Pilates and Reiki In Paradise

08 July 2009

A Girl's Best Friend?

I think we all remember the song, "Diamond's Are a Girl's Best Friend". My mother loved her diamonds, and so have most of the women I know. I actually prefer other gemstones, as I like the depth of color they provide, but there is nothing quite like some beautiful certified diamonds in terms of brilliance and flash. If you love diamonds you can design your own jewelry using the stones!

02 July 2009

Strength Without Struggle, A 6 night Pilates Retreat at Parrot Cay with Lynda Lippin

It's my Pilates Retreat!

From 8th to 14th November 2009, COMO Shambhala Retreat at Parrot Cay will be hosting a five-day, six-night restorative Pilates Retreat. This will be led by Parrot Cay’s popular and highly experienced resident Pilates specialist, Lynda Lippin, with the Retreat open to all, including beginners.

The Retreat’s theme will be ‘Strength Without Struggle.’ It has been planned in response to a growing demand from guests who have had the opportunity to work with Lynda over the past year and a half.

Lynda, who is widely respected for her nurturing style, has been practicing and teaching Pilates for over 20 years. She owned and operated award winning Pilates studios in the US and trains Pilates teachers for the Pilates PhysicalMind Institute®. She is also an accomplished fitness trainer, certified by the American Council of Exercise®.

Lynda will individually assess each participant in the first days of the Retreat in order to understand specific areas of pain, tension, weakness, or disease in the body. Daily group sessions will be a blend of lecture, discussion and Pilates exercise focused on the major issues within the group. Subjects will include Pilates history, basic structural anatomy, common injuries and tension patterns, posture, and exercise lessons.

Throughout the Retreat Week Lynda will also recommend specific COMO Shambhala treatments that will benefit each guest, whether it is a calming COMO Shambhala Massage or Reiki session. Guests can dine from a choice of Parrot Cay’s menus, including the healthy and delicious COMO Shambhala Cuisine—all designed to complement the rounded physical, mental and spiritual experience.

The Pilates Method helps to improve muscle control, endurance and correct posture while enhancing positive body awareness and body confidence. The technique, which improves and changes the body's alignment habits, has a flexibility that works for practitioners of all standards. Pilates is now growing in popularity with men as well as women. Physiotherapists are also now recommending Pilates, if it is correctly taught, as one of the safest forms of exercise available. Pilates can assist the super-fit, help people suffering from pain, restricted joint mobility or even people who are post surgery. It is also ideal for women seeking to get their bodies back after childbirth.

COMO Shambhala believes Pilates should be taught in a way that fully understands each guest’s particular needs. Combined with our holistic approach to eating, exercising and treatments, the client can then experience the alleviation of both physical and emotional stress – a synergistic approach to heal and balance. The relaxing environment of Parrot Cay – a peaceful, private island – ensures this focus is maintained.

Prices for ‘Strength Without Struggle’ start at $6,026 per person (single occupancy) and $9,014 (double occupancy) including tax and service charge for six nights accommodation in a Garden Room, full American breakfast daily, lunch and dinner, round-trip airport transfers, 16 hours of group Pilates and one private evaluation session. For further information, or to make bookings, please email Susan Allison, Spa Manager.

26 June 2009

Book Review - Move Into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality

Anat Baniel is one of the greatest living movement educators in the world. Currently based in San Rafael, California, Baniel is a dancer and clinical psychologist who spent 15 years studying with the brilliant movement educator Moishe Feldenkrais. Over her 30-year career Baniel has managed to combine the best of neuroscience and somatic education via Feldenkrais into her own highly effective and easy to implement method of movement and nervous system re-education.

Baniel's work is based in the concept of neuro or brain plasticity, which is the brain's amazing ability to constantly reorganize, grow, and change throughout our lives as we learn new skills, ideas, and functions. Over the past century researchers have shown this ability in stroke victims, spinal injury patients, people with late onset blindness or deafness, and with special needs children and adults.

In my own pilates and reiki healing work I have seen the power of brain plasticity in my clients. I have watched a woman with spinal cord injury dance at her wedding. I have seen men with severe Parkinson's Disease be able to get out of bed in the morning without pain. I know for a fact that the power of our brains to change our entire way of being in the world in positive ways is truly miraculous.

Baniel's website is full of testimonials from medical doctors expounding on how much her work has helped them personally and has helped their patients. This one from Christopher Ryan, M.D., a Denver specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation is typical:

As much as I pore over medical science and research, and as much time as I spend acid testing Anat's statements in my naturally skeptical mind, I have yet to find logical fault or lack of scientific foundation. I am not swayed by New Age psycho-babble, and neither are my long-suffering patients. Above and beyond any conceptual fascination I may have with Anat Baniel's Method, the most important thing is that it is effective. It is effective where other treatments have not been, and it is at times almost miraculously effective where medical science has either given up, or where, out of desperation, painful and often counterproductive measures have sadly become the standard of care. It helps adults, and it has helped many children whose parents have been told that there is no hope. The families with previously incurable children are stunning testimonial to the real world utility of this Method.

With all of this technical knowledge behind her, Baniel does a surprisingly great job in Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality in making all of this understandable for the average person. The nine essentials all have to do with learning and awareness: moving with awareness, doing and experiencing new things, recognizing the power of subtle and gentle change, opening up to variation, slowing down, being enthusiastic, staying flexible, enjoying dreams and imagination, and being aware. In each chapter Baniel offers her take on the topic, examples of how this comes up in life using her clients, and exercises to help the reader explore further.

For example, in the chapter on enthusiasm she coins the term "Eeyoric" to denote negativity and lack of enthusiasm for living as the old gray donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh epitomizes what we're like when we lack enthusiasm. "Like Eeyore, we slouch both physically and emotionally. We hunch down, drag our feet; the tone and tenor of our voice drops and slows, and our moods become as slouchy and draggy as our posture." And then she follows with ways to get out of this trap, to stand tall and shine inside and out.

If you are interested in neuroscience, in movement, and in improved quality of life you must read Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality and try some of Baniel's techniques. They have worked for thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds for decades and now they can help you wherever you are.

21 June 2009

Coffee Anyone?

I hate to admit that one of the things I really miss in the Caribbean and really enjoy in the US is the availability of inexpensive good coffee. On Providenciales we have many cafés and coffee bars, but they are all very expensive ($2 for regular coffee and $4 for espresso-based drinks) and none are really that good. I would even take an easy to make Nespresso over some of the dishwater passing for coffee around Providenciales.

Why Acrobats Need Pilates

Image via Wikipedia

I read a great article today which clearly stresses the importance of Pilates exercise to the continued functional working of Cirque de Soleil's acrobat performers

"While obviously geared toward the highest-level athletes, the Montreal-based company's training practices, emphasizing strength, nutrition and the body-balancing approach of Pilates, hold lessons for many who'll get no closer to a Cirque show than the front row."

The physical therapists and coach for the cast of Cirque's Saltimbanco custom build Pilates workouts for each performer. Since so many people think that Pilates focuses only on flexibility, you might wonder why these obviously strong and flexible people need extra Pilates.

"We're learning how much Pilates is beneficial for someone like an acrobat who tends to overuse certain joints, overuse one side of their body more than the other,'' Ocampo said. "With the Pilates approach we try to almost recenter people, because otherwise acrobats can quickly become unbalanced from side to side, from front to back, because almost everything that we do is one sided or unidirectional.''

Ocampo, in his mid 30s, a Cirque performer in Alegria and Saltimbanco for 10 years before becoming a coach, explained that acrobats nearly always twist one way — to their right or left — when doing things like a salto (a flip) or cartwheel.

"Pilates tries to address the imbalances that are going to start to form in your body because you're only twisting one way,'' he said.

However, Pilates, with its focus on breathing and disciplined movement, can be a challenge for high-energy young athletes. The 50 or so performers in Saltimbanco range from 18 to 47, but most are on the young side.

"When you say to them, 'Okay, let's slow down, let's take it on the mat and do these small, slow exercises,' it's a hard thing for a lot of acrobats to grasp, because they like to move fast,'' Gurie said. "But when they see it work for them, how injuries become less and less when Pilates is incorporated into their training regimen, then it becomes attractive, then everybody wants to do it."

17 June 2009

Expensive Isn't Always Better

I am a bargain hunting coupon cutting negotiating kind of shopper (it drives Tony crazy, but he does like the deals I get for us). There are certain things that are fine to bargain for, including cheap hotel rates, cheap insurance, cheap books, and cheap airfares. We have all grown up with the idea that more expensive things are necessarily better, but that is definitely not always the case.

As The Turks and Caicos Islands Turn

I have been blogging on and off about the state of finances and affairs here in Turks and Caicos since the beginning of the UK Commission of Enquiry into government corruption. Last I knew the Commission's report was complete and filed, showing lots of evidence of misconduct, mismanagement, and financial shenanigans.

In the meantime the NY Times reported that ex-Premier Michael Misick was still running things behind the scenes as new Premier Galmo Williams tried to stop the UK takeover of our government.

Late last week The TCI Sun reported that Premier Williams was seeking to call a snap election a full 1.5 years before the next scheduled election.

Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands Hon. Galmo Williams has called a snap election three months after taking over the reins of power from embattled former Premier Michael Misick.
The election, which the Premier announced to be held in October 26, has been called in the middle of the Progressive National Party (PNP) administration, as constitutionally, general election is not due until February, 2011.

Then it was rumored that the takeover was to happen as early as today. But in today's news there is yet another delay. According to The Guardian UK,

Officials have indicated that because of the sensitivity of the issue, the British government prefers to see matters "played out in the courts" before moving to suspend the islands' political institutions.

The appeal for a judicial review of the crown's right to suspend the constitution by an order in council has been brought by the former prime minister of the islands, Michael Misick. The courts have twice ruled against Misick this year. One of the central players in the islands' recent dramas, Misick has been accused of amassing a multimillion-dollar fortune, financed through questionable dealings that gave property developers access to crown-owned land.

Under the direct rule plan the British governor, Gordon Wetherell, would assume power from the islands' assembly and courts, suspending the right of trial by jury for high-profile individuals implicated in corruption. He would be supported by a handful of Foreign Office officials, and advised by two groups of "belongers", as residents of the islands are known – a more powerful advisory council and a consultative forum. Both would be appointed by Wetherell.

The proposed suspension of the right to trial by jury follows concern that it would be impossible to find jurors who could maintain their neutrality.

The proposed imposition of direct rule has been highly unpopular with the Turks and Caicos's political elites, some of whom have accused Britain of a "return to colonial rule". Even as planning for direct rule has been proceeding in London, the islands' new prime minister, Galmo Williams, attempted to call elections for October, complaining that the islands are at a "standstill". The call for elections was rejected by the governor after consultation with the Foreign Office in London.

The degree of the collapse of good governance of the Turks and Caicos – home to some 30,000 people – has emerged in testimony presented to an inquiry headed by Sir Robin Auld, a former high court judge. That inquiry was established after a delegation of visiting British MPs reported that a "climate of fear" existed on the islands.

So we just wait!

10 June 2009

Best Diet Pill

So many people write to ask me what the best diet pill on the market is. You know what I tell them? Watch how much you eat and do some exercise. Because at the end of the day there is no diet pill that will magically help you lose weight without also watching how much you eat and exercising. If you look at the pills out on the market, all of them come with a food and exercise program. So why bother with a weight loss or diet pill that might hurt you when you could just exercise and watch what and how much you eat?

06 June 2009

Pilates, Labor, and Giving Birth

A question I received recently:

I would like to know your opinion on whether doing pilates before and during preganacy could have a detrimental effect on giving birth naturally. Could stronger and more toned muscles inhibit the labour process in any way?

I spoke with an OB/GYN who thought the perinium could need a episiotomy if this area had been strengthened, but as pilates works the pelvic floor muscles, I don't see what he means. Active birth/natural birth teachers recommend yoga exercises as a means of "opening up" the whole pelvic area. This seems a very different objective to what pilates exercises help with.

And my answer:

Pilates is fine without restriction to start before pregnancy and through the first trimester (in general). Starting in month 4 you will need to modify your program to avoid the focused abdominal work and work more on breathing and other muscles. All of my pregnant clients found that Pilates helped them through their pregnancies, with giving birth, and with recovering their bodies after. Just make sure you are going to a teacher who knows about pregnancy and how to modify the program.

03 June 2009

Get It Wholesale

I can assure you from the Caribbean standpoint that goods in the US are CHEAP compared to the same or even lower quality goods sold in Turks & Caicos, where everything costs 2-3 times as much as in the states. So we shop a lot off the island and mail order whatever else we need. Since whatever we order we have to pay customs duty on, I am always on the lookout for things like wholesale clothing sites, which help us get what we need and save some money.

Final Report on Turks and Caicos Corruption

Image via Wikipedia

According to several news sources the final report of the UK Commission of Inquiry into Turks and Caicos government corruption is done and will be publicly released at the end of this month. Former Premier Michael Misick (who according to the NY Times is still running things behind the scenes) is still attempting to block UK takeover of this government, and several big real estate developers who were named in the inquiry are trying to keep their names out of the report.