Right after World War I, Joseph Pilates brought to the United States his exercise program combining yoga, Zen meditation, gymnastics, boxing, and his experience in the circus. Mari Winsor, author of The Pilates Powerhouse, longtime professional dancer and now a devoted and well-known Pilates instructor, was trained by one of Pilates’ best students, Romana Kryznowska. Winsor has taught Pilates to celebrities (including Dustin Hoffman), music icons, professional athletes and has been featured in Time, USA Today, MTV and Entertainment Tonight. In her book, she shares her expertise and testimony about how these exercises changed her life as well as the lives of countless others.

In her introduction, she tells the story of the German-born Joseph Pilates. Sean Gallagher, owner of the New York Pilates Studio, believes that Joseph Pilates may have been the world’s first physical therapist. His exercises have helped injured people and dancers work with the body in a gentle and result-oriented way by stretching, building strength and balance, and using many muscles that never get touched in ordinary exercise routines.

Pilates was a sickly child, and as a young man dedicated his life to improving his health and appearance. As his exercise program became known, he not only helped injured people, but also restored his own health. The exercises work with the body as a whole to increase circulation, which is sometimes all that is required to heal.

Pilates exercises use the abdominal muscles as the focal area where all movement of the body emanates. This brings strength and balance and translates into confidence and a feeling of being in control of one’s movements and emotions, Winsor says.

While still in Germany, the Kaiser took notice of Pilates and demanded he train his elite troops in the exercises. Pilates, a strong pacifist, politely declined and left for England.

World War I brought hardship, and Pilates was interred in a prison camp in England. Being an intuitive and influential person, he convinced the camp of the power of his exercises, inspiring prisoners and guards alike to take part. A devastating influenza plague swept across the world during this time claiming 50 million lives. But no one in Pilates’ camp died of the plague; and Pilates attributes this amazing outcome to his exercise program.

The book contains more than 45 mat exercises with photographs and instructions. Winsor calls this core exercise program “the routine”. Winsor credits these exercises with her ability to continue dancing professionally well into her forties, while many dancers need to start looking for new careers by their late twenties.
Winsor also rehabilitated herself from injury after a terrible motorcycle accident that happened when a friend was giving her a ride late at night in rural Michigan after her twentieth- high-school reunion.

She doesn’t remember the accident, but remembers her physical pain upon regaining consciousness. She suffered a broken collar-bone, broken fingers, and several broken ribs. But worst of all, she landed on her hip and “it literally exploded,” she says. The doctors told her she would have a tough time ever getting back into dance. She looked so terrible her friends thought she was lucky to be alive.

After her bones mended, she began the Pilates core “routine” outlined in the book. Painful as it was, she kept up the exercise routine—breaking up scar tissue and strengthening the weakest areas of her body. She vowed she would not only return to her previous physical condition, she would surpass it. In two months she was dancing again.

Winsor decided to dedicate her life to teaching these exercises as a trainer. She claims this routine not only builds physical strength, but emotional and spiritual strength as well. She feels that as we gain mastery and control over our physical bodies, we become more confident, and more centered.

Winsor encourages readers to find out for themselves by performing the Pilates “routine” an hour a day, for four or five times a week. The reader will gain a new sense of mastery over their physical body and feel like a different person who has more intuition, greater happiness, strength, balance, and control of their life, Winsor says. In just two weeks the reader will be strong and confident, and after a month others will begin to take notice.

I felt a great sense of hope after reading this book. If, after all their injuries, athletes and dancers like Winsor can regain peak performance by training with Pilates, think how much average people can gain physical control, flexibility, confidence, intuition and balance in our lives too.