Pauline Caswell is the owner of Love Pilates Wirral, and this is her latest column for West Kirby Today…
I remember reading the book “Flip It” in which Michael Heppell describes “paying yourself first”. His advice to stash a percentage of your income away before you pay the bills, does make sense. We are all taught that investing in our financial future is worthwhile, in the end (the end? we’ll come back to that!).
That might be great advice, but it gave me some strange thoughts, about the end, about money. No matter how old we are today, we will all be older tomorrow. Slowly becoming part of an ageing population, like unhurried moss that spreads across a wall, we can’t see it day to day, just in the end.
So, take a moment to imagine talking to 80-year-old you. Did you really invest in yourself? I for one don’t want to imagine ending up sitting in chair or lying on a mattress stuffed with twenty-pound notes from which I can’t lift myself, pop down to the shops and treat myself to a fancy bottle of wine or artisan box of Swiss chocolates. I want to be like Pauline, not me, a different Pauline. She’s real, aged 80, comes and does push ups and side bends at my Pilates classes every week (in addition to a whole timetable of other activities that keeps her brain and body sharp and strong).
Did you imagine yourself at 80? Not so easy, is it? Until that first niggle in your lower back, dodgy shoulder, hip or clicky knee… we never think our bodies will let us down. You might not have ridden a bike in a while or tried to juggle oranges, so that co-ordination gets rusty too. Whilst juggling oranges and riding bikes might not be your thing, without thinking, most days your body and mind are actually co-ordinating multiple tasks at once.
The truth is, we take our body for granted, but less so our bank account. We are probably more likely to pay into a pension than to invest in our bodies. To me, that doesn’t make equal sense.
If you want to invest in your body and set yourself up to be a better 80-year-old in the end, it’s possibly time for you to take up a little resistance training. Did I say Pilates is a type of resistance training? Before you finish reading this you might already notice your back getting stiff, your legs feeling like wet spaghetti or wondering if you have much core strength. It’s definitely the day to start Pilates. Invest in your body first, a little each day. It will be worth it, in the end. No-one ever looked back and said: “I really regret staying so fit!”.
Pauline Caswell is the owner of Love Pilates Wirral. Pauline is a skilled 2nd Generation teacher with a direct lineage to Joseph Pilates. She’s also a qualified teacher of Education in Biology, Psychology, Science & Health. Her practice is about helping people to feel good about movement and the body you live in, whatever your lifestyle, age or ability. For more information visit www.lovepilateswirral.co.uk.
This article is sponsored and has been paid for by Love Pilates Wirral.