When I first started doing Pilates seriously, it was after the birth of my two children, and I thought it would be a good way to strengthen my core. Little did I know that the benefits of Pilates would extend far beyond my abs!

I can safely say that Pilates has helped my body better than any other form of exercise or therapy. Let me tell you why.

Pilates is a form of exercise that emphasizes controlled, deliberate movements that focus on building full body strength, improving posture, balance, mobility of your joints, and overall body awareness.

This type of exercise is designed to help you move with more ease, as it trains your body to work in a more efficient and coordinated manner. Think of it as working on the fundamentals of movement.

Great for Mature Adults

Pilates is a great way to get in shape, no matter what your age or fitness level. It’s one of the few exercise programs that work every part of your body (both small and large muscle groups), including those hard-to-reach core muscles.

Pilates also helps improve posture, which can be especially important as we age and our bodies change. I grew over an inch in height after practicing Pilates regularly!

And if you’re a beginner who’s worried about getting bored or concerned the exercises may be too hard, don’t worry: there are lots of ways for beginners to modify an exercise or challenge themselves without becoming frustrated or discouraged.

Pilates is also a great therapy to help you recover from an injury or surgery. It’s a low-impact exercise plan that is gentle on your joints. By practicing Pilates, you can enhance your understanding of movement in both your joints and overall body. This is crucial in correcting misalignment, promoting good posture, and strengthening underdeveloped muscles.

Plus Pilates is extremely accessible as all you need is a mat.

Many of my senior clients love to travel and continue with online Pilates classes when abroad. I have had clients take classes on their travels from Dubai, Brazil and New Zealand! You don’t have to rely on a gym membership or machines to maintain your fitness level with a mat Pilates class. Take the magic with you so you can feel your best on your travels and keep up your energy.

Pilates Focuses on Strength AND Mobility

To understand how Pilates can help you to move more easily, it’s important to know the difference between strength and mobility.

Strength refers to the muscle’s ability to produce force in order to perform an action. Mobility is how well you can move a muscle or group of muscles through a range of motion in your body. Pilates focuses on both strength and mobility – these two components work together for optimal health benefits!

We often assume that to increase our range of motion or lengthen a tight muscle we need to stretch it. But this is not always the case. Many times when a muscle is tight it actually needs to be strengthened. This is an underlying theme in a well-designed Pilates class.

When exercising choose activities that include both strength and mobility elements equally to allow your body to move with more ease and prevent injuries. In a nutshell, this IS Pilates!

It Makes You FEEL Better Too!

Pilates is all about feeling good. It can help you to feel better physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Here’s why:

• Pilates strengthens your core muscles (the ones that surround your spine). This improves posture and strengthens key muscles in your back making it easier for you to move without pain or discomfort.
• Because Pilates focuses on breathing while moving through different positions, it teaches you how to focus on what’s happening right now – which can help reduce stress levels.
• It helps to maintain and improve your balance by working key stabilizing muscle groups in your body that are important to keep you from falling.
• Pilates releases endorphins (your brain’s feel-good chemicals) which help you maintain a positive mindset.

Ultimately, Pilates isn’t just about physical fitness; it changes how we feel inside ourselves! Will you tone your body? Sure. Will you lose weight? Probably. But the biggest benefit is how you FEEL inside and that is the magic of Pilates.

And you want to know the secret to sticking with an exercise program? It’s all about how it makes you FEEL. This is referred to as intrinsic benefits and studies show this develops a healthy relationship with exercise over the long term.

Curious to feel the magic of Pilates for yourself? Join my free 5-Day Beginner Pilates Challenge. Let‘s get you feeling stronger, more confident and toned in time for summer. You can also follow my Instagram account for short Pilates exercises you can do each day.

So, there you have it! I hope this article has helped you understand why Pilates is a great choice. It’s not just about getting fit and strong; it also helps us feel better by boosting self-esteem and body confidence. And that’s a win-win situation for everyone involved!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What have you found the most significant benefit of starting an exercise program? Do you exercise regularly? If not, what is the biggest obstacle to exercising on a regular basis?

I started working with “the elderly” while still in high school. Beginning as a candy striper volunteer in a local nursing home, I also volunteered at a nursing home up the hill from my college while working on my degree in Social Work.

My first job after graduation was in a nursing home. While I did not specialize in geriatrics, it just turned out that my entire professional life – as well as volunteering on the side – involved working with that demographic.

And although I always enjoyed working with seniors and felt drawn to them, they always remained “the other.”

Never Saw It Coming

Fast forward 30 or 40 years, and here I am: I am suddenly that “other.” The problem is, I never saw it coming, even when I should have. I think I was so firmly ensconced in my role as the “fresh young thing” helping “old folks,” that I let a strong current of denial carry me along.

It went something like this: I am quite healthy, and if I continue doing the same things I have always done, I should be fine, right? It’s other people, people who don’t take care of themselves, who get old.

Me, get old? I don’t think so!

As a result, I failed to proactively take care of problems that ALL women (and men) face as they age. Some was by way of being naïve and neglectful, some was by outright refusal to follow certain recommendations from my doctor(s).

And My Attitude of Denial Didn’t Help

In 2015, at the age of 60, I fell from the top of a ladder onto a hardwood floor when the ladder buckled under me while I was painting. Although bruised, I didn’t have so much as a hairline fracture anywhere. It made me feel invincible, so when my doctor told me he wanted to do a bone scan because I was at a high risk for osteoporosis (small-boned post-menopausal Caucasian woman), I brushed him off. My bones are just fine, thank you. Osteoporosis is a disease of old people.

Then, during the polar vortex in February 2019, a quick and simple slip on the ice resulted in multiple fractures and revealed serious underlying osteoporosis. Suddenly, I was WAY behind the eight ball, as they say.

I had been swimming in that great big river – De Nile/(Denial) – and found that I was now drowning as one health problem after another piled up (blood clot, hypertension, irregular heart rhythm). Although only 64, I felt like I aged 10 years during the year it took to recover from my fractures.

I had all kinds of doctors telling me to do things I didn’t want to do and others telling me I couldn’t do things I did want to do.

Yes, Prevention Is the Better Way

And some of it could have been prevented or the severity lessened if I had paid attention earlier.

Four years later, I still feel like I am swimming upstream to regain my health. Why, oh why, didn’t I take my calcium and vitamin D, and exercise more? I learned, the hard way, that it’s so much better to prevent a health problem than try to cure it.

As they say, every great journey begins with a single step, and I have taken the first step: I have climbed out of that great big river onto the opposite shore and am no more indulging in denial. I am embracing my aging self, while fighting hard to make up what I lost through my foolishness.

I don’t intend to lose any more time – or bone density! – and have begun to fight as hard to regain and maintain my health as I once fought against the idea of aging.

While I once scoffed at the idea of eating six prunes a day for stronger bones, I now accept there is scientific evidence for it so I never neglect my prune intake. I have switched to drinking almond milk (more calcium than regular milk), improved my diet in other ways, and added new exercises to my daily routine – and stuck with them.

I See Progress

And I’m happy to report some good progress. I have actually been able to reverse some of my osteoporosis (hips, spine) to osteopenia. Still a problem to monitor, but progress nevertheless.

Although I didn’t get smart until I was 64, I’m still only 67 and from what I hear, that’s the new middle age. I intend to be in good enough shape to enjoy it!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Did you experience any degree of denial as you moved through the aging process? How did it hurt you? What are you doing differently now?

Guilt is something that nearly all of us struggle with at one time or another. Sometimes in small ways – but other times, feelings of guilt can be so strong that they can become debilitating.

There are endless reasons why we can feel guilty about something. For example, you might feel bad that you can’t spend more time with your family because of your work. Or perhaps there have been times when you haven’t treated someone very fairly and wish you’d handled things differently.

Though guilt can be a useful emotion because it helps to keep our moral compass in check, it can also be a difficult burden to carry – one that can gnaw away at us and drag us down if left unmanaged. It’s not uncommon for people suffering from intense guilt to isolate themselves, turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, or act angrily or irrationally.

So what exactly is guilt and how can we deal with it?

What Is Guilt?

Guilt is a natural, self-focussed emotion that we tend to feel when we’ve failed to meet a particular standard. This standard could be self-imposed, such as not being true to our values or beliefs – or one that is more widely recognised by society, such as calling to work sick when you aren’t actually ill and leaving someone else to cover your work.

When we feel guilty, we tend to get an uncomfortable gut feeling that we’ve done something wrong. This feeling may also be accompanied by regret that we didn’t act differently.

Some guilt can be considered ‘healthy’, which usually means that it’s rational and proportionate to the way we’ve acted. Its purpose is to encourage us to repair mistakes that we’ve made and discourage us from making the same mistakes in future.

For example, you might feel guilty that you were rude to a friend when you were in a bad mood, which could lead you to apologise and make an effort to find a healthy outlet for your bad mood next time to prevent this from happening again.

There are also forms of guilt that can be considered ‘unhealthy’. Usually, this is guilt that’s misplaced, irrational, or disproportionate. An example of this is feeling guilty that you’re healthy, happy, and doing well when someone else is suffering – even though you have no control over their situation.

Sometimes healthy guilt and unhealthy guilt also overlap. Some people feel guilty about completely reasonable things, but they find that the size of the guilt and the length of time they feel guilty for becomes unhealthy and irrational.

4 Tips for Coping with Guilt

At some point – whether our guilt is healthy or unhealthy – we need to learn to let it go if we want to move forward with our lives.

Luckily, there are some things we can do to help with this…

Identify Whether Your Guilt Is Appropriate

The first and most important thing to do is identify what you feel guilty about, and whether the guilt you’re feeling is an appropriate response. To help make things a little clearer, it can help to write these points down.

If you feel guilty because you’ve been hurtful or offensive to yourself or someone else, then this is usually a sign that you have some amends to make and some behaviour to be changed. So, rather than wallowing in guilt, making these changes can become your next mission and focus.

If you find that there are no amends you can make or changes to be made, then it’s likely that your guilt is misplaced or disproportionate.

This could apply to someone who has recently made a big and exciting decision in their lives, such as deciding to go on a mid-life gap year or change careers but is experiencing disapproval from others. This person’s guilt will likely come from choosing to live by their own standards and beliefs rather than someone else’s, and feeling as though they are letting others down as a result.

If this sort of scenario sounds familiar, it can be helpful to remind yourself that you can’t please everyone – and to make a conscious decision to work on letting your guilt go, so it doesn’t detract from your happiness.

Affirmations can be helpful here. Try saying or writing down, “I have nothing to feel guilty for. I’m a good person.” This might feel difficult at first, but science tells us that with practice and perseverance, we can start to believe it.

Make Amends, Learn from Your Mistakes, and Change Your Behaviour

If you decide that your guilt is rational, then it’s important to start thinking about what you can do to improve the situation.

For those of us who struggle not to let guilt consume them, this step can be particularly helpful – as it can give us something else to focus on other than how bad we feel.

If you can, try to write down two or three realistic actions that can help you to make up for your mistake.

Perhaps you could write an apology letter to the person you hurt (even if that person is you!) and equip yourself with some alternative options for next time, to avoid hurting them again.

For example, if your problem is that you tend to speak or act very quickly without thinking, then it might help to work on slowing down your thought processes with some deep breathing exercises.

Remember That No One Is Perfect – and Mistakes Are Going to Happen

Sometimes, making amends and changes to your behaviour might not be enough to help you let go or lessen the guilt you’re feeling.

When this happens, it can also be useful to remind yourself that you’re human and every single person makes mistakes, regardless of how perfect their lives seem. While we might not make the same mistake twice, it’s inevitable that – as hard as we try not to – we will still make new mistakes, so it’s important to accept mistakes and guilt as an inevitable part of life.

We also can’t change what’s already happened, but we can continue learning and growing and become even better versions of ourselves.

Guilt is there to teach us lessons and help us be better people; not to cripple us and leave us stuck in the past. So, rather than losing yourself to days, weeks, or months of self-blame about what you should have done or what kind of person you are; try to focus on what kind of person you want to be tomorrow and how you can get there.

Forgive Yourself and Let Go

Showing yourself self-compassion and learning to forgive yourself is an important part of moving through guilt and taking care of your mental health.

It can be tempting to think that we need to punish ourselves and deprive ourselves of happiness when we’ve made a mistake – but this won’t solve anything, nor will it make you a better person.

If you’re struggling to forgive yourself, then it can help to visualise what forgiveness might feel like. How would you feel? And what actions would you take?

Our imaginations can be powerful tools for helping us to let go of bitterness and resentment towards ourselves and others. Imagining what could be can help us to move towards making that a reality.

You might also want to consider what you would say to a good friend who was in a similar situation. Ask yourself; would you really want them to beat themselves up like this – even after they’ve made amends and committed to changing their behaviour? Would you be kind to them? Then consider why you shouldn’t treat yourself in the same way.

As Dr Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, says, “When we give ourselves self-compassion, we are opening our hearts in a way that can transform our lives.”

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How do you deal with guilt? Has it ever prevented you from moving forward with your life? How did you overcome this?

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, STYLECASTER may receive an affiliate commission.

News flash: Heating up your hair too frequently is a big no-no. Hot temperatures from blow dryers, curling irons and flat irons can cause some serious damage to your hair’s cuticles and proteins. While your hair may look nice at first from the heated treatments, over time, you may realize that the only solution to repair your fried locks is to chop them off. Fortunately, there’s a better, safer option to achieve bouncy, voluminous curls without the heat, and it’s been all the rage on TikTok. 

Hair gurus and influencers alike have been showing off their best recommendations for getting beautiful curls without any heat. From viral satin curling rods from Kitsch to the Lululemon leggings hack, some are even posting how to get an “airplane blowout” so you arrive at your destination looking your best. 

There are so many products out there to choose from, and we know it can be pretty overwhelming to determine which ones will work best for your hair. Fortunately for you, we’ve scoured the Internet to figure out which products are most highly rated so you can shop with ease. Trust us—your hair will thank you.

Kitsch

Kitsch’s Satin Heatless Curling Set 

One of the most popular options out there, Kitsch’s Satin Heatless Curling Set went viral on TikTok for crafting some of the most perfect waves we’ve seen. Since it’s made of silk, you won’t see any frizz lingering when you take it out in the morning. It’s under $20, so it makes for a great gift too. 

Amazon

RobeCurls Satin Heatless Hair Curler Set

RobeCurls’ Satin Heatless Hair Curler is unlike the other headband curlers on the market; it features an adjustable wire to shape and secure hair. The curler creates 1–1 1/2-inch ringlets across most hair types. It works so effectively, one reviewer even felt confident enough to use it on her wedding day. The brand is also women-owned, environmentally conscious and Climate Neutral Certified.

Amazon

HRYYDS Upgraded Heatless Hair Curler

Amazon shoppers love this heatless hair curler from HRYYDS. Rated 4.6 stars, shoppers have said the curler is “so easy, it’s life changing!.” For only $20, you’ll receive the 100 percent cotton headband, two scrunchies and two duck clips for easy installation. While this pink set is adorable, if you’re more inclined to buy the purple or black options, you’ll just have to pay a few bucks more.

Amazon

Ivyu Heatless Curling Rod Headband

This heatless curling headband has over 5,000 five-star Amazon ratings from shoppers and comes in over a dozen colors like pink velvet, pink tie dye, black, champagne smile and beige. Each set comes with two hairdresser clips, two scrunchies, the headband and a claw clip to make nighttime routines easier. For under $10, the price can hardly be beat. One of many Amazon shoppers left a glowing review, writing “It doesn’t take long, it’s fast to put your hair into, it’s heatless, painless, easy to sleep in, and worth a shot.” 

Kitsch

Kitsch Satin Pillow Rollers

Kitsch’s Satin Pillow Rollers are a good alternative to the headband. All you need to do is roll your damp hair into the six rollers and link each of them up before you snap them into place. Once the sun rises, take them out and you’ll see gorgeous curls and waves without losing an ounce of beauty sleep. 

Amazon

Willbond 30 Piece Hair Wave Styling Kit

These wave curlers bring me back to my cheerleading days—and I can assure you, they really work. They’re certainly not as comfortable to sleep in as the silk headbands on this list, but they are tried and true. Your hair will look cute and crimped in the morning, ready to face the day with you frizz-free.  

Amazon

Yeelen Heatless Hair Curling Rod Headband for Long Hair 

Amazon reviewers say the Yeelen Heatless Hair Curling Rod Headband is “seriously the best $10 I’ve spent in a long time.” You get the headband, claw clip, and two scrunchies, along with a choice of several color options. This headband, unlike some of the others on this list, is compact and travel-friendly, meaning it can be packed away and stored in your toiletry bag without ruining the integrity of the product. If you’re a frequent flyer, this may be the best option for you. 

Zuvi

Zuvi Halo Hair Dryer

If you hate sleeping on wet hair, this tool is our best recommendation. While this option isn’t totally heatless, the Zuvi Halo Hair Dryer uses minimal heat through infrared light to mimic the way water would naturally evaporate in the sun and wind. As a result, your hair won’t see much damage and will be healthier, shinier, and 109 percent more hydrated, according to the brand. Reviewers love it too, with one writing, “I’ve been using the Tuvi for about a month and it drys hair just as quickly without the extra heat. My hair is much softer and breakage is way less.”

Lilysilk

Lilysilk Heatless Silk Curling Headband & Scrunchie Set

Lilysilk offers another great heatless tool that’s similar to the popular Kitsch headband. They recommend letting your hair air-dry 80 percent of the way, clipping in the headband and securing it with the mulberry silk scrunchies. Much like the other options on this list, your hair will look luxurious and frizz-free without the hassle or the damage. Win-win!

Anthropologie

Mermade Hair Heatless Curls Kit

Mermade’s Heatless Curls Kit is designed with mulberry silk, which is naturally hypoallergenic for sensitive skin and washable, so you can reuse this headband again and again. It’s lightweight and soft, making it the ideal sleeping companion. After a few hours wrapped up, your hair will fall out smoother, silkier, and shiner than before. 

Drybar

Drybar High Tops Self-Grip Rollers

Drybar is known for its amazing in-person blowout bars, and now they’re offering a way for you to get the same results at home. These self-grip rollers roll easily into your hair to build volume overnight or after a day of wearing. Since there are no clips, you won’t see creases, and you’ll avoid pulling and damaging your hair. Plus, if you have longer or shorter hair, Drybar offers two different sizes so you can achieve the perfect curl no matter the length. They’re also rated over 4 stars on Amazon, and reviewers love the volume. One reviewer writes, “These rollers are the best I’ve ever had. They roll up and are incredibly easy to remove. They produce so much volume and shine.”

Walmart.

Kim Kimble Silky Twist Hair Rollers

A bit different than the silk headbands, these silky twist hair rollers help create manageable curls and waves overnight while preventing hair breakage. After you section your hair, wet or dry, you twist the hair around the twister roller, and twist the ends together to keep the hair in place – no clips needed. For bigger curls and waves, the brand recommends you use larger sections. 

Ariana Madix’s Red Ombre Tiered Dress

Vanderpump Rules Season 10 Episode 8 Fashion

Ariana Madix’s red ombre tiered dress in Mexico at Scheana’s welcome dinner is one I only got a quick full glimpse of, but it was plenty. And while she was seeing red at James for putting his hands on a stranger, all I could think about was getting my hands on this dress before my next vacay.

The Realest Housewife,

Big Blonde Hair

Click Here to Shop her Rococo Sand Dress

Originally posted at: Ariana Madix’s Red Ombre Tiered Dress