My Inner Core

I felt it. I felt my inner core.

In the three months I've been doing pilates, I had no real idea what the instructor - a young, slim and graceful ballerina - was getting at when she talked about targetting muscles that strengthen your inner core. What inner core? She kept saying, These exercises are helping with your inner core even if you don't feel it.

So in class last night, lying on top of a foam roller, I followed her usual instructions and pressed down on my navel, and made my back ribs heavy. I lifted my arms, then my legs, one at a time. After a few tries, when I found that spot where I could hold my centre, I balanced on my back, lying on a round foam cylinder, without touching the floor!

The instructor said, If you can do that, you've found your inner core.

So that's what it feels like. It's a tightening of the innards. And your balance stems out from there to your hands and feet. I've been relying on my arms and legs to hold me up. If you've tapped into your inner core, you're like that graceful hawk, gliding across the sky and changing directions with unmoving spread wings. But I've been that penguin, flapping and flopping about on slippery ice.

After the foam roller exercise, the instructor said to turn over to your front and onto your hands and knees. And she did it in one silent, light flip, from lying on her back to the cat arch position, lithe ballerina that she is. I rolled over, landed on my tummy, stuck my butt up in the air, then scrambled my hands and knees together to make the camel hump, with hog-at-slaughter grunts to boot.

So I have more work to do to finesse my inner core. But it's so good to know I have one.