Pilates for Dancers

Mentor Highlight: Vikki Harris, Polestar Pilates UK

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Located in Burgess Hill and London, United Kingdom, Vikki Harris is a Polestar Pilates Mentor for Polestar UK, Franklin Method Back and Spine Trainer, Contributor on the Polestar International Blog, and holds a Diploma in Dance Education AISTD STC RAD. You can find Vikki on social media @vpilatesstudioburgesshill.

Describe “the Spirit of Polestar”…

VH: A guiding ‘Pole star’, a map, territory, and landscape to be explored. Fostering an experience, to develop color, depth, individuality, and authenticity. Opening a perspective that embodies the true spirit of ‘aliveness” of human existence.

What Three Words come to mind when you think of “Polestar Pilates”

Potential

Community

Joy

What do you love about teaching Pilates and owning a Studio? 

VH: What I love about teaching is being a witness to developing insight and the opportunity of self-reflection for not only my clients but for myself. I feel honored to walk alongside a process and hold space for someone to exist. Opening my own small studio was part of my liberation to ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’, becoming aware of the ‘self’ and the individual.

Where did you take your Training and who was the educator?

VH: I trained with Polestar Pilates UK in 2012 on the Comprehensive, Reformer, and Mat courses with Liz Bussey and Diane Nye as my inspiring educators. I feel full of gratitude and appreciation for the compassionate holding through the process from all, including my mentors and Carl and Julia Moss of Polestar Pilates UK.

What are your current Inspirations? What do You love about them?

VH: I am inspired by the optimizing of health finding balance in spirit, physically and psychologically. I am fascinated by human behavior, interaction, and psychology. Behind every behavior is a feeling, behind every feeling is a need. As a Mentor to Polestar Pilates students, I feel honored to witness and be part of growth and inspired to overcome what we think we can’t do and step forward with courage into life.

Why Pilates? How did you find the practice?

VH: Initially, I found Pilates in 1999 as a professional dancer and teacher. I loved discovering and embodying the bio-mechanics through the Pilates repertoire and the process of strategy and problem-solving. Understanding the “why and how” changed and developed my skills as a dance teacher. Personally, my own Pilates practice was a transition from performing and enjoying the playing of a role, to becoming my own person. The real benefits came after an injury stopped me moving and the supportive studio equipment gave me my freedom back.

Why Polestar Pilates? How did you come to join the Polestar Community?

VH: I originally trained in Mat and Reformer with Body Control Pilates in 1999 and found the Polestar Pilates Studio Comprehensive training in 2012 as I became interested to develop the rehabilitation potential of the work. My own personal journey very much influencing my desire to support others.

What do you hope to convey in your teaching?

Choice and potential.

Do you have a favorite quote you live by?

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Viktor Frankl

What is your Favorite Apparatus or favorite way to move?

VH: I’m not sure if I can choose a favorite piece of equipment as each gives me a different connection and experience. I love the sense of flow the trapeze offers in sequences of movements, yet the stimulation and containment of the reformer.

Read more from Vikki on the Blog:

Supporting Dancers within the Pilates Environment

The Gift of Opportunity and Authenticity

Located in Burgess Hill & London, United Kingdom Vikki Harris is a Polestar Pilates Mentor for Polestar UK, Franklin Method Back and Spine Trainer, and holds a Diploma in Dance Education AISTD STC RAD. You can find Vikki on social media @vpilatesstudioburgesshill.

Teaching Self Monitoring in Pilates

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By Polestar Educator Noelle Dowma DPT, BFA, NCPT, CMTPT

October 2017 was a busy month for me…I presented in the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS) conference in Houston, Texas at the beginning of the month, and again at the Pilates Method Alliance (PMA) conference in Indian Wells, California at the end of the month. The IADMS presentation was called “Dance Conditioning with Pilates as the Foundation,” and it was basically a Pilates mat class with lots of other exercises that dancers need. A good portion of my participants did have Pilates experience, but I wanted to highlight the unique non-Pilates exercises I teach to help dancers get the strength and flexibility they need.

When preparing to teach for the PMA conference, I knew my audience was 100% Pilates and not many dancers. So, I taught the directly inverted Pilates mat class. I used far more traditional Pilates exercises and only interspersed a few that would specifically benefit dancers (and regular people). This act of teaching similar things in a small time frame made me realize how versatile Pilates mat and equipment work can be.

A Pilates mat class can easily be transformed from a basic class appropriate for very unconditioned people by simplifying and modifying exercises, to challenging the most elite athlete. The difference in these two classes comes down to content and difficulty, although safety and challenge must be our focus as teachers.

I worry that we, as Pilates teachers, over challenge people, which can result in injury, the development of poor form, frustration, and misinformation.

What these teachers might be overlooking is the focus to teach the students self-monitoring so that they can make ideal choices for their body.

An example of this is to help provide our students with information about how to perform self-palpation, internal assessment (feeling what is happening), or external assessment (looking at their alignment). Our role as teachers is not to say “in-out” or to count for them, but rather to help them to know if they are doing the exercise correctly and when to modify, stop, or continue onwards.

It is always joyful for me to hear a past student tell me about trying a Pilates class elsewhere. Because of having this self-awareness, they often can assess how good the class was and are able to keep themselves safe, even if the pace and advancement of the exercise were too much. This makes sense after all, because Joseph Pilates said:

“It is the mind that shapes the body.”

If we follow his philosophy, we can help teach others to have the consciousness so that they follow Polestar’s mantra of “intelligent movement.”

Discover Noelle Dowma and Kinesphere Physical Therapy here

Polestar Graduate Highlight: Amy Foster Berntsen

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Dance, Yoga, Gyrotonic, Pilates…she does it all!  We interviewed Polestar graduate and practitioner Amy Foster Berntsen in Miami, FL.  Her unique perspective of movement informs her teaching and lifestyle -read more to learn about Amy! Catch her on instagram @amynamaste Polestar: What do you love about teaching? AFB: Teaching for me, is a service of giving back the wonderful gifts that were given to me by my teachers. I’m passionate about my work. Being a professional dancer in premier ballet companies around the world, I had to cultivate an awareness of how to care for my own body. Having battled many different types of injuries with the mindset “the show must go on!” I couldn’t let an injury hold me back from dancing. I first discovered Pilates and GYROTONIC® in my youth while training to become a ballet dancer. My teachers were strict and I was dedicated. I loved finding new ways to strengthen my physic and I absolutely fell in love with these two practices. With all the different modalities I’ve picked-up along the way, Pilates and GYROTONIC® methods contributed to faster recovery time when injured. Through my ballet career I developed a broader understanding of alternative movement modalities. Being a teacher of movement has been in my wheelhouse for about 20 years now. It’s very fulfilling and I believe it’s my dharma, my life’s purpose. I also teach yoga which deepens my spiritual practice and I meditate everyday to help me relax and connect within. I meet a lot of incredible people in my field and I’ve been fortunate enough to train with some great minds en route my movement journey. I’m always grateful and love to incorporate little tidbits of my favorite teachers style into my classes. That’s what keeps me growing. We learn from each other. We are all teachers and we never stop learning. To me that’s magic! Polestar: What are your current inspirations?​ AFB: I’m inspired by my students. How they show up to class. Ready to learn and take care of their bodies. It is a pleasure to see that and feel like my teachings makes a difference in their life. Polestar: Why Pilates? AFB: Pilates is a vehicle for everyday movement. It creates structure in the body, resets the nervous system and reeducates the tissues. Pilates keeps the body in-check with less aches and pains. As we get older it is important to find a movement practice if we want to stay healthy and rejuvenated. This is what I find to be true in my own body. I always tell my students “consistency is key”. Polestar: What do you hope to convey in your teaching? AFB: Knowledge and new skills through an experience of movement. I hope people leave my class happy and feel good about themselves. Polestar: Where would you love to Vacation to? AFB: Hawaii is the next place I’d love to visit or Italy, but Hawaii first. Polestar: What is your favorite Quote? AFB: This is hard because I have so many favs but here’s a potent one that I resonate with. “We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.” -Maya Angelou Polestar: Describe your movement style? AFB: Dynamic, poised, strong, challenging, flexible, mindful, graceful and chill Polestar: What is your favorite apparatus? AFB: Ladder Barrel. I love doing back bends on it every morning before teaching. And the reformer of coarse. Polestar: What are you reading? AFB: Currently listening to audio book: Mindfulness In Action by Chogyam Trungpa
Amy Foster Berntsen
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