01
Breath
The breath is the metronome.
Every movement begins on the exhale. We teach the lateral, ribcage breath first, before any spring is touched, because without it the rest of the method is choreography.
The method
Contrology, taught as it was written.
Six principles, the original apparatus, lighter springs than you expect, and rooms of six. This is the whole of it.
Slowly, and in order.
Joseph Pilates wrote his method down in the 1920s and called it Contrology: the complete coordination of body, mind and spirit. The exercises he left are a sequence, not a menu. We teach them in that sequence, on apparatus built to his proportions, and we do not add to them.
The first thing a new member learns is not an exercise but a breath. The second is the footwork series. By the fifth private session most members can feel the difference between moving from the limbs and moving from the centre, and from then on the work is simply practice. It takes about a year to feel the sixth principle. Then it is yours.
The six principles
02
Concentration
One thing, fully.
There is no music in the rooms and no mirror you can see yourself in from the reformer. The attention goes inward, to the one place the work is happening.
03
Centre
Everything moves from the middle.
The powerhouse, as it was originally called: the deep abdominals, the back, the pelvic floor, the glutes. Limbs are expressions of the centre, never the other way around.
04
Control
The spring is not in charge.
Momentum is the enemy of the method. A movement is only complete when it can be stopped at any point and held. We use lighter springs than you expect and we move more slowly.
05
Precision
The right place, the right order.
Each exercise has a shape and a sequence, refined over a century. We teach the shape until it is yours, then the sequence until it is no longer a sequence.
06
Flow
Then, the whole thing at once.
When the first five are present, the session becomes one long movement. This is the point of the work. It takes most members about a year to feel it, and then they never lose it.
The apparatus
Every piece in the house is built to the original proportions, in maple and steel, with springs calibrated by hand. The spring is the teacher; we only interpret it.
The spring · turn it
Footwork · Yorkville
- Reformer
- 20 across the houses
- The foundation. Carriage, springs, straps and footbar; the body learns to meet resistance without bracing.
- Cadillac
- 5
- The trapeze table. Roll-downs, leg springs, hanging work. The most versatile piece and the one members fall for first.
- Tower
- 14
- A cadillac's vocabulary in a smaller footprint. Spring work standing, kneeling, lying.
- Wunda Chair
- 8
- The hardest piece in the room. One pedal, two springs, no excuses.
- High Chair
- 3
- Standing and seated leg work with a back. Rehabilitation-adjacent programmes live here.
- Ladder Barrel
- 4
- Extension, side bending, the stretch the spine forgot it could do.
- Spine Corrector
- 12
- A small barrel for the thoracic spine. Used in nearly every private.
- Mat
- Every room
- Where the method was written. Taught as its own discipline, never as a warm-up.
The Foundation
Five private hours before anything else.
Every member, whatever their history, begins with five private sessions. The first is an assessment: how you stand, how you breathe, what your spine does when you are not watching it. The next four teach the vocabulary of the apparatus and the breath that runs through all of it.
At the end of the Foundation your teacher places you: in a group room, in privates, or somewhere in between. Nobody joins a Circle session without it. That is why the rooms are quiet and why six people can move at the same pace.
Begin with the Foundation
Five sessions. Then the rest of your life.
Write to the concierge, choose a house, and a senior teacher will hold five private hours for you. Nothing to buy first.