One of the terms you might hear a lot during Pilates classes is “neutral.” But what does it mean?

If you have a Pilates Instructor from the STOTT lineage, like me, you’ll be told that your lower back (lumbar spine), ribcage (thoracic spine), and neck (cervical spine) all have postures that are neutral, or which deviate from neutral. 

For example, your instructor might tell you that your neutral lower back posture is slightly arched (as if a grape can fit under your back, between your ribs and pelvis). If you flatten your lower back, it’s called imprint. And if you over-arch / lift it too high up, it’s called hyperextended. 

At your ribs, if your ribs are heavy and released onto your mat when laying on your back, we call that neutral. If the lower ribs lift off the mat, we call that popping. 

And lastly at your neck, a little arch, similar to the lower back, is called neutral. When we flatten the neck (which we intentionally do before doing an ab curl off the mat), we can also refer to that as imprinting the neck. If you over-arch the neck, moving your chin too far away from your chest, we also call that hyperextending, just as we do with the lower back. 

 

Let’s get a better picture of what neutral means by feeling our bones! 

Start standing, bend over, and try to use your fingers and thumbs to count the lowest five vertebrae of your spine. Those vertebrae make up your lumbar spine. Not a fan of anatomy? Don’t worry, once you learn where your lumbar spine is, it gets easy to understand what your Pilates instructors mean when they say something like, “Breathe out and imprint,” or “Breathe in and find neutral.”

Whether you should listen to them is another story! That is, among Pilates Instructors, there’s a bit of a disagreement about the therapeutic value of moving in neutral, say for side-lying work, versus allowing the lumbar spine to move. In my STOTT PILATES training, however, I was taught that finding and maintaining neutral during certain exercises was a good way to gain more control of muscles like your obliques, glutes, and hamstrings. I personally find it increasingly more helpful to think about grounding and stretching. It just feels so good!

Having said that, it’s still useful to know what the terms “neutral” and “imprint” mean, so when you’re bending and stretching your legs on the reformer and your instructors say, “Stabilizing your core in neutral,” you’ll know what they mean.

Back to our movements! Now that you know where your lowest five vertebrae are in your back, you can start controlling their shape. 

Let’s find neutral! Lie on your back, bend your knees and feel heavy at your feet, pelvis, lower ribcage and upper arms.
Now start rocking your pelvis slowly. Use your abs to gently draw your pelvis up to your lower ribs. Then get heavy at your pelvis and feel your lumbar spine return to its slight neutral arch. Notice your lower back flattening when you use your abs to draw your pelvis up to your lower ribs. Notice a little arch under your lower back but not ribs when you return to neutral
Note: Remember to practice lateral breathing as you move. If you’re unfamiliar with lateral breathing, check this article out or these exercises. To sum it up, you have breathing ribs, as I like to call them, at your mid back area (ribs 10, 9, 8, 7, 6,). They hinge on your spine and widen your mid back when you breathe in. Then they relax back down, narrowing the ribcage, when you breathe out.
Notice your lower back flattening when you use your obliques to draw your pelvis up to your lower ribs. This is called imprint. Keep your pelvic floor gently lifted, without tension.
Notice a little arch under your lower back but not ribs when you return to neutral. Try to feel heavy under your pelvis when you’re in neutral. Continue for a few minutes to get familiar with how your lumbar spine and pelvis move in relation to the rest of your body. You can use your exhales to draw your pelvis up to your ribs (to find imprint).
Now keep your lumbar spine slightly flattened (imprinted) and try lifting one leg up without moving your pelvis or lower back. You’re now table-topping one leg. When you lift your leg up so the hip is bent at 90 degrees and the knee too, we call it tabletop.
Try alternating your legs for a few minutes. You can coordinate your leg lifts with your exhales.
If it’s easy to lift one leg at a time without moving your pelvis or lower back, try lifting both legs up, then slowly lowering them as much as you can without moving your pelvis. Your feet might not touch the floor here. If that’s also easy, then try repeating the leg lifts in neutral. Single legs first, then double legs.

Good job! You’ve moved your lumbar spine from neutral to imprint, and practiced table-topping your legs in imprint, and maybe even in neutral if your abs can handle it! 

If you enjoyed learning about your lumbar spines positions, you might be happy to know that the lumbar spine has even more positions!

You can also arch your lumbar spine beyond neutral, so much that you might feel discomfort. Discomfort is key here. If it doesn’t feel bad, it can’t be all that bad, don’t you agree?

You can also round your lower back. We do that in lots of exercises! You’ll see if you jump into a Pilates class, and if you already do Pilates, I’m sure you’ve noticed yourself rounding your lower back when Rolling like a Ball, or when Rolling Up, and in many other exercises. 

Technically when you rotate or side bend your lumbar spine, you can still hold neutral or imprint. So you can rotate in neutral. 

Besides the lumbar spine, all the rest of your body as positions that Pilates Instructors refer to with the words “neutral” and “imprint” but that’s for another article! Let’s keep this one short and sweet. 

If you haven’t signed up for Pilates as yet, check out this article on how to find a studio! And if you’d like to practice with me in Mississauga or Virtually, I have plenty of openings as a new home studio. Just shoot me an email. 

 

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