[00:00:00] Welcome to Pilates Students' Manual, everything you want to know about Pilates in one place. I'm Olivia, and I'll be your host. Jump in the conversation on Instagram @pilatesstudentsmanual and be sure to subscribe for updates on new episodes. Let's learn something new together.

Hello, hello everybody. Welcome back. Exciting adventures today, as always. Today, we will be tackling "is Pilates yoga?" One of the great questions of our time. It seems pretty clear cut. Especially as a Pilates podcast, I can say with a degree of certainty that Pilates is not yoga. Pilates is definitely [00:01:00] compared to yoga the most often in either Lyft rides or talking with my friends that maybe aren't Pilates teachers are Pilates students.

There's a lot of confusion. Like, isn't that the same thing? I definitely teach both forms. I teach both yoga and Pilates. I became a yoga teacher first. My first experience with yoga was actually in sixth grade where I was able to take it as an elective, which was awesome. I found yoga again a little bit more seriously in high school after a soccer injury kind of ended my soccer adventuring. 

Yoga was really a thread in my life from high school through college while I was studying abroad. Even in Korea, I was taking yoga classes. And then when I came back to the United States, I found Ashtanga yoga. And that's the style that I studied most extensively and then became a teacher to teach.

When I moved to Chicago in 2016, that was my first exposure to Pilates. Although [00:02:00] I realized that some of the things that I had done even in high school or as a kid were actually, some of those things were Pilates exercises. Even some of the warmups that we would do for soccer, I think, had some Pilates origins, but I didn't know it as Pilates.

So I found that in Chicago, when the studio I was working at teaching yoga also offered Pilates classes. I really felt like in love with that system as well. Not because I thought it was the same as yoga, but because I thought it offered a new vocabulary and a new way of thinking about movement and then sharing movement with your clients. Specifically, like corrective exercise as movement. 

On the very surface level, when someone asks me, "isn't Pilates like yoga?" That's a hard no. That's kind of my knee jerk reaction when I'm responding to that question. Part of that's because there's some obvious differences, right? You're never going to use a reformer in a yoga class, and you're never going to do a sun salutation or put your leg behind your head in a Pilates class.

[00:03:00] But there are some kind of squiggly lines around that because you know, may not have used a reformer in a yoga class, but I have used a magic circle, whether I'm using it as a strap or to find some scapular engagement, like I've definitely used those in my yoga classes. And while I haven't done a sun salutation, per se, there are some very flowing movements that I'll do as part of the standing lunge series on the reformer. And you could really easily make that a sun salutation, if you wanted to. You know, I've used resistance bands in Pilates and yoga. 

There's just gray areas around those two exercises, and the more cut and dried you try to be the more similarities you'll actually find. So think of all the variety of different ways that Pilates can express itself and how different it can be.

There's classical Pilates, there's rehabilitative Pilates. They both use a reformer, but they're going to use that reformer in a very different way, even though it's the same piece of equipment. [00:04:00] And so if you say, okay, yes, the reformer makes it Pilates, but there's also mat Pilates and that doesn't require any equipment, but it's still Pilates.

There's also, you know, the Pilates suspension method where you're using the TRX or a suspension trainer to do Pilates exercises, sometimes to make them more supportive, sometimes to make them more challenging. Is that still Pilates? 

I would argue that it is, but again, I'm a contemporary teacher. I suppose if you were a classical teacher, you could say only classical mat and only classical equipment is Pilates and everything else is a derivative of that. I would say that those are all expressions of Pilates. 

And you can say the same thing about yoga. If you think about all the different styles and types of yoga, there's restorative yoga, yin yoga, Ashtanga yoga, hot yoga, Iyengar yoga, all of those styles are still yoga, but they're going to look very different from each other.

In a restorative or a yin [00:05:00] yoga class, you might be holding a pose with the assistance of props for five minutes, easily. And in Ashtanga you might hold it pose for five breaths and they're both still yoga. In some flow or Vinyasa classes you may not be holding the pose at all. It might just constantly be a flow from one exercise to the next, almost like a dance. And that's also yoga. 

Important thing to know about yoga is that it's very old. The Hatha yoga Pradipika, which is a yoga text that lists several of the yoga poses from the Hatha yoga tradition, which is kind of where you're holding the poses. It's not what I think is kind of the more popular yoga tradition in the US at least, which is like the flow yoga Vinyasa, yoga.

But that text describing the poses and it's like here's tree pose. Here's like Lotus pose, things like that. That was written in the 1400s. And yoga may have been practiced as part of a, whether it's a religious tradition or by [00:06:00] monks, for as long as 3000 BC. And like the Indus Valley civilization, like formative earth civilizations, and yoga is being practiced. So yoga definitely wins in the old category. 

Modern exercise  yoga that really just focuses on the poses and the movements probably came to the US around the seventies, the 1970s, and probably became popular in the nineties. It was a good time for yoga and probably is still pretty popular. 

Pilates came to the US when Joe  immigrated in the 1920s and Pilates really became a thing in the 1930s and forties. But again, only became popular and maybe the eighties and nineties, and is now experiencing a nice popularity resurgence. 

So yoga has definitely been around for longer. I'm not trying to debate that, but they have a lot of overlap. And I guess you would say Pilates has a lot of overlap with yoga since yoga was around first. 

The way Pilates and yoga are organized is there are six principles of Pilates. [00:07:00] Again, which Joe did not enumerate, but he discusses these themes in his books that he's written both Your Health that was published in 1934 and also Returned to Life through Contrology, which was published in 1945, his two books. And the yoga sutras of Patanjali were- I'm not going to put a date on that- very old, very long time ago, where eight limbs of yoga are listed. 

So just looking at these two nice numeric series of themes, the six principles of Pilates are breathing, control, centering, concentration, precision, and rhythm, also called flow. Rhythm, flow, same thing. The eight limbs of yoga are the yamas, which are the restraints. The no-nos like no stealing, no violence, no lying, no greed. The niyamas, which are observances, such as cleanliness, contentment, and [00:08:00] discipline, things like that. Asana is the third limb, which are the postures. Pranayama is the fourth limb, is breath. Pratyahara, which is withdrawal, usually sensory withdrawal. Dharana is concentration, dyana is meditation, and samadhi is uniting with the universal consciousness. 

So we're already seeing some overlap, like right in the foundational process of these forms of movement. Breathing and concentration are like legit nail on the head overlaps. Those are like the same, but you're beginning to see though that yoga, like the full picture of yoga ,is more about how you live your life and the movements are part of that. The Pilates principles are really just for Pilates. You could embody those principles in things that you do, but Pilates is not telling you "don't steal." It's really just about the movement. Whereas yoga is more of a lifestyle choice. 

Again, difficult to make that argument [00:09:00] sometimes because a lot of yoga practice that happens in the United States is not a lifestyle choice. It's "I went to a yoga class and I sweat and I feel stretchy and nice now," you know what I mean? So it really depends on how deep you want to take yoga. 

Coming up after the break, I'm going to look at two specific things, classical mat Pilates and Ashtanga yoga, the primary series, and show you how they compare and then contrast. And then I will throw in my final two cents about the," is Pilates yoga?" discussion.

Hey there, enjoying the episode? Me too. You should definitely subscribe so you get notifications about new episodes. And if you love it, maybe leave me a review. That would be awesome. Thanks for sharing the Pilates love. Now back to the show.

[00:10:00] So looking at classical mat Pilates and the Ashtanga yoga primary series. Classical mat is 34 exercises as taught by Joseph Pilates. They are described, enumerated, explained in Joe's book, Return to Life through Contrology, which was published in 1945. Ashtanga yoga, the primary series, passed down by Sri Pattabhi Jois, outlined in his book, Yoga Mala, published in 2000, but practiced way before the book was written. There are 42 poses. 

Wikipedia has Ashtanga yoga starting in 1948, but you know, Pattabhi Jois says that he learned it from his teacher Krishnamacharya so it could be earlier than that, but that's the neighborhood. Also Returned to Life and Yoga Mala are pretty much the same book. They're both just enumeration of the [00:11:00] exercises and how to perform them, which as someone who does both styles of movement, it's really useful to have like a user's manual for that. I've linked both books in the description if you want to check them out. 

Both movement systems start with a warmup. In classical Pilates it's the hundred. It's good for you and it improves circulation and it gets you into your breathing and it warms everything up. Ashtanga yoga starts with several sun salutations and 10 standing poses. But the goal of both of those things is the same. It's to get you warmed up and moving. 

The greatest parallels between the primary series and classical mat happen in the seated postures and the closing sequence. The standing postures, there isn't a ton of overlap. I mean, you can talk about there's overlaps in terms of movement, that you're doing external rotation and things like that. Like the movement building blocks are the same as in all movement systems. But there isn't a lot of standing Pilates that happens in the classical Mat sequence. Joe does have a standing sequence of things. There are [00:12:00] overlaps there, but we're just talking about the 34 mat exercises so that I don't go on forever. 

There are a bunch of parallels in the seated postures so that when I was doing mat training, I was like, wow. There's like really a bunch of parallels. About a third of the Pilates exercises and about a third of the seated poses and closing sequence, leaving out the 10 standing poses. It's about the same. So there's like a large overlap. The Venn diagram is getting clear. 

Some of the specific overlaps that I see, and you may not be familiar with the yoga pose. Google's your friend. You can definitely look that up. You might be familiar with the Pilates movement. You can pretty much visualize from there that they're very similar.

Spine stretch forward in Pilates is very similar to paschimottanasana, which is a seated forward fold. Purvottanasana is a reverse plank in the primary series, very similar to leg pull or leg pull back, I've also heard it called where you're in that reverse plank. In Pilates, you're lifting a leg. In yoga, you keep both [00:13:00] legs down, but same idea. Navasana or boat pose, very similar to teaser. 

Exercises where you're rolling up and down, there are several of them in the primary series. Like garbha pindasana, like supta konasana, like ubhaya pandangushtasana,  those poses where you are rolling up, very similar to any of the rolling exercises in Pilates, so like rolling like a ball. 

To get down there so that you can roll back up, in the primary series of Ashtanga, you're doing a roll down, a seated roll-down every time. Supta konasana specifically is very much like open leg rocker.

Not only are you doing a seated roll down to get down down there, a lot of times you're also doing a rollover where you're bringing your legs over your head into something like a plow pose or halasana, and then doing a thing, often rolling back up to seated in Ashtanga. So that's parallel. 

Setu bandhasana is a bridge pose in yoga. It's a bridge pose in Pilates, or bridge exercise. [00:14:00] Sarvangasana is shoulder stand, very similar to control balance. In all of your sun salutations and all of your transitions between the seated exercises in Ashtanga yoga, you're doing chaturanga dandasana, or a pushup, over and over again. I would argue that your upward facing dog is a swan.

There are some loose parallels in exercises. The ones that I mentioned are like straight up, that is the same body shape. The way you're getting there is the same. There are some looser parallels in exercises, especially like the advanced exercises, like seal is very similar to an exercise called embryo pose, garbha pindasana, where you are rolling back and down. In embryo pose, you're rolling in a circle. I've heard five times. I've heard nine times because it's the months of gestation. But you are rolling back and forth. Seal is also very similar to an exercise called bhujapidasana, which is kind of like if you were to give your arms a hug with your legs, just like a little [00:15:00] bit less intense. Seal in that case would also be like, kurmasana  where you're in that kind of turtle shape.

There are even more crossovers to mat Pilates in other series of yoga, like the intermediate series. You'll have things like bow pose, which is very much like rocking in mat Pilates. So like the parallels don't end there, but those are just some of like the off-the-bat ones that I see that are interesting.

And beyond these exact exercises, how you do the exercises also very similar. We're all talking about abdominal connection and working from the center, right? Centering is a principle of Pilates. And in yoga, you're also pulling your navel in you're lifting your pelvic floor. In yoga, they're called bandhas, or locks. Where you're lifting your pelvic floor, that's mulabandha. You're pulling your navel in and up, that's uddiyanabandha. There's a third bandha where you're drawing your chin towards your chest, jalandharabandha, the chin lock. That's going to give you that extra muscular connection that's going to let you do all of the movements that you're trying to do. You [00:16:00] need that, that centered support.

You also really see in both systems, the intelligence of the sequence. In Pilates, especially on the equipment that you're doing the same movement, even the same exercise, but in different body positions. So teaser while you're seated is the same as elephant when you're in like almost a downward facing dog shape on the reformer, right? It's that same V it's either inverted or reverted, same thing with Pikes or pull ups on the chair. Right? If that same connection. 

In Ashtanga yoga, you're doing the same pose, but you're doing it often standing up, then sitting down, sometimes lying down, and then upside down often times. Not as much on your side, there's definitely more side stuff that happens in Pilates. You're doing the same movement, but because you're in a different relation to gravity or you're on a different piece of equipment, the exercise might be more challenging. So if you think of a standing roll down, right, gravity is assisting you as you spinally, flex and roll down towards your toes. But when you're doing that [00:17:00] same movement, it's a roll up or a roll down, I guess, while you're seated, but gravity is going to make the way you feel that exercise be different.

It's either going to be more challenging or less challenging, but you have that same connection to the muscles. So if you can do a roll down, you can do a roll up because the muscle movement is the same, but it's also different. Same, but different. 

Both Ashtanga yoga and the classical Pilates mat was meant to be practiced as a system. It wasn't like, Oh, do a pushup to build strength. You will build strength by doing a pushup, but it's not about just that one exercise of doing the pushup. It's really doing all of the things together so that you can make those connections. And Ashtanga yoga is the same. You're not going to get stronger or more flexible by doing one pose, but by doing all 42 poses again in the same order, same amount of breaths, same connection in those poses or exercises, that that's how you improve because it's a system, not [00:18:00] because it's a specific exercise. 

So you can see my dilemma as both a yoga and Pilates teacher because there is a ton of crossover. And yet I know in my heart that they're different. What I usually tell people when they ask is, you know, what is Pilates is that it's a system of exercises developed by Joseph Pilates using the equipment that he created to build strength and flexibility, with a mind body connection.

If you take out "the exercises developed by Joseph Pilates" and just say developed by Pattabbi Jois, it's pretty much the same thing. There isn't equipment in yoga at all, but like in the mat exercises there isn't really equipment. They're just props and you can add them in or take them out. What it comes down to is yoga is more of a system of living. The breath and the postures are just two parts of it.

Whereas in Pilates, Pilates is it. The principles of Pilates are to help you execute the [00:19:00] movements better, and then you will have ease and spontaneous zest for life as Joe says, but it's a bit more limited in its scope. Yoga is really about beyond your life, even like your supreme consciousness, and if that's too woo woo for you, like that's totally fine because Pilates or even just doing the yoga exercises as the yoga exercises is fine and more beneficial than not doing them.

Pilates is not yoga. Pilates was definitely influenced by yoga. This is a Pilates podcast, so if you're listening to it and Pilates is your jam, that's amazing. If you also like yoga I'm with you, you're allowed to like both ways. For me, it's really just two different languages, two different ways to get into your body and to connect deeper with yourself.

So what do you think? Are Pilates and yoga really similar? Am I way off the mark? Feel free to reach out on Instagram, say hi, say what you think. Yeah, I look forward to hearing from you. Have [00:20:00] a great week and I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for stopping by for today's episode of Pilates Students' Manual. Subscribe to follow the podcast and join the community of Pilates lovers on Instagram @pilatesstudentsmanual. You can reach out to me there with questions, comments, or feedback for send me an email pilatesstudentsmanual@oliviabioni.com. If you learned something new today, share this episode and the Pilates love. The adventure continues. Until next time. [00:21:00]