Not airplane mode. Off. There’s a difference, and my body knows it the moment I stop pretending otherwise.
I used to scroll up until about ten minutes before a client arrived. Email, social, whatever - the usual low-grade noise. I told myself it didn’t matter because I was still thinking about Pilates, still mentally reviewing the session plan. But thinking about Pilates and being present for Pilates are not the same thing, and I know that better than anyone.
The habit started accidentally. One afternoon my phone died before a session and I had no charger nearby. I sat in the studio for twenty minutes with nothing to look at. At first it was uncomfortable in the way that silence always is when you’re not used to it. Then something settled. By the time my client walked in, I was actually there - not arriving mid-session the way I sometimes did, catching up to myself around the Footwork series.
That session was noticeably different. I caught a compensation in her left hip during Single Leg Circles that I’d been glossing over for weeks. Not because I’d suddenly gotten smarter. Because I wasn’t still half-processing whatever I’d been looking at twenty minutes earlier.
The visual cortex doesn’t hand your attention back to you the second you put the screen down. There’s a lag. Researchers studying attention and screen exposure have documented this - the residue of digital stimulation persists after the stimulus is removed. I don’t need a study to believe it. I just needed that dead phone.
Now the thirty minutes before I teach are deliberate. I change clothes, check the studio temperature, look at my session notes once, and then I’m done with devices. Sometimes I walk the length of the room. Sometimes I just stand at the Reformer and feel the resistance in the springs with my hands.
That last part matters more than it sounds. I’m not warming up. I’m arriving.
And the difference shows up in the first exercise every time.