Have you ever wondered how you can reach overhead without looking? Or how you know your knee is bent when your eyes are closed? This sense is called proprioception, and it helps us understand where our bodies are and how they are moving in space.
Receptors in our muscles, skin, and joints send information to the nervous system about position, movement, and force. The brain interprets these signals to help us sense our bodies without having to watch every movement we make (Proske & Gandevia, 2012).
This is part of what makes learning movement so interesting. We practice an exercise while also learning what that movement feels like. In one study, participants became better at detecting small changes in hand position after practicing a reaching task. The improvement was specific to the area where they practiced, suggesting that our sense of position can adapt alongside movement learning (Wong et al., 2011).
There is research connecting this to Pilates, too. In a small randomized trial, healthy young adults completed six weeks of online mat Pilates. The Pilates group showed improvements in trunk position sense and core muscular endurance. While these findings cannot tell us how every person will respond, they suggest that Pilates may support our ability to sense the position of our trunk (Suner-Keklik et al., 2022).
For me, this offers another reason to make room for noticing sensation in a movement practice. When I ask a client to notice where their pelvis is or describe how an exercise feels, I want them to become curious about their own movement. Proprioception gives us a useful way to understand that process: there is a constant exchange of information between the body and brain, even during movements we barely think about.
References
Proske, U., & Gandevia, S. C. (2012). The proprioceptive senses: Their roles in signaling body shape, body position and movement, and muscle force. Physiological Reviews, 92(4), 1651–1697. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00048.2011
Suner-Keklik, S., Numanoglu-Akbas, A., Cobanoglu, G., Kafa, N., & Guzel, N. A. (2022). An online Pilates exercise program is effective on proprioception and core muscle endurance in a randomized controlled trial. Irish Journal of Medical Science, 191(5), 2133–2139. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-021-02840-8
Wong, J. D., Wilson, E. T., & Gribble, P. L. (2011). Spatially selective enhancement of proprioceptive acuity following motor learning. Journal of Neurophysiology, 105(5), 2512–2521. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00949.2010
