Joseph Pilates’ Foundational Elements of Movement: Returning to the Framework of Contrology. July 2026

If you’ve taken a Pilates class or completed a teacher training program, you’ve almost certainly been introduced to the Six Principles of Pilates, listed below. But Joseph Pilates’ foundational elements, the ones he actually wrote about, tell a different story.

• Centering
• Control
• Concentration
• Flow
• Breath
• Precision

These principles provide an accessible framework for instructing the method, and I used them for the first 10 years of my teaching career. When I revisited my old training manual, I found that Romana Kryzanowska had also added a seventh principle, rhythm, and, to my recollection, an eighth, imagination.

What many people don’t realize is that Joseph Pilates never published a list called The Six Principles of Pilates. The principles most of us recognize today were introduced decades after his death by Philip Friedman and Gail Eisen in their 1980 book, The Pilates Method of Physical and Mental Conditioning. Drawing from Joseph Pilates’ writings, the teachings of Romana Kryzanowska, and their own practice, they organized recurring themes into six educational principles that could be more easily taught and remembered.

Their contribution was significant. Rather than replacing Joseph Pilates’ work, they provided a language that helped make his method more accessible as Pilates grew beyond a small community of teachers and practitioners. I also recognize that some have argued these six principles are not unique to Pilates, but are qualities shared by many movement disciplines.

This raises an interesting question: if Joseph Pilates did not organize his method around these six principles, how did he describe it? The answer is found by returning to his own words.

In Your Health (1934), find it here https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/your-health-joseph-hubertus-pilates/1111813847?ean=9781928564621 , Joseph Pilates defined Contrology as the balance of body and mind, which he described as follows: “It is a conscious control of all muscular movements of the body. It is the correct utilization and application of the leverage principles afforded by the bones comprising the skeletal framework of the body, a complete knowledge of the mechanism of the body, and a full understanding of the principles of equilibrium and gravity as applied to the movements of the body in motion, at rest and in sleep.”

Elsewhere in Your Health, and in his other writings and interviews, he repeatedly returned to two more themes: “…how to breathe properly – normally…” and the balanced relationship between tension and relaxation.

Rather than presenting a list of principles for performing exercises, Joseph Pilates described the conditions that make the “art and science” of human movement possible — how the body is organized, how it functions, how it responds to gravity, and how awareness influences every action. From these writings, six foundational elements emerge:

1. Conscious Control

2. Skeletal Leverage

3. Knowledge of the Mechanism of the Body

4. Equilibrium & Gravity

5. Breathing

6. Tension & Relaxation

These six foundational elements form the framework of Contrology. Conscious control asks us to move with intention rather than habit. Skeletal leverage reminds us that movement should be organized through structure, not strain. Knowledge of the mechanism of the body points to the importance of how the body’s parts relate and function together. Equilibrium and gravity highlight the constant relationship between balance, load, and support. Breathing connects movement to rhythm, circulation, and vitality. And tension and relaxation reveal that efficiency depends not on effort alone, but on the ability to release what is unnecessary. Recognizing that tension is never only muscular, and that the body often holds what the mind experiences.

These are not presented as a challenge to the modern Six Principles, but it’s in my nature to dig deeper. That’s part of why I sought out training with Romana. I wanted to get as close to the source as I could.

Returning to Joseph Pilates’ original writings offered me a different perspective, one anchored directly in his own words and gave me a simpler, more complete understanding of what he was getting at. He wasn’t simply describing a workout. He was describing a way of thinking about movement itself, and that perspective feels just as relevant to me today as it did nearly a century ago.

In this article, I’ll take a closer look at each of these foundational elements, exploring what Joseph Pilates wrote and why they continue to shape the way I move, teach, and learn.

1. Conscious Control

At the heart of Contrology is a single demand: nothing happens by accident. Every movement is meant to be conscious rather than automatic. Before we can change the way we move, we have to become aware of what we’re already doing.

This is where the apparatus becomes such a remarkable teacher. The springs, straps, and points of contact provide constant feedback, helping us sense where we are in space, how we’re organized, and where unnecessary effort begins to creep in. Awareness isn’t something added to the movement — it develops through the movement itself.

This has become a cornerstone of my own practice and teaching. Rather than simply having students perform an exercise, I want them to become curious about what they sense, what changes from one repetition to the next, and how those discoveries influence the way they organize their movement. To me, that’s the essence of conscious control.

2. Skeletal Leverage

Joseph Pilates trained as a boxer, gymnast, and self-defense instructor and it shows in how mechanically he thought about the body. He was interested in the skeleton as a system of levers, and the muscles as the forces that move those levers.

This is one of the reasons I teach through the bones. I have written more about this concept in my article https://matworkz.com/tell-your-bones-what-to-do/. I’ve always used a simple definition: Pilates is the weight of the arms and legs challenging the torso in different orientations. When the skeleton is well organized, muscular effort becomes more efficient because it can take advantage of the body’s natural leverage. From there, movement unfolds with greater balance, coordination, and ease.

Teaching through the bones is also remarkably practical. Most students can learn a basic understanding of their skeleton, and while muscles vary in size and strength, we all share essentially the same bony framework. The bones provide consistent landmarks that help students organize themselves and better understand how movement works, affording them a greater independence in their practice.

3. Knowledge of the Mechanism of the Body

Joseph Pilates insisted that intelligent movement requires a “complete knowledge of the mechanism of the body.” This wasn’t a passing remark. Throughout his writings, he returned again and again to the body’s structure, mechanics, and function, suggesting he was building a system of movement based on understanding the body. More than simply designing a workout.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from Joseph Pilates is that everything affects everything. The feet influence the pelvis. The pelvis influences the spine. The spine changes the way we breathe. We can’t change one part of the system without influencing another. Once practitioners begin to recognize their unique relationships, the movement starts to make sense instead of becoming a collection of exercises.

To me, this is one of the least explored aspects of Joseph Pilates’ work. I’ve become increasingly interested in the relationship between skeletal organization and muscular response. It has led me to ask different questions in my teaching and practice. I went from “Which muscle should work?” to “What structural relationships will allow the body to naturally respond?” I can’t help but think this reflects Joseph Pilates’ repeated emphasis on working with the body’s inherent design. That shift has opened a way of thinking about movement that continues to deepen my own practice while keeping me curious as both a teacher and a student.

4. Equilibrium & Gravity

Joseph Pilates described a “full understanding of the principles of equilibrium and gravity as applied to the movements of the body in motion, at rest, and in sleep.” He wasn’t only concerned with balance during exercise, he was concerned with how the body organizes itself against gravity at all times.

This explains why in his book, Return to Life, he begins on the floor rather than in standing. The floor provides support, feedback, and stability while reducing many of the balance demands gravity places on an upright body. Romana always said the hardest thing about Pilates is finding the right position. I think that’s exactly where this element falls.  As movement progresses, lying, sitting, kneeling, and standing each ask something different of us.

Teaching and practicing this element means noticing where the weight is, where the support is felt, and where the feeling of compensation begins. The goal isn’t to fight gravity but to understand how the body organizes itself within it.

5. Breathing

Joseph Pilates, as an asthmatic, placed extraordinary importance on breathing. For him, breathing was not separate from movement, it was foundational to posture, coordination, circulation, and vitality. As modern science continues to confirm. https://themapsinstitute.com/how-deep-breath-can-alter-our-posture-and-affect-movement-2/ He insisted that the lungs be completely emptied before they could be properly filled (I hear Romana in my head, “empty da lungs), that full exhalation, not just inhalation, was the key to real oxygenation of the blood.

How many times have I caught myself holding my breath in the middle of my own practice? Learning how to breathe, and how to manage my thoughts and senses through breath, has become one of the key lessons I’ve taken from his work. The fact that I can catch myself holding my breath has become an awareness practice in itself. The quality of our breathing often influences the quality of our movement. Learning how to breathe is one of the most practical movement skills we develop.

6. Tension & Relaxation

Joseph Pilates was as interested in a muscle’s ability to release as its ability to contract. Unnecessary tension, in the jaw, the shoulders, the hands, was, in his view, a sign of inefficient movement, no matter how strong the person appears to be.

But for Joseph Pilates, tension wasn’t only muscular. He also wrote extensively about nervous tension and its effect on the body.

Not much has changed since he described its consequences. The sources of stress may look different today, but the human response remains familiar. Stress affects the way we breathe, hold ourselves, and move through the world. The mind and body are constantly communicating, and patterns of stress often become patterns in the body.

I believe this is another unexplored side of his work. In the way I was trained, we were never told to relax anything. Looking back, I think that’s a disservice to what he was actually teaching. Contrology was designed to restore awareness, not by eliminating effort, but by learning the difference between necessary support and unnecessary strain. Physical and mental balance are part of conscious movement.

What these foundational elements mean together points to something bigger than technique. Sitting with Joseph Pilates’ writings, I discovered more than another way of thinking about Pilates. I found a richer way of thinking about movement itself. Seen through that lens, these foundational elements become more than technical concepts. Together, they reveal that Contrology was part of Joseph Pilates’ larger vision for cultivating the balance of body and mind beyond just exercises.

Perhaps that is why he so often returned to this idea. In Your Health, he reflected on what he believed the ancient Greeks understood so well:

“The ancient Greeks probably knew better than anyone else, the true meaning of ‘Balance of Body and Mind,’ as tangibly expressed in terms of supreme physical health, supreme mental happiness and supreme achievements along the highway of human progress.”

For Joseph Pilates, the exercises were never the destination. They were the means. Conscious control, leverage, breathing, balance, and the skillful use of effort were all in service of something much greater: the cultivation of a human being whose body, mind, and spirit worked together as one.

I believe that was the heart of what he was trying to teach. It is certainly what I continue to strive for in both my practice and my teaching.

Awareness first. Technique follows. Integration is the goal.