What's New on Embodia - Pilates for Pelvic Health

Overview

Pilates is far more than a fitness trend—it began as a rehabilitation method and continues to offer powerful strategies for supporting pelvic health today. In this free course, Rochenda Howard will explore how Joseph Pilates’ original principles connect with modern physiotherapy research, clinical practice, and digital education tools.

We’ll revisit Pilates’ roots in rehabilitation and the concept of the pelvis as the body’s “powerhouse”—the centre from which posture, alignment, and efficient movement flow. Building on this foundation, the session will highlight how pelvic stability relies on two key muscle control strategies:

• Anterior support: abdominal layer recruitment, building from the deeper lower abdominals.

• Posterior support: gluteal layer recruitment, with a focus on the deeper, lower gluteals.

You’ll also learn how the diaphragm and pelvic floor integrate into both strategies, creating a dynamic system for load transfer and movement efficiency.

Drawing from recent research, we’ll examine how neuromuscular dysfunction—especially differentiation within the gluteus maximus—impacts pelvic alignment and contributes to pain. You’ll see how neural inhibition, central sensitization, and neuroplastic changes in the brain can alter motor control, making posture and stability harder to restore.

The clinical takeaway: traditional Pilates exercises may not automatically retrain these systems if the pelvis is out of alignment or pain is present. Instead, success lies in process-driven retraining—targeting the lower gluteus maximus to act as a sling under the pelvis, supporting neutral alignment and restoring efficient movement patterns.

Finally, this session will introduce Clinic Academy, a customizable platform for building and sharing online education. You’ll discover how Pilates-informed pelvic health strategies can be integrated into your own branded courses, patient education programs, and memberships to expand your clinical impact.

Learning Objectives

In this session you will learn:

1. The rehabilitation origins of Pilates and its focus on the pelvis as the body’s powerhouse.

2. The layered muscle strategies that support pelvic stability: anterior (abdominal) and posterior (gluteal) systems.

3. How the diaphragm and pelvic floor reinforce both strategies.

4. Insights from current research on gluteal differentiation, neural inhibition, and neuroplastic changes in pain.

5. Practical applications for retraining muscle function and restoring neutral pelvic alignment.

6. How to leverage Clinic Academy to host your own courses and pre-set programs (including Questionnaires) for patients and the general public. 

Audience

This course is ideal for pelvic health physiotherapists, occupational therapists, women’s health specialists, movement educators, clinic owners, and any clinician who wants to grow beyond one-on-one care and foster a thriving pelvic health community.

Evidence-Informed Practice in Context

One of the strengths of this community is the thoughtful dialogue that emerges when we bring evidence and practice together. During the live webinar, a participant asked:

"We now know that there is no longer strong evidence that pelvic instability is part of the pregnancy-related PGP dialogue. The pelvis is Stable, Safe and Self-Manageable, as demonstrated in the paper by Jodie Pulsifer et al. (2022). How do you reconcile your approach in Pilates with the building evidence that instability is an unhelpful narrative in pregnancy and PGP?"

This kind of critical, evidence-informed questioning is exactly what moves our profession forward. As you go through the course, we invite you to hold this balance in mind: honoring Pilates’ rehabilitation roots and practical strategies for retraining, while also integrating the evolving research and language that shape contemporary pelvic health practice.

We’re excited to have you here—let’s dive in!