Yoga and Pilates – What’s the difference?
Both Yoga and Pilates support strength, mobility, and overall wellbeing, but they approach the body and mind in slightly different ways.
Yoga mobilizes, aligns, stabilizes, strengthens, and releases the body while keeping the breath at the center of the practice. Through mindful movement and breathing, yoga helps regulate the nervous system and cultivate stability in both body and mind. On a deeper level, the practice helps us release stored tension, soften patterns held in the body, and create space for insight and integration, making the body a gateway to greater awareness.
At our yoga school, classes such as Original Hot 90, Hot Core 60, and Hot Strength 60 follow the Hatha Krama system, where postures are built progressively. Each pose prepares the body for the next, so that when we arrive at a peak posture, the body is ready, aligned, and supported. The heat, adapted to each class, helps muscles relax, improves focus, and supports healing in body and mind.
Yin Yoga complements this by improving mobility while bringing mindfulness into the practice. Yin works with the Chinese meridian system and focuses on the body’s subtle energy centers, creating space for transformative work and energetic release.
Vinyasa Flow classes are breath-centered, flowing, and often faster-paced, linking postures in a continuous, creative sequence. Unique to our school, Vinyasa Krama follows an ancient spiritual system of transformation, building practices in small, progressive, and logical steps that support personal growth and embodied transformation.
Pilates, in contrast, focuses on precise muscle strengthening and stability. Classes follow a pathway of mobilizing the body, strengthening specific muscles, and then releasing tension. Pilates is excellent for core strength, posture, and balanced muscular support.
We offer three Pilates styles:
Gentle Pilates – slower paced, supportive movements ideal for beginners or recovery.
Pilates – All Levels – a balanced class combining mobility, strength, and stability.
Strong Pilates – a more challenging class that builds deeper strength and endurance.
While some of the more physical yoga practices may feel similar to Pilates, yoga is traditionally part of a wider system. The physical postures (āsanas) are only one element of the eight limbs of yoga, which guide how we relate to ourselves, others, and our inner awareness:
Yama – how we relate to the world around us
Niyama – how we relate to ourselves
Āsana – physical yoga postures
Prāṇāyāma – working with the breath for energetic balance
Pratyāhāra – turning the senses inward
Dhāraṇā – focusing the mind
Dhyāna – meditation
Samādhi – absorption, a state of deep connection and bliss
Through this holistic approach, yoga offers strength, stability, awareness, and transformation — from body to mind, and beyond.
Natasha Gunn/ Yoga Therapist
