Pilates is great for you. Will it make you like yourself?

There is something my Pilates teacher says when I’m on the brink of giving up.

My class will be in the middle of an inner thigh circuit, having done what feels like hundreds of micro squat “pulses.” My thighs ache. My calves are burning. A bead of sweat forms at my brow and drips down onto my mat. I’m craving the sweet release of death, or maybe just water.

“Stay in your body!” he’ll yell, over the blasting pop music.

Stay in my body, stay in my body, stay in my body , I’ll chant in my head, testing the physical limits of what I feel capable of after work on a weeknight.

I’ve been going to this same mat Pilates class at my gym for two years now. I love it, or that’s what I tell myself as I count the minutes until it’s over. But it was only recently that I learned of reformer Pilates,