The Positive Cue is Key
Today I was listening to a quote from the author and speaker Simon Sinek. His statement "the brain doesn't do negative" got me thinking about cueing in Pilates and how to direct verbiage while teaching.
Sinek discusses how when we're skiing we won't be successful if we only think "don't hit the tree" while looking at all the trees to not hit. In order to move seamlessly through the path of trees we must look at the path we want to take instead of thinking of what not to do. We must look at the space through the trees where we do want to go in order to direct the mind to go there.
Initially, I found myself confused by this phrase as I was thinking of course we can think negatively...right?
When I hear someone discuss the idea of negativity I think of a personality trait. We don't want to be false positive all the time, a false sense of overly optimistic and unrealistic sense of reality. We want to be able to respond appropriately to situations and be negative when necessary to properly assess a situation.
However, as I thought about it more I realized if someone says to not think of an elephant the brain will only respond by thinking of an elephant, and if we tell a child to not push a button the only thing they want to do is push a button. The brain responds to stimuli and thinks of things, we don't, not think of something. When people practice mindfulness and learn to control the chaos of the inner chatter of the mind it becomes more possible to control those errant thoughts that the brain runs through, but the brain does seem to be wired to not be able to think of the negative.
So, when teaching Pilates, cueing a client by saying "no" or "don’t do x" will have the opposite effect of them only thinking about the thing we don't want them to do. We're not looking for fake positivity, but using positive cueing is key to assisting clients' learning. There are basic types of cueing whether it's directed more intrinsically toward the client's body such as lengthening the arm, or extrinsic cues such as reaching for the door. Different people have different learning tendencies and respond better to different types of cueing. Depending on the client, exercise, or situation, different cues may be more effective than others.
Just like Sinek's great analogy of skiing and looking at the trees we want to avoid, the brain does not understand "don't do x" as a directive to help the body to do something. When we tell the client "don’t do that" the client is distracted from the full body connectivity and hyper-focused on what they're doing wrong.
If the mind can't comprehend the negative and we tell a client "don't move the hips", they'll only be thinking about how their hips are moving but that directive doesn't help them figure out how to stop moving them. Maybe they'll grip somewhere else in the body to try to still the movement a bit, and likely they'll feel that they're doing the exercise wrong and maybe they won't know how to fix the issue. If we ask the client to push into the opposite leg more, or reach the arms more, we're giving the client a positive cue, telling them what to do instead of what not to do. Here we're giving the client the keys to learning how to work toward stability in the hips. For this reason, we need to know what it is we're actually asking for and the various ways in which a client can achieve that. In the case of the wobbly hips, what we're really asking for is stability in the lower quadrant. So we need to think about the ways in which we can stabilize that region, the muscles that support that movement, and what connection this client might be lacking to reduce the excess movement. If we truly know what we're asking for, then we can give the client the more specific, positive keys instead of saying "no" or "don't do x".
There are always little building blocks that we can use to build a client up toward achieving a goal. If we're not there yet think about what we need to work on in order to achieve that goal, and once we get there think about what can we continue progressing and developing, to continue growing. In Pilates, there's no end goal, yet we keep progressing and moving along. So, if I can't do something yet, let's see what I can do at this moment, and see where we can go from there. But if someone doesn't know how to do something that we're asking for, simply saying "no, don't do that" doesn't help guide them.
All the lessons we learn in the studio are applicable outside as well. We can notice how often we think in the negative instead of in the positive, and how that makes us feel when we do so. Verbiage impacts both how clients think and feel during their sessions as well as afterward how they feel leaving the studio continuing on through their day. When clients come in to learn from us they're asking to be guided through their movement practice. They're with us to feel better and to improve. If we choose words like 'No' and 'don't' we're setting up for negativity and discomfort, priming the mind for a sense of being defeated or deflated. The body tenses up when we hear "No" get yelled around us.
For teachers, notice how often we use "don't do x" as the cue, and how that can be changed into a positive action cue, and how that changes the client's response. People learn in all different ways and our job is to try to accommodate all these varied needs as best we can. We must always look at how people learn and how we can connect with them. We don't want our clients to feel afraid of being wrong or of making a mistake.
Overall, our goal in Pilates is to lift others up and for the client to feel better leaving the studio than when they came in.
This begins with how we speak to the client and how we direct them throughout their session. We're teaching clients how to figure out the movement and what their body needs for themselves with the ultimate goal of the client not needing us for everything. By cueing the client with positive directions we're giving them the keys to be able to figure certain things out on their own later. If we see the hip moving when we don't want it to, the teacher thinks about how I get them to find more stability, so we can cue them to push more into the opposite leg or press down through the arms. Then, later, if the client feels the wobbly hip again in their practice they then intrinsically know what they might need to do and can follow the positive cues we gave them previously.
Similarly, often there are moments when a client adjusts a correction for themselves just before I cue them. They can feel what is off, and since they've been given the cues to figure out how to minimize the error they can adjust themselves. The practice then is becoming their own, not just relying on the teacher. As a teacher, it's always exciting to see a client make these corrections themselves, feeling where the body needs more reach, movement, or stability.
By teaching using positive cueing we are giving our clients the keys to continue growing in their practice, learning how to find what works best for them, and helping them feel better walking out than when they first came into the studio that day.
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