Can you touch your toe to your forehead?

First of all let me start this blog by saying never will you come to a Pilates session and get asked to touch your toe to your forehead!  It’s not something we ever do or even try to do.  That being said I have a story about how trying to touch my toe to my forehead gave me some new goals for my 2016 Pilates practice!

During a semi-private session one of my clients said to the other something like, “I can’t believe you can’t touch your toe to your forehead!”  She then grabbed her foot and put her big Toe on her forehead.  We all laughed and I mentioned how impressed I was!  She said,  “You can do this right?”.   Hmmmmm….I didn’t think sooo and surely wasn’t going to try it right then.   But of course after I got home that evening I had to try it.

I was sitting reading with my kids and asked them if they could do it.  They easily grabbed their foot and put it on their forehead( not surprising really).  I grabbed my foot and tried really hard to get it to my forehead…….it did not go easily but I was close.  So I curled my spine toward my foot a little bit more and I could get it there( although for merely a second!) My abdominal muscles were working so hard to curl my spine forward that they started getting a cramping like sensation!! Maybe I needed to try the other foot.  I should have know that I naturally grabbed my less tight leg/hip to try it the first time and there was no way my right foot was getting to my forehead.

I’m a little bit competitive (especially with myself) and really don’t like to not be able to do things. So immediately my brain went to, ” Why is this so hard for me and why is it soo much harder for me on my right side?”.  A quick scan of my body and I knew that it was hard because of tightness in my legs and hips and imbalances between the two sides.  I know my right side is my tighter side and when I am thinking of it or focusing on it I do try to find ways to balance it out (but maybe I need to do that more often?).

Soo what’s a Pilates instructor to do?  I have a new goal for 2016….. lengthen, stretch and balance so that maybe I can touch my right toe to my forehead.  Helping others create balance in their bodies through movement is what I do on a daily basis, so how fun and fitting that one of my own goals is to balance out my body!!  I snapped a picture of my toe touching forehead attempts, again not because I want to impress you or want you to try this, but because I want to use this as a small marker of how I’m doing at creating balance in my body as the year progresses.