Pontius Pilates

I've taken up pilates.  Well, that's a rather bold statement seeing as how I've only done it twice so far.  "Taken up" indicates more of an investment than I really think my achievement to date justifies.  For those who don't know pilates is a sort of exercise thingy.  I don't really know a better way to describe it than that.  It seems to consist of balancing yourself on one of your four appendages (usually, although not exclusively, a foot) while simultaneously flailing the other three appendages around very slowly, preferably with your eyes closed.

Oh yes, and then there's the breathing.  Breathing is very important to pilates.  I think I can go so far as to say if you can't breathe then you can't do pilates.  Breathing is something I can normally manage to do very well.  The problem emerges when somebody continuously reminds me to breathe while I'm simultaneously undergoing what looks like a slow motion epileptic seizure.  Then I find that I can't breathe at all.  Until I do but not at the right time.  I've discovered that I can either focus on breathing or focus on exercise but doing both simultaneously is a little beyond me.

Nevertheless I do my best, which fortunately isn't too much more difficult than doing my worst.  I breathe (or not) at the wrong times and fall over while attempting to extend my toes to the wall, my right hand to the ceiling and my left hand to Mecca or something similar.  This position is called the frenetic lamprey or possibly the hyperactive wombat.  At some point someone decided it would be fun to give silly names to all the various bodily contortions we are called upon to do.

I think a fair few of these names were pinched from yoga which also gives silly names to its activities.  This is permissible in yoga seeing as how it seems to be an exercise routine for half starved people in poor parts of the world who are probably lightheaded from hunger and suffering.  Pilates doesn't have this excuse being very thoroughly an invention of the western world.  With its emphasis on control, coordination and breathing at precisely the right moment you probably won't be surprised to learn it was invented by a German.  He called it contrology but subsequent people possibly concerned with such an Orwellian sounding title decided to name it after him.  Unfortunately his name was Joseph Pilates.

It's marginally better than contrology I suppose if only because it has less of a "ve have vays of making you exercise" vibe about it.  Further it sounds silly enough to have been imported from the Orient or one of those other places that demonstrate how enlightened and culturally sophisticated they are by living short wretched lives of deprivation alleviated only by philosophies that tell them, essentially, how to lead short wretched lives of deprivation.  Still as names go I suppose pilates isn't the worst they could have come up with.  You'd look like an absolute idiot turning up with a rolled up mat to take a class of joseph..