mostly defined as a practice. It is not seen to be as engaging or demanding as Pilates, but more of a way of practicing how to bring together focus, breathing and muscle movement into one. Most importantly, yoga has a spiritual side to it since it recognizes the importance of spirituality in maintaining a stable state of being.
However, it is important to note that practicing the different poses in yoga is a highly physically engaging process which can be easily classified as exercise. Yoga is aimed at stretching and strengthening a variety of muscles with every other pose.

Differences between Yoga and Pilates

One of the most important differences of yoga and Pilates is the fact that in yoga a pose has to be maintained over a few breaths to have the required effect while in Pilates, the movements are more rapid to create an exercising effect.

In Pilates, all movements emanate from the center, i.e. core. Pilates is mostly aimed at building strength in the torso and then developing the asymmetrical development of other muscles leading from the torso. Yoga, on the other hand, is mostly concerned with increasing strength and flexibility of the back and limbs.

Boot styles also employ different breathing patterns to further enhance the achievement of the set objectives. Yoga uses a mixture of slow deep relaxing breaths while Pilates mainly relies on deep long breaths with some short rapid ones used for specific exercises.