Author: Maureen

About Maureen

Posts by Maureen :

Antoinettefotor

Healing Movement

0

Sea Point Pilates Studio has become home to a new exercise format called BodySensing. Although it has been taught at the studio for little over a year, it has attracted a firm following of clients who find its gentle, whole body approach both healing and reviving.

It’s taught by Antoinette Kavanagh, who founded Sea Point Pilates Studio some years ago. A former dancer, her practice was Pilates based but she was always open to new ideas. When she first started studying BodySensing, she expected it to be just one in an impressive line up of skills. Instead, she has found it so fulfilling that she’s now working exclusively within that medium.

Before looking at the benefits it has achieved for just one of Antoinette’s clients, here’s a brief rundown of what BodySensing somatic therapy is.

It’s a trauma informed somatic therapy to regulate your nervous system. The nervous system lies at the heart of healing. It influences every biological system in the body.

You can heal from trauma, reduce stress and ease chronic pain by unwinding emotional patterns through embodied movement.

You don’t have to be a victim of a violent act or living in a war zone to experience trauma. The trauma could be anything from the damage that unrelenting modern day life inflicts on our bodies to the stress that chronic pain imposes on our overall health.

BodySensing does not work with trauma psychology, it focuses instead on healing the physiological and sensory effects of stress, trauma and chronic pain.

Very simply, it is based on self myofascia release. Fascia is a bodywide network, now considered one of the richest organs for body perception. It is embedded with billions of neurons, the majority of which are interoceptors. A history of chronic emotional stress can change the sensitivity of these free nerve endings.

Fascia is bathed in a gel like liquid (intestitium) that provides plumpness, elasticity and suppleness. It becomes dehydrated and sticky when stressed or inflammed. Loss of suppleness is linked to a sympathetic response that signals that the nervous system is under stress, resulting in symptoms that range from stiffness and discomfort to chronic pain, inflammation and autoimmune conditions like Arthritis and Fibromyalgia.

BodySensing uses gentle sliding, bouncing, rocking, winding and unwinding movements to rehydrate and allow the body to move with ease and regain it’s elasticity. Tapping into our body’s innate ability to heal itself.

As an example of how BodySensing can help ease pain and stiffness, and increase mobility, Antoinette told me about how it has helped bring about life-changing improvements for her client Monica.

Monica is in her early 70s. She had polio as a child, which damaged her spine to the extent that it is braced by a metal rod.

For many years, she has used a walker to move around and been dependent on carers to help her with daily chores. She found ordinary daily tasks like standing up from sitting on a chair or getting out of a car both challenging and exhausting, as was getting down to and off the floor for exercise. Standing for more than a few minutes was painful. A poor sense of balance made her cautious about moving in case she fell and hurt herself.

When she and Antoinette first started doing BodySensing, her general discomfort was exacerbated by painfully stiff neck and shoulders. She’s an artist and work was taking its toll.

Antoinette introduced Monica to the gliding, rocking, soothing movements that BodySensing is known for. All are whole body movements, designed to rehydrate fascia that has dried and become stuck, causing stiffness and pain.

Monica managed the gentle movements quite easily and particularly liked the mindful element, saying it felt like a form of meditation which encompassed both mind and body.

After only three weeks, Monica was already showing huge progress. She could stand for as long as she wanted to, balance on one foot and could get out of a car with relative ease.

She was particularly pleased to be able to get down to ground level and back up again without exhausting herself. She enjoys floor-based exercise as her back is supported and she can move more freely, so this was an important milestone.

About four or five weeks in, she woke up early one morning, well before her carer was scheduled to arrive. Having needed help for some years to do ablutions and dress in the morning, she boldly decided to see how she could manage on her own. By the time her carer arrived, she was up and about, fully ready to face the day.

That huge achievement gave her confidence to push herself even further. Three months later, she rarely uses her walker and is doing more and more on her own.

Her friends have noticed the difference in her. Some have commented that she looks younger, more vital and moves with greater ease, tackling stairs without help and becoming much more independent.

Monica herself says she feels as though she has been rebalanced and her pain has eased significantly.

Antoinette’s only negative is that Monica isn’t doing her homework often enough!

She explains that the the shifts often happen quickly and sometimes dramatically, but need to be repeated often. In an ideal world, Antoinette would like to see clients becoming self sufficient as there is a strong intuitive aspect to the work. After 8 to 10 weeks of regular sessions, with homework inbetween, clients can and often do continue the healing process on their own, checking in occasionally for a session or fascilitation.

‘Homework’ can be incorporated into daily routine. The secret is to not be inactive for long periods of time, and to notice when there is stiffness and or discomfort in the body. Rocking and gliding movements, pausing and coming to quiet within, expansive whole body yawning sensations all help to keep the fascia hydrated and the body fluid and supple.

For Antoinette, BodySensing Somatic Therapy has completely changed not
only how she works with her clients but how she lives her life.
Understanding that the body mirrors the shape of the mind, responding to how we think, feel and experience life is profoundly life-changing .

Text content

woman on reformer

Adapting to Osteoporosis

0

Lucy dropped into the studio one rainy morning and asked if she could join a mat class. A simple question that evoked a big ‘yes’ … initially.  Turns out there were complications. Not that you would guess it to look at her. She’s a slim, fit-looking woman in her very early 60s, radiating good health and energy.

Lucy has osteoporosis, or brittle bone disease. It was probably caused by eating disorders and resulting malnourishment when she was a teenager. Her doctor had advised against yoga and told her that Pilates should only be with an informed instructor because some exercises could be detrimental.

She was daunted by that. She loved Pilates. She had gone to classes at her local gym for more than 15 years but had stopped when diagnosed eight months previously. She was missing them like mad: not just the exercise method but also the social interaction and fun of it. The sheer size of the classes she attended at the gym meant she wouldn’t get the personal attention she needed; she wondered if a smaller studio environment could help her.

Yes – it could!*

Briefly, she has three crumbling vertebra half way down her spine (T10, T11 and T12 to be exact). The exercises she needs to avoid are flexing the vulnerable area (or bending forwards), rotating her back and doing lateral bends(bending sideways).

Quite a lot of the Pilates repertoire involves flexing, rotating and lateral movements. Some of our most popular exercises like The Hundred, Single and Double Leg Stretches, and Criss-Cross involve chest lifts which mean flexing the top part of the spine. We were going to have to put some thought into adapting the conventional movements to accommodate her needs. It was do-able, so she booked some private, one-to-one sessions and we set about deconstructing the Pilates repertoire and creating safe alternatives.

Before going any further, let’s get the run down on Osteoporosis.

Osteoporisis is a gradual loss of bone density, resulting in increased bone fragility and susceptibility to fracture. Mild loss of bone density is called Osteopenia, which doesn’t always develop into Osteoporosis.

There are a number of causes of Osteopenia:
• heredity
• less than ideal development of bone mass during childhood/early life (poor bone quality)
• medication – a number of medications used to treat other conditions have an impact on bone health;

Osteoporosis is not part of the normal ageing process. Genetics can give a person a propensity to develop the disease but lifestyle can prevent it.

Women are more likely to get it than men, particularly women who have gone through menopause. Slight women with small, fine bones are more at risk than their sisters of a heavier build. Caucasian and Asian ethnicity is a risk factor. Some medications can accelerate the loss of bone density. Lifestyle can result in low Vitamin D and calcium which are contributory factors. Salt, alcohol, caffeine and smoking are just some choices that further increase risk. Malnourishment, bulimia and anorexia can all have an impact.

It is sometimes called ‘the disease of affluence’ – our Western lifestyle of little exercise, poor diet and limited outdoor activity seems to be making younger, pre-menopausal women vulnerable where it used affect mainly older people.

The big message is ‘Exercise helps prevent osteoporosis’. Weight bearing and high impact exercises strengthen bones by stimulating them to produce more bone.

Pilates with small equipment like hand-held weights, resistance bands and magic circles make muscles work harder, and the pull of muscle on bone via tendons stimulates bone development.

Large equipment like the Reformer and Wunda Chair also help prevent Osteoporosis because springs add resistance and increase loading on muscle.

The right kind of exercise can play a part in both prevention and treatment. Conversely, the wrong type of exercise can cause serious injury.

Pilates osteoporosis-prevention programmes look at back strengthening exercises, particularly focussed on the thoracic (or upper) spine, plus hip and wrist strengthening. These are the areas where fractures are most likely to occur should clients later develop osteoporosis.

They also improve core strength which improves balance and helps prevent, or reduce the severity of, fracture-causing falls.

Such programmes should be combined with higher impact exercise such as brisk walking, jogging or running.

Although a client with fragile bone density could fracture any and every bone in the body, the thoracic spine is particularly vulnerable. That makes all thoracic flexion, lateral flexion and rotation strictly forbidden.

That’s the science part over. Back to Lucy…

The first time we worked together, I realised it was a bigger job than I anticipated. Adapting exercises to suit different physical needs is a relatively easy task. Adapting a client’s mental attitude is much harder.

I was alarmed at her gung-ho attitude.

“I’m not an invalid – I feel great – we only need to make small changes” was one hurdle I had to overcome. Although I wanted to make Lucy aware that she had to make major adaptations to protect her spine, it would have been counter-productive (if not destructive) to make her nervous of exercise and deprive her of both confidence and the joy of moving.

I had to be careful not to bombard her with negatives -” you shouldn’t, you mustn’t, you can’t” – and instead focus on the positives and advise her what she should and could do.

Another hurdle to overcome was Lucy’s gym-based culture – she didn’t think she’d done any work unless she finished a session sweating, aching and exhausted. The Pilates principles of concentration, control, flowing movement, centering and precision were not part of her mindset.

Her rushed, high energy approach posed a real risk of her losing her balance, twisting her back or even falling. We don’t want any client doing that, especially a woman with osteoporosis. A recurring theme through our sessions was Joseph Pilates words: “Concentrate on the correct movement each time you exercise, lest you do them improperly and lose all vital benefits.”

I took a small gamble in videoing part of an exercise routine that she tended to rush. When she saw how uncoordinated and uncontrolled her movements were, she was quite alarmed and slowed down, using breathing to regulate her movement.

In four private sessions, we went through the Pilates repertoire and adapted them to suit her back. There were few exercises that we just couldn’t adapt – the roll down and roll up; and seated exercises like the saw and spine twist. We worked out alternatives that she could do instead, rather than sit idle while everyone else in the class worked.

She then joined one of our classes and had a very happy season with us, before moving house and changing studios. We miss her!

* If you have recently suffered injury, illness, surgery or illness, or have a chronic or degenerative condition, consult your doctor, surgeon or physiotherapist before exercising.  Pilates instructors are not medically qualified and cannot advise on serious illness or injury.

 

taryn smiling fotor

Do I Exercise When My Back Hurts?

0

I’ve just had an interesting conversation with Taryn Goodman of Sea Point Pilates Studio about exercising with back pain. My general rule is to avoid exercise if pain is acute or muscles are in spasm, but she has a different take.*  

Although she bills herself as a Pilates instructor, Taryn is instinctively a healer. She’s driven to improve her skills, increase her knowledge and learn from others. She reads widely, attends courses and loves to connect with instructors who have new skills that she can learn from. So when she presents a different point of view, I’m pleased to hear it…

When a client messages to cancel a session because their back is sore, Taryn generally tells them to come in anyway. They’re often uncomfortable with the advice. They wonder if they should be moving. What if they hurt themselves even more? Taryn’s view is that movement is essential, even if it’s tiny little movements. Being afraid to move and cocooning yourself is often the worst thing you can do to an unhappy body.

That makes sense. As we get to understand more about how the fascia works and how movement maintains the sliding surfaces between muscles to keep us flexible and mobile, so we get to realise that prolonged periods of doing nothing are actually damaging and should be actively avoided.

Let’s take a Science break and talk fascia…

If you have a strong stomach and can handle an autopsy situation, watch Gil Hedley’s ‘The Fuzz Speech’ on YouTube.  

It’s the best explanation of how fascia enables movement that I’ve seen. Made in 2005, it’s a bit dated as science has made huge strides in this area but there are update notes.

Briefly, Hedley explains that limiting movement allows ‘fuzz’ to build up in the fascia between our muscles, so they don’t glide along one another and enable smooth movements. Prolonged lack of movement allows the fuzz to become like fibres in the layers between our muscles which inhibit movement more permanently. As ‘fuzz’ builds up and fibres develop, it feels as though our body is solidifying, particularly in areas where we may avoid movement in order to protect an injury.

Back to Taryn…

When a client has back pain, Taryn’s exercise prescription is to start with very basic, gentle movements and increase the level of difficulty very gradually. Her aim is to move her client’s body from a sympathetic nervous state to a parasympathetic nervous state.

Another Science break…

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates the functions of internal organs such as the heart, stomach and intestines and has control over some muscles within the body. The functions of the ANS (such as the beating of the heart and contraction of blood vessels) are involuntary so we aren’t aware of them most of the time.  It has two ‘modes’:  the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).  

The PNS controls the “rest and digest” functions of the body – the functions that maintain our equilibrium. It’s what our default mode should be – when our body is running smoothly and calmly, with controlled heart beat and relaxed muscles.

The SNS controls the body’s “fight or flight” responses, or how the body reacts to danger or stress. Pain is stressful.

When the body is stressed and controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, it speeds up, tenses up and becomes more alert.


Back to Taryn…
At the start of a session with a client with back pain, she gets them to do seated roll downs, gently flexing through the spine from the head, through the neck and only as far down the spine as is comfortable. This is definitely NOT a ‘no pain, no gain’ scenario. ‘If a movement hurts, don’t do it’ is the abiding rule.

Having done a gentle warm up on the spine, Taryn goes onto basic mat exercises.

She starts off with imprinting and releasing the small of the back (the lumbar spine) into the mat, making small rocking movements, forward and back, side to side, using the breathe to soften and release. This subtle imprinting and releasing movement is borrowed from the Body Sensing method, and is sometimes called skin sliding. The purpose is to get fascia moving in a soft, gentle way.

When the client is comfortable with imprinting and releasing, she selects exercises from the Pilates repertoire that are suitable, such as small pelvic tilts, maybe progressing to full pelvic curl; gentle chest lifts; arms open and close without weights…

There’s homework too, to be done in bed. She suggests that clients with sore backs should do the gentle exercises of imprinting the spine and moving the pelvis, rocking it gently and mindfully, and get the body to soften and relax before getting up in the morning or going to sleep at night.

She thinks the mindfulness element is important and suggests that the small movements can become part of a meditation to help the body move from a tense, pain-filled sympathetic nervous system to the calmer, healing parasympathetic nervous system.

She asks her clients to imagine that rhythmic imprinting and releasing are like waves washing up a beach, then retreating back to the sea. When the wave rushes back into the sea, she suggests they visualise giving away something negative in their life – an emotion, a feeling, a thought – and imagine it floating far away into the ocean, never to return.

As a new wave washes up the beach, they can imagine it bringing a new and positive thought or emotion that they want to welcome into their life and body.

It’s a strategy that’s working for Taryn’s clients and allowing them to unlock their pain and return to normal sooner than they expected.

Isn’t it great how science and the power of the mind can combine to help us heal ourselves.

* If your back pain is severe or you have recently suffered injury, surgery or illness, consult your doctor, surgeon or physiotherapist before exercising.  Pilates instructors do not hold medical qualifications and cannot advise on serious illness or injury

fitness blogs steve-long-121fotor2483-unsplash

Pilates: It’s What Stressed Men Need!

0

After a happy hour training a husband and wife team (let’s call them Janet and John) this morning, I left frustrated that more men haven’t embraced our amazing method of fitness training. John is a prime example of the progress that can be made in just six months.

Perhaps the answer why men are reluctant to try Pilates is in the first comment John made on Day One. He shuffled his bare feet self-consciously and muttered: “You need to know this isn’t my idea. Pilates is a bit girly, isn’t it?”

Well…! Where do we start putting that misconception to rights? For one, the method was developed by a cigar-smoking (not a required habit) man who was a boxer and wrestler. An Austrian, Joseph Pilates began his work when he was interned in a British prison of war camp during World War 1. He developed his mat exercises to help fellow inmates stay fit in an unhealthy environment and began developing his unique apparatus to rehabilitate injured soldiers. It was all about men then, in very tough conditions.

Nowadays, Pilates is the go-to exercise method for elite athletes like tennis-players, golfers and footballers. But let’s forget about them and focus on men living everyday lives and encountering everyday health problems, like John.

He’s in his late 50s. When we started worked together, he was overweight, had high blood pressure and chronic back pain. His leg joints were grumbling, and he complained of frequent heart burn and stomach acidity.

He’s still overweight but promises he’s dealing with it. Despite the continued strain that his weight puts on his back and his joints, he hasn’t ‘put his back out’ for months and reports that his knees and hips are less painful. His heart burn and acidity are things of the past. His blood pressure is beginning to drop.

He swears it’s all down to our twice-weekly Pilates sessions. Who am I to disagree?

So, how did we make such a difference?

 

First and foremost, I must give John all the credit. He worked hard. Very hard. A typical stressed-out, desk-bound businessman, he hadn’t done any exercise for years and was shockingly unfit.  When you’re fit, exercise is fun; sadly, getting fit is often painful, demoralising and frustrating. I’m not surprised he’s a successful man – having put his mind to getting fit, he gave it 110 per cent and pushed through the initial discomfort to achieve his goals. Janet is fit, has great body awareness and no underlying aches and pains – the ease with which she tackled their shared workouts didn’t help his self-esteem at all!

Each session we did was designed to work all the major muscle groups in the body, with special emphasis on his problem areas.

We strengthened core muscles. John’s back really needs break from the weight he’s carrying but, in the meantime, newly strengthened core muscles are providing vital support. To start with, he struggled with basic chest lifts. He’s can now do a perfect roll up and nails some tough ab routines.

Hip flexors (Iliopsoas and quads) were next on the list. John spends most of his life sitting, whether at a desk, in his car, or in front of the telly. No surprise his hip flexors were shortened and weak. (Hip flexors are fixed between lower spine and upper thigh. When they’re weak and shortened, they tug on your spinal column and cause back pain. And a shortened psoas is one of the main causes of sciatica.) We devoted time to stretching and strengthening hip flexors, and John has a set of stretches to do when he’s been sitting for ages.

The indigestion thing… Joseph Pilates was obsessed with breathing properly and standing up straight. He said: “Never slouch, as doing so compresses the lungs, overcrowds other vital organs, rounds the back and throws you off balance.”

Adopting good posture can reduce pressure on your vital organs so they can go about their work in an uncrowded, happy space … good bye indigestion.

(As an aside, compressing the lungs means your breathing is likely to be shallow and laboured, so you deny yourself big lungfuls of life-giving, calming oxygen.)

And finally, John’s leg joints. To be honest, the thing he needs to do most is lose weight. If he doesn’t, he will probably be a candidate for hip and/or knee replacements in five or ten years time. While he finds the motivation to deal with his weight, we’re working on strengthening the muscle around the struggling joints.

In our Pilates sessions, I use therabands and ankle weights to add a load-bearing element to target those muscles.

Once muscle tone improved, I encouraged him to start cycling again. Apparently, he used to cycle with his kids but they’ve grown up and moved out so his bike had gathered dust in the garage.

His first thought was to get an indoor exercise bike but I persuaded him that outdoor exercise has the added features of sunshine, fresh air, social interaction so lots of extra stress-busting endorphins. He and Janet now take a spin around the neighbourhood most Sundays. They have no wish to do endurance cycling but the hour or so they do a week is making a difference, probably the major contributor to lowering his blood pressure.

If a man in your life is being crippled by his work, point him in the direction of the nearest Pilates studio. And go along with him – in another article I’ll write about the motivational benefits of people working in twos and threes.

 

* If you have recently suffered illness, sugery or illness, or have a chronic or degenerative condition, consult your doctor, surgeon or physiotherapist before exercising.  Pilates instructors do not hold medical qualifications and cannot advise on serious illness or injury.