Pilates Body Quotes

I wrote this book to help you find a passion in exercising, in the hope that you will inspire your friends to live healthfully, too.

It had turned out that climbing a tree was more difficult than it looked. It was harder than warrior pose in yoga, than teaser in Pilates, than the elliptical or the Reformer. Rebecca thought that if no one had thought of it yet, soon enough someone in the city would spearhead a craze for tree climbing in Central and Prospect Parks, and it would become the talk of every cocktail party: have you tried that large oak by the Sheep Meadow? Oh, it’s completely changed my body.

We ain’t in California no more,” Pilate said. “Every fuckin’ body up here’s got a gun. Even that old lady in the hamburger shop, shot Michelle.

Things that we do every day make up who we are and the results we have in our life. Bank accounts collect from constant deposits and good health is achieved or maintained from what we put into our bodies daily.

Pilate also became, in a way, the first priest of the Eucharist of Christ. Christ offered the bread and wine as symbols of his body and blood, but Pilate offered Christ himself. He took him, showed him to the people, proclaimed him and broke him.

War, as a legitimate means of shaping the world, died with Christ on Good Friday. Jesus refuted the war option when he told Peter to put up his sword. Killing in order to liberate Jesus and his followers from the violent injustice of Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate would have been a just war—but Jesus refused to engage in a just war. He chose instead to bear witness to the truth, forgive, and die. Jesus took the death of a world framed by war into his body and he and it both died together. Jesus was buried and with him was buried the old world devoted to sin and death. On the third day Jesus was raised and a new world was born. Of course the old world of death still lingers around us, but in the midst of it, the world to come is being born.

I sometimes went with Svetlana to Pilates—even though the logistics of mat placement was deeply stressful, in a way that made me feel like I understood the primal conflicts for land that formed the basis of modern history. The room had a maximum occupancy of thirty, which might have been OK if everyone was just sitting there, but not if the idea was to make your body as long as possible and do sweeping motions with your limbs. Svetlana always made us get there early, to secure an advantageous position. Then the people who came later would try to crowd us out, inserting themselves between us, or directly in front of us, blocking our view—not apologetically, but with a self-righteous attitude. If you didn’t defend your space like Svetlana did, sitting up extra straight and doing elaborate stretches, you got hemmed in and couldn’t do the movements. People kept hitting you (or were you hitting them?) and giving you dirty looks.

On these accounts He came to us; on these accounts, though He was incorporeal, He formed for Himself a body after our fashion, -appearing as a sheep, yet still remaining the Shepherd; being esteemed a servant, yet not renouncing the Sonship; being carried in the womb of Mary, yet arrayed in the nature of His Father; treading upon the earth, yet filling heaven; appearing as an infant, yet not discarding the eternity of His nature; being invested with a body, yet not circumscribing the unmixed simplicity of His Godhead; being esteemed poor, yet not divested of His riches; needing sustenance inasmuch as He was man, yet not ceasing to feed the entire world inasmuch as He is God; putting on the likeness of a servant, yet not impairing the likeness of His Father. He sustained every character belonging to Him in an immutable nature: He was standing before Pilate, and at the same time was sitting with His Father; He was nailed upon the tree, and yet was the Lord of all things.

himself. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Maria, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

The four gospels do not tell us much about what happened on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We know that after Jesus died, the disciples stayed behind locked doors for fear of the Jewish leaders (John 20:19). Their fear was well-founded because on that Saturday, the chief priests and the Pharisees met with Pilate and asked him to order the tomb sealed to prevent the disciples from stealing Jesus’ body (Matthew 27:62-66). After the resurrection, those same religious leaders would bribe the guards so they would spread the rumor that the disciples had indeed stolen Jesus’ body from the tomb (Matthew 28:11-15). In a bizarre twist, Jesus’ opponents had a greater belief in his resurrection than his disciples.

I am now going to turn to a couple of the ways in which the New Testament depicts significant silence. One of the most dramatic of these moments is Jesus’ silence before his judges, before the High Priest and the Governor. The gospel narratives show us how the High Priest or Pontius Pilate urge Jesus to speak: ‘Why don’t you answer me?’ says Pilate, ‘Don’t you know that I have the power to crucify you or to release you?’ And we’re told in St John’s Gospel that when Jesus gives no answer to the charges made against him, Pilate wonders, he is ‘amazed’. Now the odd thing in these stories is that Jesus is precisely in the position of someone having his voice taken away; he is a person who has been reduced to silence by the violence and injustice of the world he is in. But then, mysteriously, he turns this around. His silence, his complete presence and openness, his refusal to impose his will in a struggle, becomes a threat to those who have power–or think they have power. ‘For God’s sake, talk to me!’ says the High Priest, more or less (‘ I adjure you in the name of the living God, tell us!’). And Pilate’s wonderment, bafflement and fear in the face of Jesus’ silence are a reminder that, in this case, Jesus as it were takes the powerlessness that has been forced on him and turns it around so that his silence becomes a place in the world where the mystery of God is present. In a small way, that’s what happens when we seek to be truly and fully silent or let ourselves be silenced by the mystery of God. We become a ‘place’ where the mystery of God happens.

Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. ‘Look at him!’ Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, ‘That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he’s done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!’ Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. ‘That’s not fat,’ he declared, punching himself in the stomach, ‘that’s good healthy meat!’ He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks.

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” (Matt. 27:62–64 NIV)

March 31 MORNING “With His stripes we are healed.” — Isaiah 53:5 PILATE delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were inter-twisted every here and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman lictors was probably the most severe of His flagellations. My soul, stand here and weep over His poor stricken body. Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon Him without tears, as He stands before you the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of His own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which His stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief? If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms. “See how the patient Jesus stands, Insulted in His lowest case! Sinners have bound the Almighty’s hands, And spit in their Creator’s face.” “With thorns His temples gor’d and gash’d Send streams of blood from every part; His back’s with knotted scourges lash’d. But sharper scourges tear His heart.” We would fain go to our chambers and weep; but since our business calls us away, we will first pray our Beloved to print the image of His bleeding self upon the tablets of our hearts all the day, and at nightfall we will return to commune with Him, and sorrow that our sin should have cost Him so dear.

Pilate, having heard of the disappearance of the body of Yeshua, became afraid and sent soldiers to investigate the tomb, when they had arrived at the tomb; they found Michael sitting on the stone that had once sealed the tomb. “Who is it that you seek? If it is the Nazarene He is not here He has risen and walks among you.” Michael was filled with the glory of the Lord so that the soldiers covered there faces in fear and fainted. The soldiers fearing that Pilate would not believe them fabricated a story that the disciples stole the body in the night; so that Pilate had marker stones placed one milion apart through out Israel that read:

Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don’t go off somewhere else! . . . just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, and stand firm in that which you are. —Kabir (mystic poet, 1440–1518)

left my CBT therapist to work with a psychodynamic psychiatrist and I joined a Pilates class.

The remains of a crucified man from the first century were found in a cave northeast of Jerusalem, with a nail still embedded in the heel. The circumstances of this find suggest the man’s body was taken down soon after death because of the wealth and influence of his family (Crossan and Reed 2001, pp. 3–4, 246–247; Lowder 2005, p. 264). The discovery of this man’s remains, and the reported timing of Jesus’ crucifixion and involvement of the high-status Joseph figure, make the story of Pilate’s early release of the body plausible.

Yummy mommies with Pilate's-honed bodies bouncing designer-clad babies on tanned knees. 

12 Ways to Improve & Project Confident Posture 1. Go people watching. Note how you interpret the different postures you observe. This will expand your awareness of how posture impacts first impressions and will help you become more aware of yours. 2. Stand in front of a mirror to see what other people are seeing. Are your shoulders level? Are your hips level? Do you appear aligned? Are you projecting confidence or timidity? 3. Take posture pictures to provide you with points of reference and a baseline over time. Look at past photos of yourself. 4. Stand with your back against a wall and align your spine. 5. Evenly balance on both feet, spaced hip-width apart. 6. Take yoga or Pilates classes to strengthen your core muscles, improve flexibility, and balance, all which support your posture. 7. Consciously pull your shoulders back, stand erect with chin held high. 8. Practice tucking in your stomach, pulling your shoulders back, raising your chin, and looking straight ahead. 9. Sit up straight without being rigid. 10. Enter a room like you belong there or own it. 11. Stand with an open stance to be welcoming and approachable. 12. Angle your body towards the person to whom you are speaking. Angling your body away may signify that you are indifferent, fearful, putting up a barrier, or trying to get away from them.

Pilate

The garage door is open at Ben's house when we pull into the drive. Adele Cody is almost hidden by Bounty eight-packs in a stack nearly as tall as she is. She flits in and out of the shelving racks wearing yellow yoga pants and a black sports bra. Her abs are clearly defined, the muscles in her arms ropy and straining like an aging pop star's, with too little fat on her body and too much Pilates on her schedule. She's making room for the paper towels, moving boxes of Band-Aids to the shelves above and Brillo Pads to the shelves below, displacing display flats of Carmex and Altoids in either direction.

The aim is actually to change the patient’s physiology, his or her relationship to bodily sensations. At the Trauma Center we work with such basic measures as heart rate and breathing patterns. We help patients evoke and notice bodily sensations by tapping acupressure19 points. Rhythmic interactions with other people are also effective—tossing a beach ball back and forth, bouncing on a Pilates ball, drumming, or dancing to music.

He was truly of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Son of God according to the will and power of God; that He was truly born of a virgin, was baptized by John, in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by Him; and was truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, nailed [to the cross] for us in His flesh. Of this fruit we are by His divinely-blessed passion, that He might set up a standard for all ages, through His resurrection, to all His holy and faithful [followers], whether among Jews or Gentiles, in the one body of His Church.

Ken Endelman’s manufacturing company, Balanced Body.

When we keep steadily before our eyes the mental condition of the eleven at the time of Christ's resurrection, we see the transparent falsehood and absurdity of the theft theory invented by the Jewish priests. The disciples, according to this theory, came by night, while the guards were asleep, and stole the dead body of Jesus, that they might be able to circulate the belief that He was risen again. Matthew tells that even before the resurrection the murderers of our Lord were afraid this might be done; and then, to prevent any fraud of this kind, they applied to Pilate to have a guard put upon the grave, who accordingly contemptuously granted them permission to take what steps they pleased to prevent all resurrectionary proceedings on the part either of the dead or of the living, scornfully replying, "Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can." This accordingly they did, sealing the stone and setting a watch. Alas! their precautions prevented neither the resurrection nor belief in it, but only supplied an illustration of the folly of those who attempt to manage providence, and to control the course of the world's history.

He further said Neiers “seemed to be a good girl” and had achieved the “highest level in Pilates you can earn.” (When I later contacted the Pilates Method Alliance, the governing body of Pilates in the United States, they said no such ranking exists.)

If you do not understand your body; Your body does not understand you!

On my way home from work last night, I had the brilliant idea to start working out. I was going to go for early morning runs and start a Pilates routine. I’ve always been in love with my body. I’m one of those love the body you’re in kinda girls, but damn, I’d kill to look like one of those gym girls with the dump truck ass and the toned stomach, but now that the sun is streaming in through my bedroom window, I don’t know how badly I actually want it.

Fear had silenced Joseph of Arimathea up to this point. Jesus’ life and teaching had attracted him and brought him to saving faith, but his faith remained clandestine. He went about his spiritual business in a secretive way—that is, until the cross brought him out into the open. And so, after too long hanging back in the shadows, Joseph “went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.