Samsara Pilates and Pole Studio

going to move my blog...

2008-03-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

I have a live journal blog for another thing I do and I'm liking live journal better. I can use it easier and it lets me put live links in, so here's my new address

http://samsarapilates.livejournal.com/

Teaching matwork again

2008-03-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

I am finally not burnt out on matwork anymore.

Yesterday I taught a workshop on the fundamentals of pilates and how they apply to the mat. It was such fun. I do love helping students be able to do anyone's pilates safely and effectively. And I was able to incorporate some of my more evolving ideas of abdominal support into how I taught it, so that was wonderful.

I've decided to run a pilates class during the summer in the mornings. I already have it half full. That rocks! I love to teach students over a consecutive period of time so I can really impart to them a deep pattern.

I feel like, all the studying of apparatus took my energy for awhile. I am ready to integrate matwork again into the rest of what I am doing.

Much is happening in my movement work outside of pilates too, and that is really great!

My somatic search...

2008-03-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

I've decided I need to focus less on another Pilates teacher certification, and more on exploring somatic movement. I do love Pilates and it is so useful, but I do not want to imprint more fixed patterns on the body.

The more I learn and read about somatics, finding each body's unique movement pattern and breath, the more I want to keep following this idea.

I have never enjoyed doing an hour of straight pilates repertoire. I more enjoy seeing what my body needs each moment, each day, and using pilates and other methods for getting my body juicy and playful and easy, so I feel good and enlivened.

I've been reading some great somatic teachers ideas about not putting fixed patterns on a body. That connects more with what and how I already teach. I look at my student when they arrive, see where is restricted, how are they breathing, talk to them and find out how they are feeling physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and then I follow my instincts in giving them work. I almost always do footwork as I feel it is wonderful at releasing so much in all ways, mind and body. But then, instead of just going through the method exercises, I follow what seems like the natural thing to do. Sometimes it is rolling on the mat, or exploring breath, or walking around experimenting in the body, or playing with the spinal articulations. My ultimate goal is for my student to leave feeling wonderful and easy in their body, tensions slipped away, and for them to have energy for their life.

Fundamentals and Pilates Workshop

2008-02-12T16:58:00.000-08:00

I have these moments where I am just sure of something I need to teach. And so far, when I get these feelings I am successful.

Yesterday afternoon I got a sudden thought to teach a Fundamentals of Pilates and How They Apply To The Matwork workshop. Very small, only 5 students. Two hours. One hour and a little focused on the Fundamentals from Eve's work, and the rest of the time applying the Fundamentals to the matwork. The cost is $50. That was last night, and by lunch today I had the workshop, scheduled in March, filled already. I scheduled another for May and it already has one student.

I am so excited to deeply share this work with students who, instead of just wanting to mindlessly do matwork, they want to understand what they are doing and why.

So happy!

I've not taught group mat class for a couple of years so that I can focus on other studies, but I do love teaching the matwork! And when I taught twice a week, 8 week sessions for WOTC, I got to take the time to explore these fundamentals with them. I had a beginning one-hour class in which I always warmed them up with the fundamentals, not all of them, but those that applied to the matwork I was going to give. I gave lessons every tuesday on the ideas of the fundamentals and on thursdays we really worked deeply with them on the mat in the repertoire. My intermediate/advanced class I warmed up with the fundamentals almost every class. They didn't have to be told, after awhile, what the order was or what to do, they just did them. One class per session I would take them through the full matwork repertoire that I could cover in one hour without warming them up with the fundamentals, so they could feel in their own bodies how much different the matwork was without that warm up. They didn't do as well in their form, and didn't enjoy the work quite as much. But, because I knew that they could not take from me forever I wanted to prepare them for the many pilates mat class experiences I'd already gone through myself, where I was literally started out in the 100 and off we went. I believe it is vital to do some fundamental warm ups before the full repertoire.

On my way to smart spine certification

2008-02-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

Friday I leave for Long Beach, California to attend the Smart Spine certification over the weekend at Long Beach Dance Conditioning with Marie-Jose Blom-Lawrence. I am really looking forward to it.

Last summer I took a Smart Spine workshop at the Balanced Body conference in LA. I really loved the product and brought it home with me. My clients loved it too.

I did a mat class on it. I love the matwork, and I guess you could say I sort of specialize in it to some extent, as I really love studying it. I have to say, I have never had such a good mat workout ever, than I have on the SS. I learned I was doing something extra with my back in the matwork that I couldn't do on the SS. After that class in LA I was sore in very good, healing ways, and my body felt amazing. I am almost always in some degree of pain in my body, particularly my back from injuries in figure skating. The work on the SS is very healing and helped me find even more balance in my body, which is what I need to stay fluid and mobile.

I really can use the SS in many ways for my own body, but I am still working at finding ways to read my client's needs with the prop, so that I can most benefit them. I can't wait to explore the work on the apparatus and mat more deeply.

I also love the SS so much I want to do certifications for the prop here. I think it is brilliant for not only doing full work on, but especially the fundamentals of pilates on. I am in love with Eve Gentry's Fundamentals, and Marie-Jose is equally as passionate as Eve was about these pre-pilates movements. I think they are more healing than just doing full repertoire. If you can really feel the fundamentals you can get your mind/body connected to many of the more choreographed pilates repertoire and get something deeper from them than just being able to do choreography. Can we find healing in both mind and body in big choreography? I think, yes, if we are mindful and learn and study the smaller movements in our bodies.

pre-movements and Pilates

2008-02-04T11:29:00.000-08:00

This morning I am reading How Life Moves and was struck about the writings on pre-movements, resetting/exploring movement habit patterns, changing our perceptions of our movement patterns.

I love somatic work. I love being an explorer in my own body, and I like to help others go deep in themselves too.

Eve Gentry's Pilates Fundamentals are what really called my heart to Pilates. The art of exploring each movement as its own piece, and then seeing how each small movement pattern connects with others throughout the body is fascinating. How interesting it is to watch an inefficient movement pattern in the hip affect the rest of the body, up and down, and how simply exploring the hip pattern, finding a new, more effective, more effortless pattern also changes everything in the body, up and down. And yet, if the student is not ready to be 'in' their hip yet it is very difficult to help them undo and find a new pattern.

In my experience in my own body and working with others, I find emotion in the ineffective patterns. Of course, movement patterns are not just emotional, they are genetic to some degree, habitual with what we do in our bodies all day, injury and illness. But, I am truly fascinated in how emotion gets stuck in the body. I've seen many go through counseling of the mind, without movement counseling of the body, and their body still locks these old emotions into itself, and they still cannot fully undo. I've seen many who force out of their body the emotional evidence, but never do they deal with the mind/heart piece, and they are never really free either. I believe the best way to work with unhealthy emotions is by exploring and processing them in the mind and the body.

In less than two weeks I am off to study with Marie-Jose Blom-Lawrence. Like Eve Gentry she works with the Fundamentals. With her, I believe she calls them pre-Pilates. I took from her last summer and was again absolutely sure in my heart that the fundamentals of movement are a big key to unlocking so much in each one of us, not just to get out of physical pain, or emotional pain, but to explore the world with more ability to sense physically, this world, and to be more aware of how we are experiencing the world.

I am looking forward to going deeper and deeper into my own body, so that I can explore out of my body with even more feedback to my senses.

I love movement.

new book

2008-02-04T08:16:00.000-08:00

I picked up How Life Moves: Explorations in Meaning and Body Awareness by McHose and Frank.

I am really enjoying their ideas, and this book was meant for teachers as well as deep movement addicts. I've been studying the idea of primary skeleton (fish skeleton) and secondary skeletons, and how they work in Pilates and pole, and life. This book explores the primary fish skeleton in our movement evolution. Very interesting movement experiments. I can't wait to read it all!

bras

2008-01-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

I was studying last night and came across this fact that stunned me.

If a woman does not wear a bra at all her chance of getting breast cancer is the same as a man's, 1 in 168.

In countries where women don't wear bras there's nearly no breast cancer. In countries where women bind up their breasts like the US and Japan, there's the highest rate of cancer.

This is due to the blockage of the lymph system which is very delicate in the breasts.

In my women's studies I've read these sorts of statistics from many countries showing that bras are unhealthy for our breasts. This is the first time I saw the statistic comparing women's occurrence to men's.

Before I came to pole I only wore a tank top with the shelf insets to do and teach Pilates. But on the pole I like to have my girls look perky, makes me feel more sexy. I am still keeping my bra for that, but am taking it off after I'm done. And here my mom told me that I should wear a bra my whole life, even sleep in it, so my boobs don't sag. Funny what we do for beauty.

Here are some tips to lesson your risks...

If you have to wear a bra wear it for the shortest time possible.

Make sure you can get two fingers under every part of it.

Don't wear a bra that leaves red marks when you remove it.

Gently rub your breasts when you remove it to get the lymph flushing.

If you need the support, try wearing a cotton bra that can change with your size throughout your cycle. This is one of the problems with our bras is that we change sizes through our menstrual cycle, but most bras do not allow for this, so we get bound up in them.

Banned a student from the pole studio

2008-01-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

Cannot believe the jerks I sometimes get into the pole studio. This doesn't happen in Pilates!

Had a woman not listening to my instructor, being loud and talking over her while she was instructor, being a bully, complaining that my choreography doesn't got fast enough. She yelled at me on the phone when I called her, would not listen to a word I was saying.

I told her I'd give a full refund and that she was not welcome at any of my studios or workshops ever again.

Blah!

Sex Workshop

2008-01-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

I taught the Sex Workshop I teach for free every 6 months. It went very well, and all the women who attended were wonderful.

We watched the video showing the woman taking herself from a non-aroused state through orgasm. Her pelvic floor is amazing. When she is really engorged you can see the sphincter layer, figure 8 muscles perfectly. While I am showing the video I explain the anatomy of what they are seeing, as well as orgasms, and the many ways they are triggered, and of course how big the clitoris really is.

After the video we took a break and the women all enjoyed speaking with one another. We got back together and I taught the anatomy pieces, showed the books, and all that.

Then we went into the movement portion of the workshop and that was great. I did pelvic floor awareness work on the big balls, then we went to the floor and did the wall work, then on the small balls, ending with releasing the feet with the low impact tennis balls to let them feel a more relaxed superficial back line.

Helping Clients Feel Their Spine

2007-12-02T07:50:00.000-08:00

Friday I taught two newer clients who needed a somatic lesson in feeling their own spines. It is funny how, until someone takes us into our own body like a guide, we are not aware of ourselves.

One of these students is an oncology nurse and personal trainer. She is coming to me to learn more about the body beyond what her training has given her. I took her through feeling her own spine from the inside. We were on the floor, supine with knees bent, and I walked her up her spine from her tailbone, thru sacrum, thru feeling the lumbar spine lifting away from the mat, and the thoracic spine dropping down into the mat, the cervical spine lifting up again, and ending at the skull. I guided her to feel the spring that the spine is, that the spring is between the weight of the sacrum and the weight of the skull (not forgetting that the tailbone is also an important part of the spring, even though it is past the sacrum and not between the two points). We did this exploration through tilting the pelvis posterior---which lengthens out the spinal curves, and then tilting anterior--which increases the curves. We end this pelvic tilting (after several sets) in neutral spine so she could feel where we work in Evolved Pilates. Once we understand the range of our spine in movement it is much easier to know when we are truly in a neutral spine and pelvis for healthy Pilates work.

We sat on really bouncy exercise balls and bounced letting the spine--the spring of the spine--really bounce up and down. It is a hydraulic system, this spine, and when it is limited in its ability to bounce it becomes rigid and more prone to injury. I guided her to really relax her pelvic floor while we bounced, and then I took her through engaging the deep pelvic floor and she felt how that stiffened up her spine, and it hardly bounced with her. Then she relaxed the pelvic floor again and felt the spine get all happy and springy. This was good for teaching her that an over-tight pelvic floor creates tension in the spine and risks injury in high impact sports and such. I also taught her how to bounce up pulling the pelvic floor up, and when she bounced down she relaxed the pelvic floor. This is a quick firing of the pelvic floor and can be challenging at first, but if the pelvic floor doesn't lift up and in during a big jump (like figure skating) then you won't have the power of the lift, and if it doesn't relax enough on the landing then the who body feels the impact and the landing lacks grace.

Quilters Movement Workshop

2007-12-01T07:45:00.001-08:00

One of my clients is a quilter, and since I know a lot about the damage that happens to the body from long hours of quilting from watching my mom deform herself doing it, she asked me to teach a workshop for her guild.

It was such a good time to do it. My mom passed away nearly a year ago from cancer. The guild workshop is almost on that anniversary. Since my mom loved quilting it feels nice to help other quilters during this time.

I put a video on youtube for the quilters to supplement their workshop.

Dancing in boots

2007-12-01T07:39:00.001-08:00

Those boots don't feel heavy when I put them on for playing after pole class, but when I invert in them I feel almost like I'm brand new to inverting. I feel clumsy. I am going to have to make some serious training time in those to create more grace in them.

Also, when I am in them the back line of my body is relaxed, not active like it is when I dance barefoot and I feel clumsy dropping into back bends in them because I feel more like I'm falling into them instead of reaching back into them.

I do love the way they look though. So I think it worth the practice time.

Posture and Pole Dance

2007-11-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Posture and Pole Dance

In my experience teaching and practicing pole I’ve seen how the differences of posture affect Pole Work. Each posture comes with its own range of easy movements and challenging ones. Below I will explore each posture and some of the benefits and issues with each.

Swayback Posture – which is sometimes confused with a forward curved lower back—is actually when the pelvis is posterior tilted, tucking the tailbone under, the shoulders will round forward, and the head reaches forward to counter balance. The low back (lumbar spine) flatten out in this posture. Hamstrings are tight, and hip flexors are locked long. This posture is sometimes referred to as 'fatigue' posture because the pelvis is hanging back off the femur heads by the 'Y' ligaments.

Here is a drawing of it. http://www.fotosearch.com/LIF155/mm102016/

The femur bones (the big leg bones) are in extension in the hip sockets. This means the pole dancer will find movements bringing the leg/hip into extension super easy (ie. Bringing the leg behind the body), and movements bringing the leg/hip into flexion more challenging. The reason why is that when the hips are already open, opening them further is something that is a natural pattern. When you try to take the hip into the opposite pattern, flexion, you are asking the body to go to the opposite extreme of range.

Tricks easier for Swayback Posture dancers are: Back bending, any spin where the legs come behind the body, invert positions where the leg reaches behind the body.

Tricks more challenging for Swayback: Curling up into inversions, crouch positions, straddle positions.

For working with the more challenging moves with a swayback it is vital the dancer understands what she or he does with his pelvis in the first place. It is not that the pelvis needs to necessarily move into anterior placement, so much as the tailbone and muscles need to relax to allow the femur bone to travel easier. Also the hip flexors need strengthening in a fluid pattern so that the dancer can draw the femur through to flexion in a healthy way.

Flat Back Posture—is sometimes confused with Swayback as they both have reduced lumbar (low back) curves, but in Flat Back the spine is long and the cervical spine leans forward. Another difference is the ribcage placement. In Flat Back the ribs are over the pelvis, and in Swayback the ribs are posterior (behind) the pelvis.

Just like Swayback, the hips are elongated making the femurs in extension.

I have not seen any Flat Back students progress past one level of pole dance, so I do not know first hand what tricks would be easier or more challenging. One thing for sure is there is no spring to the spine which is a problem because the spine is a spring system. Any high impact movements will be difficult.

Kyphosis-Lordosis Posture- This may not be an excessive amount of curve in each direction, but it is a viewable lumbar curve (low back), and a curve of the ribcage forward, which is a balancing of the spine, like a spring. If these curves are too deep or out of balance they can create movement problems and pain. The pelvis is in an anterior tilt, creating a femur/hip placement that is stuck in a flexed position. The neck is hyperextended, which mirrors the pelvis. The ribcage bends backward between the two points. The low back muscles are shortened. The pelvis is in an anterior tilt, meaning leaning forward-increasing the lumbar curve. The back muscles are very short making it hard for them to lay flat on their backs without the ribcage reaching away from the floor (this is with knees bent in supine).

http://www.pediatric-orthopedics.com/Treatments/Kyphosis_Lordosis/kyphosis_lordosis.html

Tricks easier for Kyphosis-Lordorsis posture are any that require a flexed him/femur position, inverting into a crouched position, straddle positions, splits.

Tricks more challenging to perform without overusing particular vertebra mobility are back bending movements, and anything that takes the leg into extension as the backward movement will try to initiate from the low back instead of the femur head reaching back in the hip socket.

Military Posture- This is characterized by a shortening of the back of the body. The pelvis is often in an anterior tilt, meaning leaning forward, shortening the low back muscles. The ribcage is generally normally placed, if not a little posterior. The neck is long and a little forward to counter the ribcage portion of the spine. Stomach muscles are weak, as they are too long. The hip flexors are short and strong. These dancers, in my experience, throw themselves at the pole. They have a lot of strength but not enough length to do the work slowly or correctly. They need a lengthening of their back muscles.

Tricks easy for Military posture are those that utilize mid-back strength, and hip flexor strength. Inverting and handstand positions.

Tricks challenging for Military Posture are those that require length in the latisimus muscle, like spins. They will tend to hold their weight by their pecs, biceps, and forward shoulder muscles, instead of engaging fluidly through the long back muscles.

As always, a good eye by a professional Pilates instructor who is trained in posture can be vital to changing deep movement and postural patterns.

Here’s a little more info on finding out what your own posture is. http://www.easyvigour.net.nz/fitness/h_Side_Posture.htm

Pole Dance

2007-11-27T12:26:00.000-08:00

I love teaching and doing pole dance!