The Movement Studio Pilates

The faculty of the Movement Studio Teacher Training Program are educated from a number of different Pilates styles as well as other movement modalities. Our goal is to foster the development of confident, creative Pilates teachers by introducing somatic applications to enhance the Pilates method. Extra time is taken to focus on techniques, for observation skills, verbal cuing, program design and problem solving.

We do not give set orders of repertoire to memorize and execute. We teach you how to develop programs yourself. We include accomplished guest instructors to cover pathologies and embodiment in teaching. Our program requires hard work to synthesize the layering of material. Teachers are available for mentorship. The reward is to finish with confidence in what you have to offer as a Pilates teacher. You will be ready to meet your clients’ or classes’ needs with the ability to observe, program and be creative within the structure of movement principles. Our program has set a standard for the Canadian Pilates Association and graduates are guaranteed insurance bySports Insurance Canada.

Email us at inf0 (at) themovementstudio (dot) ca for more detailed information.

The Movement Studio is excited to be offering a unique Pilates Teacher Training program starting this fall. The course is recognized by the Pilates Association of Canada (PAC) and insurance is available upon completion through Sports Insurance Canada.

In the spirit of Joseph Pilates’ vision of an inspiring, responsive movement practice that adapts to the person in front of you, we aim to teach the Pilates repertoire in an expansive, exploratory, evolutionary, creative and interactive way.

Our first priority is creating high quality and well-rounded instructors… that means not only learning, experiencing and embodying the Pilates repertoire but also having the tools to effectively convey the material to clients. We focus on how your experience of the practice is transfered to the people you will be working with.

For more information, email us at inf0 (at) themovementstudio (dot) ca

Letting go is such a funny thing. Our minds have mischievous ways of trapping us in this ever-changing life. What does it mean when we say someone is in control, under control, out of control, or taking control? Was there anything to control to begin with? My thoughts about control came to me in a workshop 5 years ago with Salique Savage.

We were in partners and were holding each other’s wrists. We were to engage in a movement dialogue where one person would input force the way they wanted, the partner would receive it in the way they wanted and send force back. It was a sort of dance. Salique asked us to move our bodies like sails. Sails use the wind to move the boat.The wind can change and we are not in control of what the wind will do, but we can use our sail to make the best out of what the wind is giving us. We had a very hard time finding our sails. Our mind habits, I discovered are also our movement habits. Habits as we all know are very hard to break, so it was not “smooth sailing”.

The movement dialogue often did not sequence well. Some of us moved and moved and moved into our partner seeking some pressure back to work with while the other partner buckled joints, unable to sequence information into them and give outwardly. This often happened when we were afraid to hurt someone or do the wrong thing. The incessant moving person was not waiting to get information from their partner. (Monologue versus conversation) Imagine that relationship. Or, the other thing that happened is that one partner anticipated and tried to help the other partner by moving for them.  This was also disastrous because if I could not take care of myself and let my partner know what I wanted, he had nothing to work with, but himself and my assumptions of him. I was neither taking in his input nor digesting it to form an opinion about it and act on it. Imagine that relationship.

So do we really need to “take control” or do we need to engage in the world in a mindful way that encourages to balance our taking and inner processing with giving and outer action. It can be very hard to stay true to ourselves and stay engaged or attuned to one person or a group.  When you take in information, digest it, form an idea, or impulse, act on it, and realize it didn’t work or it hurt someone, it can be discouraging. Conversely, when you receive information that is disagreeable to you, it may be hard to stay engaged or to fully take in the information and process. We may limit ourselves to new experiences in this way. Sometimes we stay engaged too long when we clearly need a break or a change even.

All of the phrases I had known came racing back to me. “Be with, not for”, “help others to help themselves”, “help yourself first so you may help others”, “it can be hard to live your truth, but there is a rightness to it”. The experience of how hard it was for me to do this in a movement experience was shocking. It felt like I could not stop trying so hard to be right and as a result, I couldn’t be myself. I had thought I was over it, but it was a lingering habit.

Salique did not mention any of this. I love his simple brilliance. It was my own little “aha”. I love how in somatic practice, the teacher can plant one little nugget of information that can vomit into a huge life realization. That is why I continue a movement practice. It keeps me developing myself and likewise those that interact with me and vice versa.

That brings me to the letting go part. I had this dream that a Lion was trying to approach me to eat me.No matter where I went, it would find a way in. The dream woke me up, and then I was so much in an alerted state by trying to escape the lion that I couldn’t go back to sleep. In wondering how I would calm down so I could sleep, I though that I needed to get out of the fight state. So I tried to control the dream so that the lion would go away. That didn’t work. Then I realized that I was fighting my dream where it maybe was not necessary to fight. So I decided to let the lion eat me. It started at my legs and worked its way up and I don’t know what happened next because I fell into a very deep sleep. Well I do know what happened. The lion got what he wanted, and I got what I wanted.

I’m not sure how many times in your life you are gifted with the presence of a truly embodied teacher. Jane spoke to us of listening to the body, sensing, and acting from our deepest selves. feeling me and seeing you. experiencing our actual cells, fluids, and tissues interacting with the environment, and the recognition that movement is physiological change on a cellular level. This, the creation of sensation. Heavy… and yet so beautifully freeing. She asked us to stay with our sensation, her soft honey voice reminding of the difference between awe and confusion being simply judgement… and that only the slightest reframing exists between them. It is so challenging, being aware of a physical sensation in the present, and recognising that we are either moving away or towards something as a response. She touched on so much in such a short time that my head was pulsing and my heart desiring greater exploration of this new playground… finding strength in vulnerability, remembering energy circulation frees us of stagnation, and that at times the sheer pleasure of being alive is not enough so we subsitute it with other pleasures. food. Sex. alcohol. ayaaaa! Jane has the ability to hold up the mirror with such lightness and support, that no matter what darkness reflects in you, you know that you can explore it safely, fully, and that by meeting what was hidden, find the healing, the strength. Thanks so much for this journey!

Within each Pilates exercise we can play with Phrasing which allows us to be responsive to clients day to day. In this sense, we have the macro phrasing of the session as well as the micro phrasing of each exercise. With Foot/Leg work we can change our tempo to put the accent at the beginning (Impulsive Phrasing), middle (Swing Phrasing), end (Impactive Phrasing) or have no accent at all (Even Phrasing). Generally speaking, with Pilates we encourage an even quality to movement to facilitate constant sensing as the intent. Especially in the beginning, this is an important quality for experiencing the support for and awareness of movement. Once a client is more familiar and confident with an exercise, we can introduce different phrasing to round out a richer exploration. We can observe whether a client is able to shift their phrasing or whether they are so patterned into moving with a specific style of initiation/action/recuperation that they are unable to make another choice. This is common with some beginners who require encouragement to spend time in preparation, as they tend to skip over this crucial time of having an intention and just want to ‘do’ the exercise.Swing or Even Phrasing may be best to focus on. In this way, preparation is included to maximize initiation and sequencing.

Phrasing in body movement is linked to breathing patterns. Noticing whether a client takes a quick and impulsive inhalation and never pauses at the end of an exhalation will give you information about their tension holding patterns as well as how their movement is sequencing. Bringing awareness to the inherent accents within the breathing cycle creates an opportunity for change in the dynamic rhythm of movement. Our breathing supports our intention as well as the exertion/recuperation cycle. If we are doing mid back series we may call upon an Even Phrasing of breath and movement, whereas if we are using the jump board we may want to access either Impactive or Impulsive breath and movement phrasing. What provides overall ease and efficiency for that client?

Phrasing is one of many rich components of the LMA framework and I particularly enjoy how we can become aware of our preferences and begin to explore other options. I have written about a session’s phrasing as well as how it can be applied to each exercise, but the concept can obviously expand far beyond this. We have phrasing throughout our days, months and years as well as within each minute and second. Our breathing is always a good indication of how we embody phrasing from moment to moment. Becoming aware of breath is an excellent inroad for working towards balance as well as range.

Warmup: for my Brain

prone cervical nod

prone nose circles

heel rock

seated cervical nod against the wall

seated nose circles against the wall

seated cervical nod

seated nose circles

following horizon right then left with breath

kneeling side stretch

cat/cow

leading head/tail on the knees neutral spine

child’s pose

I have played with this warmup over the last two weeks (sometimes just in bed!). I started with just the cervical nods with a focus on different gravitational relationships, then realized there were more planes of movement available. I find connecting to my brain incredibly challenging with my eyes open so i prefer to close them and visualize from there.

I can picture the anatomy of it with my eyes closed. Everything is black and the outline of the brain and all of its grooves is glowing red. When I try to picture how it sits in the bones of my skull it disappears. My reaction to the movements has changed over the course of this time, and the progression is interesting.Originally I couldn’t tap into the gentle jostling of the brain at all, or feel it sitting still for that matter. When laying prone it helped a great deal when someone else was holding my skull and initiating the movements. I felt that in this position it was hard to dissociate my brain from my neck, even when doing small ROM i would get tense in my neck and chest. When someone else moves it I feel supported enough to release, as though I am safer with them than without. It was helpful to go back to Bonnie Bainbridge’s book and be reminded that “the activity of the organs underlie our movements in space”. I think I was getting stuck in my bones and not going right in for the juicy stuff. Ilove that she says “the movement of the mind through and within an organ reveals the specific mind of that organ”. The movement of my mind within my brain feels like a roller coaster on the down side, zipping quickly through and not stopping to let people on and off! ayaaaa!

Organs of life. This week we’ve been exploring our deepest connections, those right next to the spine, below the supportive ‘core’ muscles we usually cue from. Knowing that the spine is surrounded by our most important organs, and that our musculature on the outside is there to hold them all in, gives them a feeling of more importance at present.It’s quite amazing to note the difference in movement. There is a softness, an ease, which takes over. Everything slows down… like coming out of warp speed back to coasting… and any feelings of urgency are long forgotten. I have been exploring yielding in my brain, or my lack of connection to this yield. There are so many layers of muscle and bone holding on in me that when I think I’m finally there I notice that the area I started melting first is back at it. grrr. Beautiful lessons!!!

Pilates Teacher Training – blog two

Assessments rule! Unfortunately, I have a tendency towards neurosis at the best of times, so I’m not totally sure that this was a smart thing for me to get started on. We began by covering Anita with lovely stickers on all of her bony landmarks, yup, just the bony ones… then we stood back to see what we could notice. It’s incredible the things a little sticker can show you that the naked eye would completely ignore!!! A slight rotation in the shoulder or hip, placement of the head, weight bearing… you could go on forever! ! found that i was really hungry to understand what it was we were looking for, and looking at, and sometimes this was an unrequited wish. What you see standing still and what happens through movement can seem totally different, though parts of one can explain the other. What I learned was that there is a bigger picture, and on top of that another one, and there could be smaller ones too. our bodies are so spectacularly intricate that there is no way we could ever really capture all the nuances, all the tiny shifts and movements that are happening… we need to step back and open up to a broader perspective to see what is really going on… Pilates is so tuned in with life for me right now, and I am so thankful!!!