We are all familiar with the idea that exercise can add years to your life—and improve the quality of those years as well. It lowers your risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, dementia, depression, and more.

Across exercise practices and routines, we often hear a lot about “challenging the core”—but what is the core exactly and what does it do? Those deep muscles spanning from the hips to the ribs help to keep your back strong and supported and provide a solid foundation to keep your neck and shoulders (sitting atop your core) and hips, knees and feet (sitting below your core) in balance and functioning with fluidity and ease. Bringing more awareness to your core can promote better breath, a healthy pelvic floor, a lengthened spine, easeful posture, increased balance and coordination.

Pilates is one of the safest and most effective ways to work toward all the above goals. Each Pilates exercise has you moving in connection with your center. This is a main Pilates principle. Pilates is a system of exercise that started a century ago by Joseph Pilates to address his own physical ailments. Having rickets and asthma as a child, he developed a program he called Contrology (now coined Pilates) to strengthen and rehabilitate himself, which he then shared with the world.