The Earth Element is all about relationships. Meaning is found in context and connection and the ways in which we integrate. The super power of relationships is that they help us to ripen our own nature. We nourish ourselves and we care for each other in community. We connect a little deeper and we get that yummy feeling of ‘enoughness’.

In talking about the power of relationships, I’m talking also about how the sum of the Classical Pilates systems relate across the entire studio.
Chinese Medicine is the study of functional relationships between things.
And in many ways, we can see Pilates as functional movement.
The Pilates system has value in how each exercise relates to the one that came before and the one that comes after (ahhh the glory of transitions!).
And within the whole system, the whole studio, we will talk about and feel into the relationships between exercises and apparatus.

The Earth Element is the Spleen the the Stomach. Our middle, our center, where we truly do process nourishment.
In our workout, I see the matwork as the most Earth Element apparatus. It’s always there for us, it’s grounding like the earth energy. It’s a reminder that we can come home to ourselves on this mat, building deep core connection, anytime and anywhere. Sometimes I see our mat work like the hub of a wheel, the center where we can come and go to, leaving and returning, over and over. It’s solid and steady the mat work. And furthermore, it’s the ‘apparatus workout’ we do together in groups, in full classes, in rooms of laughter and grunting.
It’s got a community feel, a coming together on common ground (pun intended), and doing that deep core work.