“Pilates” Class

Once a year, in the fall, the mothers of children attending Seiwa Kindergarten are invited to attend a pilates class.  I accepted.

The class was held in the morning after we dropped off the kids. The class lasted 2 1/2 hours. It was taught by one of the mothers who is a fashion model. She is classically beautiful and one wonders if she had any intestines at all with how tiny her waist is.

Two mothers that speak English from living abroad helped me get to the location and set myself up. I thought I could just follow the actions of the teacher and figure it out. After all, I had done pilates before. I realized quite quickly that I needed assistance understanding as she spent a lot of time talking and not doing. Well, my one friend leaned over and began to translate and began getting flushed as she tried to explain ‘kegels’ and how a body changes after having babies etc.  Once we began doing exercises she would lean over and remind me to do my ‘seagulls’ and I tried not to chuckle. Most of the class consisted of yoga poses until we came to the posture lesson. We did a lot of standing against a wall to see how bad our backs were and then we had to shift as per her direction to see what it felt like to be correct. There was some giggling about my bust size and a comment about how there was no wonder my shoulders were not back like hers. We learned how to walk first by stepping our feet down properly, then how to put one in front of the other leading our bodies with our hips and not our necks, and then came the arm swing. I hope no one took offence but I would burst out laughing at the whole experience every once in a while. It was fun to be in a room full of mothers trying to walk the lines of a gym like runway models yet everyone seemed so serious about it. Then we went outside to practice our walk in a parade around the Seiwa campus grounds for 40 minutes. Picture that!