Body Awareness 101: The Real Connection Between Yoga, Pilates, and Healing
I had the privilege of attending yoga school with a torn Achilles and three herniated discs in my back—an ironic initiation into the practice of presence. Stay with me, I’m only half joking; it turns out injury has a way of becoming its own kind of teacher.
Practicing for hours each day with a body that felt broken became a powerful lesson in how deeply awareness can shape movement and how much power I hold in my own healing.
If you’re new to mindful movement, let’s break it down:
Why Body Awareness (and How You Cue It) Matters:
I was surprised to find that while practicing under the guidance of my yoga school’s lead teachers, I was largely pain free in my practice. I wasn’t effortlessly gliding into bridge pose like my seventy-year-old classmate Pam, but with the basics, I was pretty much cruising.
Yet, when Pam and I paired off to practice together, missed cues to draw the belly button in or to maintain a gentle bend in the knees, resulted in bouts of pain or uncomfortable aches. Without intentional alignment cues, my body awareness wavered. (No shade to Pam, none of us even knew where our sit bones were yet).
The contrast made me realize that awareness itself is a teacher, and that through my own teaching, I hold the ability to awaken that awareness in others in order to help them feel steady and safe.
The Power of Harnessing Your Own Body Awareness
Let’s be real, if your back hurts, you can’t blame it all on your yoga teacher. At some point, we’ve gotta take a little responsibility for our own healing, ya know? A good teacher will guide you inward, but the follow through is all you.
Until it stuck (and it took a minute!), I learned again and again in yoga school that my tendency to push my body towards its limits was not a path to healing. When I stopped chasing sensation and started actually listening, my overuse achilles injury quickly began to mend. Guess you can’t foam-roll your way to self-awareness…
So, where does Pilates fit into all of this?
Glad you asked! Yoga’s all about tuning into the body. And while that kind of awareness can absolutely support healing, the deeper focus is what it does to the mind. My Achilles healed, sure, but yogis would say the real lesson was teaching my body and my nervous system how to slow down.
Joseph Pilates, probably watched yoga heal an Achilles tendon or two and thought, “cool, let’s make that the whole workout.” And so he did. He took body awareness and made it the entire point. No woo-woo, no fluff. Just strength, precision, and control designed to help your body heal itself and move more effectively.
It works because awareness changes your movement patterns. Once you start recruiting the right muscles and releasing the ones doing too much, your body finally has a chance to rebalance and heal.
After 2 months of steady Pilates practice, my back pain gradually began to soften.
I found that Pilates wasn’t just changing how I moved in class, but allowing me to sit taller at my desk, stand firmer with more balance, and use my core instinctively when running or lifting. Subtle, intentional adjustments began to flow naturally as I learned to move with greater awareness.
BLUF? Yoga and Pilates both come down to body awareness. Yoga reconditions the mind to be gentler with the body, while Pilates retrains the body to move with intention.
So, let’s save the $300 on a Theragun… your body is out here trying to tell you what it needs for free!!!
Live photo of me after 5 weeks of being told to listen to my body (she’s tired):
