21/05/2026
"S**t..."
That’s what a young teacher I mentor thought to herself last week during a private session.
She had a new mover come in. Someone with a long history of heavy gym workouts. A self-proclaimed "strong" person who came to Pilates because she was experiencing knee pain.
At the end of a great session, my mentee asked a very genuine, well-intentioned question:
"Was there anything you found challenging today?"
The mover immediately tightened.
"By the way," she replied, "I may look like this (a little round) but I am strong."
My mentee realized she had unintentionally stepped on a landmine. The question was not wrong. But the impact on this specific human being was profound.
What actually happened here?
To a standard fitness trainer, this might just seem like a slightly defensive comment.
But when we look at a mover through a trauma-informed, pathokinetic lens, we see something else. We see the hidden psychological architecture of the body.
For this mover, "being strong" is not just a physical capability.
It is her armor.
It is the protective narrative she has used to survive, navigate gym culture, and carry herself through everyday life.
When asked what was "challenging," her nervous system equated that word with vulnerability. A direct threat to her armor—especially since she already felt self-conscious about her appearance. Her response was her nervous system rushing to repair the breach and re-establish safety boundaries.
Every sentence and word our movers say tells us exactly who they are, what they are and where they are at. We have to learn to sense it.
If a mover is hanging onto the identity of "strength" just to get through their day, a gentle, well-meaning question about "challenge" can trigger a defensive freeze.
How do we adjust this to keep the space safe, while still getting the clinical information we need for her knee rehabilitation?
We decouple vulnerability from identity.
We shift the focus away from her personal capability and ground it in objective, localized somatic feedback:
❌ Instead of: "What did you find challenging today?"
(This forces the nervous system to evaluate its own weakness.)
✓ Try: "How did you find that specific exercise for your knee?"
✓ Or: "What did your body notice when we adjusted the spring load on that sequence?"
By asking how she found a specific movement, we invite her to be a curious co-investigator of her own biomechanics. She gets to keep her armor of strength fully intact. We get the precise structural feedback we need to help her heal.
The invisible language of teaching is not written in anatomy textbooks. It is found in the space between what a mover says, what their nervous system senses, and how we choose our words.
📖 Coming Soon: This intersection—where pathokinesiology meets a somatic, nervous-system-first approach—is exactly what I’m mapping out in my upcoming resource: The Trauma-Informed Approach Guideline for Pilates Studio Owners and Practitioners.
It is designed to help movement professionals look beyond standard medical data, look into the human complexity of our movers, and build lasting safety that actually accelerates their physical rehabilitation goals.
Stay tuned for details on how to get your copy.
