Pilates & Reiki In Paradise Blog: Pilates Studios

Showing posts with label Pilates Studios. Show all posts

28 July 2008

Pilates for Parkinson's

There I was opening my Google alerts for Pilates and there was a great headline, "Center trying to help Parkinson's patients with Pilates". It is even better since the studio involved is back in my old area of the Philadelphia suburbs.

This program was started by 72 year old former dancer and current pilates instructor Moss Cohen, who has Parkinson's. Cohen credits this system, developed in the early 20th century by Joseph Pilates, for keeping him limber and balanced, with good range of motion and a straight spine, since his diagnosis in 2001.

"'Pilates is defined as stretching and strengthening with control," said Cohen. "It strengthens core muscles in the abdomen, which are important for balance and to support the spine.' And pilates' emphasis on the mind-body connection is also helpful for people whose muscles no longer function on automatic pilot."

I have worked with many Parkinson's patients over the years and every single one was benefited in their daily lives from doing Pilates.

For more information, contact Sheila Hatzell at Pilates for Movement, 34 Summit Grove Avenue, Bryn Mawr. Phone: (610) 581-0288. Email: Sheila@pilatesformovement.com

22 July 2008

Olympic Runners Using Pilates

Just read some great news about an old friend, Wendy LeBlanc-Arbuckle of The Pilates Center of Austin in Austin, TX. Her husband Michael Arbuckle used to make Pilates equipment, and his company, Progressive Dynamics, expanded into Peak Pilates.

Anyway, Wendy trains Olympic track star Sanya Richards, dubbed "the fastest 400- meter woman in U.S. history" at the young age of 23. Richards does Pilates twice a week in the Austin studio, and credits her work with Wendy for teaching her how to distribute her weight evenly through her body and feet for a more fluid stride AND for teaching her to breathe while moving so she doesn't hold her breath while running anymore!

According to Pilates Style Richards is taking LeBlanc-Arbuckle with her to Beijing. Go Wendy!

04 July 2008

Joseph Pilates, Sports Illustrated, 1962

There were a fair number of articles written about Joseph Pilates and his new exercise method of Contrology while Pilates was alive. After all, he did open a studio at Henri Bendel's department store in NYC, and he did train people with last names that you may recognize such as Vanderbilt, Gimbel, and Ballanchine. His studio was considered to be a proper gymnasium and everybody came to Joe's from poor dancers to society ladies.

In 1962 Robert Wernick wrote an article for Sports Illustrated entitled "Joe Pilates: Learning to Be An Animal". Wernick begins,

"There is a happy band of people, of which I am an aspirant member, who are distinguishable anywhere by their springy step and "saved" look from the mass of their contemporaries who shuffle and shamble in untidy corpulence around us. We know that we are saved because we faithfully attend exhausting but exhilarating sessions at the Joseph H. Pilates Universal Gymnasium on Eighth Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

For it is here that Joe Pilates, a white-thatched red-cheeked octogenarian, his wife Clara and Hannah (who came in for a lesson 25 years ago and stayed on) bark their stern commands as we twist and stretch and complain through the exercises forming the core of what Joe, with his Germanic taste for scientific nomenclature, calls Contrology."

It is worth reading this article to get a taste of what the man was like, what his attitude was like. I leave you with a quote that still resonates today with high obesity and back pain levels. Says Joe, "And what do Americans do? They play golf, they play baseball, they use half of their muscles, a quarter of their muscles. They get fat, they go jogging, they go on crazy diets, they jump up and down in crazy exercises, they have bad backs, they have beer bellies, they slouch, they complain, they have hernias."

I couldn't say it better!

29 December 2007

PMI Pilates Teachers in Bangkok

According to Bangkok's Independent Newspaper, The Nation, Bangkok's best Pilates studio, Pilatestudio on Ploenchit Road, Bangkok, is run by PhysicalMind Institute certified Pilates teachers.

"Throughout an hour-long Pilates class, you hear deep breathing - almost like sighing - every five seconds.

That's because rhythmic breathing is at the core of the exercises. Pilates concentrates on inhaling and exhaling and strengthening the abdominal muscles, says Kultida Puranaputra, an actress and one of the nine instructors at Pilate studio.

'Your mind has to relate to your body,' she says. Kultida and the other instructors earned their certificates at the Physicalmind Institute in New York City."

Further,

"One of the students at Pilatestudio described the regimen as a one-stop exercise service. 'If you go to a fitness centre, you might use several different pieces of equipment to exercise your entire body. But if you join a Pilates class, you exercise every part of your body in just one hour,' says Pechjarin Kanjanaprasatpom, a 28-year-old IT site manager.

Although weight reduction isn't one of its claimed benefits, many women say they discover they lose weight when practising Pilates. 'I recovered from a shoulder injury because of it,' says Pen Suwannarat, who has been practising Pilates for a month."

Weight loss, less pain, stronger bodies--that's Pilates!

04 May 2007

Body College Pilates

Mike Wright has some great Pilates and Gyrotonic studios in the Washington DC area. Body College Pilates has well trained caring teachers who were mostly trained by Mike himself. If you live in that area check out Body College for the best Pilates training.

24 March 2007

Flow Pilates Studio

Today I went over to check out my friend Michael Miller's blog

As I was scrolling through some comments I saw a name that I recognized--Brady Wedman. Brady is a wonderful teacher who I worked with at Body Precision in Rosemont PA in the late 90s. Brady then moved to Zurich and opened his own studio, balancenter Zurich (yes, he used our name! When I opened my second studio named balanCenter Pilates Brady called me to ask if he could use the same name in Switzerland.)

Lo & Behold Brady is now in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Erica (who is PhysicalMind Certified) in their own studio, Flow Studio (Pilates & Gyrotonics). I just sent him an email. So if you live in California do stop in to see Brady and tell him Lynda sent you!