Monthly Focus - August

 Whole Body Movement

Pilates is about integration: integrating movement into a flowing whole body experience, integrating the mind and body to create clarity and purpose and integrating mind, body and spirit to create a life of balance.

In contrast to other exercise methods that focus on isolating specific muscles, the Pilates Method looks at the body as a whole unit.  Joseph Pilates believed that developing the minor muscles naturally helped to strengthen the major muscles.   But, once someone starts practicing the Pilates Method of Body Conditioning, one realizes that it is much more than that.  It is a system that focuses on complete coordination of body, mind and spirit.

At Body Balance Institute we practice and teach whole body movement.  Whole Body Movement means nothing works independently; all body parts work together.  We are a sum of the parts, but no part of our body can work optimally as an independent unit. 

 “I invented all these machines in Germany. I used to exercise rheumatic patients.  I thought, why use my strength?  So I made a machine to do it for me.  Look, you see?  It resists your movements, in just the right way, so those inner muscles really have to work against it.  That way you can concentrate on the movement!  You must always do it slowly and smoothly... Then your whole body is in it. ”

–Joseph Pilates

Teaching to Learn

By: Emily Floyd

For as long as I can remember, I have been a teacher. As a kid while many youngsters played dress up, or played with their dolls, I was busy teaching classes with my dolls and stuffed animals. There was never a dull moment. Assignments were always due, corrections were always applied, and feedback was always given to my students. I’ve always known that teaching has been the driving force within my passion for movement, and living well. The desire to teach Pilates and connect with clients came rather simple and I’m so inspired by how teaching Pilates has influenced me.

My Apprenticeship at Body Balance Institute has allowed me the privilege of working with a variety of clientele at all times. Some advanced and some beginners in their pilates practice. I’ve had the opportunity to teach privates, semi-privates, and classes at both BBI’s main studio location and also work at PGA Tour Headquarters and PGA Entertainment. I teach Pilates Mat Classes, as well as other mixed apparatus classes (Reformer, Chair, Barrel, and Trapeze / Tower). From the start of my journey into teaching Pilates, I knew that I wanted to learn it all. Having the knowledge and experience and working with the four main pieces of equipment that Joseph Pilates engineered and created was important to me. Each piece works in a different way, yet preserves the integrity of the method and pushes the physical body to different degrees. This opens the form up to a variety of individuals with different fitness and wellness goals.

Last August, is when I began my journey as a Pilates Instructor. It was July when I officially decided

to move back to Jacksonville, Florida after living in New York City for two and half years. The decision did not come easy. Packing up and leaving my community and everything I loved about the culture of NYC, only to return “home” was not how I pictured pursuing my dreams. But I wouldn't have it any other way at this point. I can remember emailing BBI for the first time and asking about enrolling in education programs through Balanced Body. I knew before I decided to move, that it was integral to my education that I connect with the Pilates Community in Jacksonville. For months I researched for the best option in Jacksonville to begin my training. That search led me right to BBI. Not long after I emailed BBI to get more information about registration for training. Later, I receive a call explaining that the studio was starting an Apprenticeship Program. Vicki Sullivan, the studio owner then interviewed me and that's when I knew this was just the community I was looking for!

A few weeks into August I emailed my “Apprenticeship Application” into BBI with the hopes of being accepted into the program. I was called back for a second Interview and then packed my bags and moved to Jacksonville. (Fun fact, before moving back to Jacksonville, I went straight to Atlanta, GA to complete my first Pilates Certification Course - Mat 1!) Little did I know, I would be the first to officially be a “BBI Apprentice”. Along with many perks, such as free BBI Pilates Classes, Workshop Discounts, a part time job, and Mentor currently working as a Master Trainer in Pilates, the Apprenticeship has come with it’s challenges. Always being under the eyes of outstanding instructors, taking time to study and complete personal practice hours while teaching full time, and fully funding my education and apprenticeship not so easy... It has all come at a steep price, but I have worked very hard to save money so that I could pursue my Full Comprehensive Pilates Certification.

One of the biggest take-aways from being an Apprentice is to always give yourself permission to “mess up” and continue to learn as a teacher. No one, not even the greatest teachers, will ever be perfect. Whether you learn something from your failures, or you learn something from another teacher or course you take, they are both just as valuable. There are so many wonderful continuing education courses out there to delve into once the “main chapter” of the Pilates Certification Coursework s complete. In fact, through Balanced Body, we are required to do at least one continuing education course annually. As Joe used to say (according to PMA). ”Remember Rome was not built in a day.", and "Patience and persistence are vital qualities in the ultimate successful accomplishment of any worthwhile endeavor." Giving oneself permission to “stop and start” regularly is so important, and a key part of growth. All things typically begin as merely a thought or idea, then transpire into

reality after a great deal of planning and discipline combined. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy and critic. With being a dancer and semi-perfectionist, it’s been hard at times to allow myself permission to make mistakes. It can be VERY intimidating working under the same roof as some of the incredibly intelligent and experienced Instructors here at BBI. There is most definitely a standard, and fulfilling that has always been a priority for me. Just a few months ago, I was humbled by my expectations that I had placed on myself and hit a learning curve. I am grateful for having a great relationship with Balanced Body Master Trainer, Kristen Sullivan. Her guidance and mentorship throughout this process has provided me with perspective and encouraged me to always push myself as an instructor. Among many things, I will always remember her saying “Look at the body in front of you”. That’s where you begin. Everyday we learn something new about the practice through our amazing clients! We are so lucky to work in a field where we get to truly listen and see each other. Every session and class is an experience for both the teacher and the client. You build relationships, and it’s so refreshing to really get to know your clients. Pilates is so much more than just exercise and that’s one of the main reasons I absolutely love teaching it. It changes people’s lives.

It’s hard to believe that July is already here and that by the end of August, it will be a year since I started the process of becoming a “Certified Pilates Instructor”! If all goes as planned I hope to be finishing up my Apprenticeship and complete my Final Certification Test Out by September. I will then take the PMA(Pilates Method Alliance) online test so that I am also PMA certified. My hope for the future with Pilates is to be able to travel and teach Pilates to communities around the world that need it. I have an interest in working within the scope of the Medical Field with “special populations” (those with either Motoneuron System Disorders, those that may deal with body image issues, and also athletes and dancers). I am hoping in the next three years or so to begin my journey into Graduate School in pursuit of developing programs for those populations of people. I would like to provide them with better access to both Pilates and Gyrotonic® practices. I’m not sure where life will take me next, but I am so glad that Jacksonville has and will always be home for me. I highly recommend the Apprenticeship through Body Balance Institute. I was able to immediately begin my teaching hours and the facility has been incredible to practice and teach at. The community of clients and teachers is one like no other and energy is truly uplifting and so encouraging every day! Getting to work right alongside and take class regularly from Balanced Body Master Trainers and other professionals has been such an inspiration to me, as both a student and a teacher. 

According to Pilates Method Alliance (PMA), “ First generation Pilates teachers, who knew Joe, maintain that he and Clara would be very happy and proud of the popularity and growth of Pilates. However, it is less clear how he might feel about the influx of "quickie trainings" available for would-be instructors wanting to be trained in a weekend or two. Joe worked at length with his own teachers, allowing them to assist and then finally teach after sometimes as long as 2 or 3 years of training and apprenticeship." Having the opportunity to jumpstart my Pilates Instructor Career through a program like the Apprenticeship through BBI, was everything I was looking for when I started my search for coursework. It’s so neat to me that in many ways this is the way Joe intended for Pilates Teachers to learn the method and become teachers. My last workshop will be July 23-24th, can't believe it! I feel confident with the material I have learned over the past year and am thrilled to see what’s on the next page of this Chapter!

Flips, Flight and Freedom

By: Tara Scalesi

When I was a kid, I used to love watching the Olympics with my family and marveling at the girls (and boys) who would run at full speed onto a padded mat and begin a series of seemingly impossible, continuous flips. They were incredible and I was enamored with all the crazy things they could do with their bodies. I remember begging my parents to be a part of a gymnastics program, but my mother, fearing that I would break every single bone in my body, refused to sign me up. “You’re too tall to be a gymnast anyway,” she’d say. And I guess that was true. I was always taller than everyone in my classes and in my mother’s defense; I was not exactly the most graceful kid either. I had a slew of silly injuries (with the scars to prove them) from things like flying over the handlebars of my bicycle or running into walls. I was a bit of a mess. Her fears were not unwarranted, and I really could never blame her for saying no to a sport that would have left her in fits of worry and that would have probably sent us more than a few times to the emergency room. 

Still, I wanted to flip like those Olympic competitors did. So without a training program, I found my own ways to fulfill my need of seeing the world upside down. My best friend/next-door-neighbor/fellow inversion enthusiast, Mary, and I were climbing/jumping/flipping maniacs. We would find ourselves regularly at the tops of trees, usually upside down, and we would practice handstands and headstands in the yard and put on Cartwheel shows with choreographed rolls and tumbles and tricks. On rainy days when we were trapped inside, we would stack up the blankets, pillows, and comforters on the couch in my parents’ den and go running through the kitchen to tumble onto our makeshift cushion mats. The possibilities were always endless. 

So, as you can imagine, we were absolutely ecstatic when Mary’s mom came home one day with a trampoline. We would finally be able to add flight to our moves! We spent hours upon hours after school every single day on Mary’s trampoline, teaching ourselves back flips, front flips, walk overs, hand-springs, twisty flips in the air, just everything. We had so much fun. We would even played this (admittedly dangerous) game that we created for the sole purpose of getting as much height as possible. We would bounce simultaneously into the air 3 times and then land on our backs together, but because the timing of the jump/landing we could never be exactly in sync. One person would inevitably land a split second before the next, and the impact would shoot the second person high up into the trees. It was definitely crazy, but it was an unmatchable rush. Suspended in air like that, time would stand still for a second that felt like it could go on forever. It was so peaceful in those moments.

It was a little under 10 years later that I took my first Aerial Yoga class in NYC. After having tried a series of very interesting classes, like underwater spinning (yes, this is a real class) and cardio fencing, I stumbled upon this very interesting looking class where people were wrapped up and twisted in fabric and hanging around that they were calling “Aerial”. The discovery alone tapped into something I hadn’t even realized I had been missing, and I had one of those “OOOOOO, I want to try THAT” kind of moments. I went in to my first class with absolutely no experience. At the time, I had very little flexibility or upper body strength, but I didn't care. I went in and thought, “I’m probably going to be pretty bad at this.” And I was, but it didn’t matter - I loved it immediately. 

Aerial, or Elevated Movement, as we call it here at BBI, can be useful in a lot of ways in our bodies. There is a lot to be said about all of its very real benefits for the body, specifically the ways in which it encourages blood flow to change, and allows our bodies to explore shapes and movements we would not ordinarily achieve in our upright, gravity-fighting every day lives. However, the thing I connect to most about it, personally, is that it is FUN. It’s so easy as adults to get stuck in our heads, telling ourselves the rules about what it is to be an adult. What we should and should not do, or can and cannot do. We get too accustomed to telling ourselves that we “can’t” do things. 

“Oh, wow, I could never do anything like that!” is a statement I hear a lot when people first look at a picture of someone taking a class like this. Let me be the first to promise you that this class is so much more than crazy upside down flips. I promise you, the entire class is NOT inverted. We swing, we hang, we flip, sure. But a lot of it is grounding, too. There’s a lot of work with balance, strengthening, restoration, and stillness. We work a lot to open the spaces in our bodies that we tend to close off for protection and self-preservation. Some of this class feels like a deep tissue massage and will help to release toxins from our systems. Some of it is floating silently, focusing on breath and falling into deep relaxation or meditation. It is a space to connect and bring awareness to the profound work that our bodies are doing every second of every day to keep us moving. I find the practice of Elevated Movement to be playful and exploratory, but also deeply connected. I hope for each and every client who experiences this class that they find joy and freedom in moving their bodies in whatever way makes it feel good, light and free. 

If I’ve successfully de-bunked your fears that this class may be to physically challenging for you (And I hope I have!), and you’re STILL feeling slightly fearful because you are worried you wouldn’t be any “good”, I encourage you to please, kindly let that go as well. Everyone is welcome in this space. We have designed these classes for all levels, and private sessions are even more individually focused to each client’s needs. There is always a way to work on something, no matter the level. As always, it is less about completing difficult poses or competing with what someone else can do, or even getting yourself to reach a specific end-goal in any way. I encourage everyone to approach this work with lightness of heart, an open mind, and a little extra faith in yourself. Most importantly, allow yourself the permission to play! Reconnect with the fearless little kid you were once upon a time. There’s something magical about being suspended in air. Give yourself to the chance to fly! 

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Monthly Focus - July

Precision

Precision, or exactness of movement is what sets Pilates apart from other exercise systems.  Precision requires focus, awareness and controlled action.  Every movement has a purpose and every cue or instruction is important to the success of the movement.  In Pilates, we use fewer repetitions that are executed with control and precision, performing one or a few perfect movement rather than several haphazard ones.  The end result is efficient, graceful movement that appears effortless.

“Concentrate on the correct movements each time you exercise, lest you do them improperly and thus lose all vital benefits.  Correctly executed and mastered to the point of subconscious reaction, these exercises will reflect grace and balance in your routine activities.”

–Joseph Pilates

Massage, Pilates, Qi Gong and Beyond

By: Erin Johnson

My first love of the human form and all of its possibilities began for me 13 years ago with Massage. The idea that we begin to learn about ourselves by first pressing up against the world around us is, in its inception, self awareness that grows from those moments during massage when you realize you were holding on to more tension than you were consciously aware. Part of my personal evolution through bodywork has been to begin to teach people the tools of how to let go of those places of tension.

Pilates, my first love of a movement system, not just for the principles behind it but also because I have a thing for equipment! Especially equipment that helps us find support while we are searching for freedom in our physical form. Joseph Pilates was brilliant at engineering these pieces. One of my favorite pieces of equipment is the Reformer. If I could narrow it down to what intrigues me most about the reformer, first it would be the ability to teach reach and expansion. Teaching to reach into the straps, whether with arms or legs gives us something to press into and to reach for. For me, bodywork is ultimately about self-awareness. If we learn about ourselves by pressing up against the world around us, the design of the Reformer is where it's at! Anytime we are reaching into something we begin to create space in our bodies. We want length as well as strength and we want to create it without building more compression or tension into our system.

Another beautiful concept taught to me within Pilates is that of Axial Elongation. To find support wrapping our spine helps increase the spaces between the vertebrae.  We are looking for balance in the musculature surrounding the spine. We want the back and the front to be working together, so as to not become imbalanced in our work. Awareness of equality in the tissues is the beginning of resting our mind in the soft tissue during movement. This practice in itself helps to increase our ability to be self-aware.  Imbalances create stagnation within the system. Stagnation limits our ability to move freely and to our full potential.

This personal progression of self-awareness has traversed through Massage into Pilates and now into Qigong. It is not that I have deemed Massage unnecessary, I still hold my first Love quite close; and certainly, we need the physical work to maintain a strong structure, it is that we start to become an active participant in the shaping and healing of ourselves. We no longer lie on a table and say “fix me”. We come to understand that the real changes in ourselves come when we take what we have learned on the table and in the studio and use it to continue to grow and heal in all aspects of our lives.  My part as a Massage Therapist and now a teacher of movement is to help create space within you. You truly are the healer of yourself.

YES, there is a whole other territory to explore in bodywork and beyond. Qi Gong is my fresh new love affair. Internal work is the aim in Qi Gong, meaning there is more going on inside the body than what is happening externally. Qi Gong was introduced to me 6 years ago by an acupuncturist and it was a way for me to, ahem, relax! My understanding has and continues to be deepened by my

tutelage under Damo Mitchell and the many talented teachers within Lotus Nei Gong School of the Daoist Arts. While in the beginning it is used to soften and connect with your breath, it is a much deeper process! If you allow this practice to take root in you it can become a bit of an obsession.... okay that sounds a bit extreme, we will call it a gentle obsession! Gong can be loosely translated as a skill gained through work, and work it is! It is a consistent and dedicated practice that offers us the gifts of experiencing the human form and all of its possibilities through a very different cultural framework.

Qi Gong holistically connects the body and strengthens our awareness of the entire system while letting go of habitual tensions and patterns. It is creating, what my teacher refers to as a connected wetsuit. If you have ever read anything about Qi Gong you are most likely to come across the terms the "three treasures"; Jing, Qi, and Shen. It would be considered fractured and incomplete to not recognize that the consciousness, the physical, and the force that sits in connection between the two are equally important in our work.  This practice also embodies the concepts of Sung, the art of letting go, and Ting, the art of fully integrating our awareness through the whole.  

Creating space in our physical form is our first connection. So while Pilates offered me the ability to understand the importance of the structure to support space within the body, it is Qi gong that has given me the empirical understanding of the power that is intrinsic within that space.

We never gain anything in adding and we do not lose anything by letting go.