Polestar Pilates

How To Grow Your PT Practice With The Reformer

by Leave a Comment

You are here: Home / Archives for Polestar Pilates

Dr. Ada Wells DPT, PMA-CPT, TPI Level 3 is a senior Polestar faculty member with 25+ years of working as a physical therapist and educator in rehabilitation, fitness, and health education.  She is the owner of ProBalance Physical Therapy & Pilates in the SF Bay Area since 2004 and provides services at her brick-and-mortar business and online.  In addition to her development of specialized sports rehabilitation & performance programs, Ada provides lectures on rehabilitation and healthy lifestyle exercise.

BA: How did you go from what you saw as the reformer in the rehabilitation studio, to what you built today? You have a whole studio of group reformers and I know you also use the Konnectors and all of your machines have been adapted.  You use the Oov a lot in conjunction with your reformer classes – can you speak to that evolution?  How did you go from just the reformer in a physical therapy clinic to what you have developed today?

AW: The very first place I worked as a Physical Therapist in a larger facility was in a gym but we still only had one reformer. When I opened up my first studio location it was set up in a way that was really separated by private areas but I didn’t have this one large room to be able to have enough machines for a group class.

I made do with what I had, and eventually had two reformers, a trapeze table, and a chair. I was able to do trios and duets and was able to get people to realize they were working on the same thing on different machines and there’s that sense in the room that you’re in the same vibe in the movement.

When I acquired the studio space I am in now, I got this larger room area which is what I specifically wanted in order to be able to teach group reformer classes. The moment we moved into this space my business completely transformed. It went from a smaller operation to “wow” I am impacting a lot of people’s lives and really felt like a force in the neighborhood. It was simply for that reason, the ability to reach multiple people in that one hour of time.

Let’s face it, I love to teach privates, and I love one-on-one, but it is kind of trading time for dollars. When you can create an opportunity to scale your services and to reach a larger group of people, In this case with group classes as well as teaching online, it really changes the game in terms of how I feel I can impact people. We have this network now and it is just wonderful to be able to share that.

BA: One of the things that impressed me is the ease of the introduction of movement in a safer space. In the reformer studio, we can control things like speed, progress quicker, and make the proprioception less or more challenging. The reformer was built to be able to assist people who were not able to do the Pilates mat work. If you can’t hold your feet up in the hundred position, we can put your feet in the straps. We can put just enough springs to take off the load so that you can do the exercise correctly.

As we progress we can move towards the hundred, leg circles, and other exercises. This made so much sense to me as a rehabilitation practitioner. Sometimes in reference to the Pilates studio, we use the word “playground”. This ability to go in and create assistive environments to be able to progress people through graded load, proprioception, and tempos. What are your thoughts on that environment?

AW: It’s one place where people have the opportunity to feel graceful because they are supported. Feet in straps baby! I do not dare teach a class without feet in straps. I laugh because I tried and we actually had to go back and do it because my students were revolting!

It’s the place where they feel like they have control of their movement and what’s wonderful is that for the beginner we can still modify. Maybe they can’t tolerate having their legs totally straight, maybe they have some neural tension, no problem! We can load up more springs and maybe move the straps to their thighs. It’s funny because I always hated physics when I was in school, I couldn’t stand it.

Working with the equipment was dealing with physics every day, but it doesn’t feel like physics it just feels fun. You can see these angles of pull and you start to appreciate just through using it that you can see “we have a shorter lever here – distribute the weight there”.

The biggest thing is just helping people feel like they can move. They are being nurtured and supported in movement if they need to be. I teach a Pilates for athletes class, maybe it should be Pilates for Ageing Athletes because they are all athletes over fifty. The class allows them to do the things that feel athletic but they also very much revel in the stuff that’s more basic and fundamental because they realize how it feels in their body that they can feel their femoral head massaging their socket. They can feel the benefits!

They are developing this awareness they didn’t have before because maybe they were just powering through, or bulldozing through their exercises.

BA: Exactly!

Watch the full #PilatesHour episode “The Pilates Reformer: From Rehabilitation to Performance” here.

The Secret to Working with Joint Replacements

by 1 Comment

You are here: Home / Archives for Polestar Pilates

Polestar Faculty Beth Kaplanek RN, BSN, NCPT created an easily digestible 16-hour ONLINE course that is designed for Pilates Instructors and other medical professionals.  Learn more about when the next course is happening.

We sat down with Beth Kaplanek, for an intimate conversation about her book and upcoming course. Continue reading to meet Beth and discover why you should take this course if you are a Pilates Instructor or in the medical field.

Polestar:  Tell us about yourself Beth!

BK: I started my career in fitness in 1998, teaching aerobics and personal training. I also served for 20 years as a registered nurse working in various capacities in the emergency room, the operating room, the intensive care unit, drug counseling and rehabilitation, and hospice care. After years of teaching fitness, I became a Pilates Instructor because of my right hip replacement – possibly one of the first-ever instructors with a joint replacement. I think I can own that! Sixteen years later due to a bilateral hip condition, I ended up needing my second hip replacement and Pilates has been and continues to be the best way for me to move and live healthily all while keeping my flexibility, strength, range of motion and maintaining the integrity of the prosthesis. I was asking myself how I could share it with others to help them regain full function and have a positive movement experience.

Polestar: And you wrote a book and created a course with Polestar!  Can you tell us more about that? 

BK:  I wrote a book alongside two Orthopedic surgeons, Brett Levine MS, MD, and William L. Jaffe MD. The book is called Pilates for Hip and Knee Syndromes and Arthroplasties. The book presents the Pilates method and how it can be adopted for the needs of individuals with hip and knee pathologies and joint replacements. The book was written after Dr. Levine, Dr. Jaffe and I showcased preliminary research regarding Pilates as a form of post-operative rehabilitation for Knee and hip arthroplasties published in the Bulletin of the NYU for Joint Diseases and Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research.

Polestar:  That’s amazing! Can you share more about your course?

BK: It can be complicated material, but I break it down so that it can be easily digested and implemented into anyone’s practice.

“You have to hear it, see it, and apply it in order to learn it and use it!”

This course should be the next step for every instructor that has finished their core curriculum in Pilates. For those who take this course, I provide them with a 175+ page manual (it’s actually more like a book!) to reinforce everything that they learn during the course itself. I want Pilates instructors to think about how they can apply the course material in thinking about movement. The course guides you through working with people with pathologies and joint replacements. Over the two days, there are four movement labs. Every piece of the Pilates apparatus is utilized in creating a full-body movement program for the individual client. I send you home with an illustrated manual full of guidelines for movement and suggested movements for [that] pathology.

“The body is an amazing thing.”

The ultimate goal is to give a positive movement experience with no pain or discomfort. We as Pilates Instructors need to help to re-educate [the client’s] movement patterns and then build strength! The [Pilates] instructor has to be aware of pathologies and common problems that we see on a regular basis.

“…There is always something to learn!”

Pilates is an ideal form of low-impact movements that are easily adaptable
to the pre and post-rehabilitation and fitness needs of your clients with hip and knee pathologies and joint replacements.

Polestar: So very true. Thank you for that. If people have questions about this course or your book where should they contact you?

BK:  They can always visit my website www.bethkaplanek.com  or email me at beth@bethkaplanek.com . I also work at the Polestar Pilates Studio in Miami, Florida so you can stop in and say hi!

Beth Kaplanek is a practitioner of Pilates for Rehabilitation and Author of “Pilates for Hip and Knee Syndromes and Arthroplasties – Pilates Teacher’s Perspective of Lower Extremity Pathologies and Joint Replacements”

Six Tips To Better Cue The Breath in Pilates

by Leave a Comment

You are here: Home / Archives for Polestar Pilates

By Polestar UK Mentor Kristin Loeer. If you are interested in learning more about Kristin’s approach to working with the breath in Pilates you may be interested in the upcoming workshop “The Movement of Breathing” which will be hosted by Polestar Pilates UK in November 2022.

I have never met a client who was not confused or insecure about the nature and function of their breathing. In fact, I have never met a client who, when asked about it, did not assume that they are “probably breathing badly”. People are exposed to plenty of breathing cues in Pilates and Yoga classes. Outside of the studio, there is also an abundance of breathing practices and breathing apps.

So why is there such confusion and lack of confidence about breathing? And secondly, I dare ask, do we, as movement professionals who cue breathing all the time, feel all that confident about it ourselves?”

After all, we may have learned that thoracic breathing is the way to go. Or we were told that deep diaphragmatic breathing is important. We may feel compelled to remind people to take deep breaths during movement because we see their tendency to hold their breath. Then again we may wonder about the exhale because if we do not breathe out we can not take in fresh air either. When we add Pilates to the equation and start talking about inhaling and exhaling in relation to movement we can easily overwhelm our clients, if not ourselves.

The Breath as Autonomic and Conscious Process

The reason why the subject of breathing causes never-ending confusion is that breathing is both a very finely tuned autonomic process, as well as under our conscious control. Hence it can be altered, but we may wonder whether it should be. This will always have a very complex impact on the rest of our being. 

Just like digestion or heart rate, breathing is orchestrated largely by our autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is influenced by our life experiences. It is constantly responding and adapting to external and internal changes. Its main concern at all times is homeostasis and survival.  

The Breath As A Tool

As mentioned, unlike heart rate and digestion, breathing is also under our conscious control. I can choose to lengthen my exhale or to hold my breath. I do not have the same control over my heartbeat or digestive processes. This makes breathing such a powerful tool. We can use it when we want to become calmer or more alert and of course, it gives us the opportunity to optimize movement through breath. 

I am a practitioner, who specializes in somatic trauma work. My belief is that it is important to remember that while we can alter our breathing and create powerful change through it, breathing is a carefully and deliberately orchestrated nervous system process. No matter how inefficient or dysregulated a client’s breathing pattern may seem, in my experience, it is never random. There is no such thing as “lazy breathing”, “wrong breathing” or “I forget to breathe”.

There is nothing the nervous system does without good reason or without its key concern being survival. 

This does not mean that we should not work with our breath. It means that we need to go about it gently and respectfully. We need to be aware that there is a reason for the client’s current breathing pattern, and that if we try to alter it, there may be pushback from the client’s nervous system. We can bring about positive change indeed if the nervous system recognizes that this change in breathing is helpful. On the other hand, if we are not careful we might promote a messy interference with the nervous system’s autonomic process, which does not serve the client well.

Here are my six top tips for how to work with the breath in both private Pilates sessions and group classes:

1. Observe The Breathing Pattern

Particularly in private sessions, we have the opportunity to observe our client’s breathing both in stillness and motion.

Let’s not be too hasty with our wish to help them use their breath better. Let’s be curious about what their body is naturally doing. Also, consider how breath might change automatically as we work with using other cues. It is very possible that your soothing voice or their awareness of their body’s movement against the ground settles their nervous system. This alone might regulate their breathing without you having to address it directly.

2. Make Breathing Cues Relevant To The Client.

As with movement, respond to what you are observing rather than using generic, popular cues.

Some people do indeed breathe shallowly. Others have already been told they do so and are now stuck in compensating patterns of excessive abdominal breathing. Many people inhale more than they exhale, however, there are also a fair few people who stretch their exhales and barely feel the need to inhale. The point is that no one person breathes the same and we need to be careful not to generalise and give people cues that are not useful to them.

3. In Group Classes: Offer Different Breathing Cues To Explore.

In group classes, it is much harder to observe and attend to individuals of course.

We need to be aware that not one breathing cue will work or be right for everyone. Let’s provide different options so that they can explore and be inspired by the cues that feel good to them. You might ask them to become aware of how much they breathe in compared to how much they breathe out. You might suggest they try out opposite options within an exercise to let them decide what feels right for them. Also, give people the option to ignore the breath-related cues altogether. They may simply not be in a place where they feel safe to explore their breathing patterns. 

4. Use Positive And Invitational Language

Whether you work with individuals or a group, when it comes to breathing I strongly recommend using invitational language.

Let’s remember that the nature of our breathing is closely linked with our sense of survival. It is important to put the client in charge of their breath. Encourage them to be present and curious with their breath. Reassure them that while they may want to try out making changes, their natural breathing is not wrong and they can return to it whenever they want.  

5. There Is No Failure. 

A client may simply not be able to access the shift in breathing we are encouraging them to find.

This may bring about a sense of failure in the client. Let’s remember that the nervous system always has the final say and if it does not deem a change safe it will not allow it. You can communicate this to the client by explaining how their body is “saying no” to this today and how over time it can change its mind”. Encourage the client to explore and “play with this again later.”  

6. Bring Awareness To The Impact

If the client’s breathing does change, allow them time to experience this without adding any further new information or cues.

It can take a few minutes to explore this and to become aware of the holistic impact this change has had. They may feel calmer, stronger, or experience more flow in the movement. This positive shift is really worth exploring! It has the potential to integrate and perhaps become the new normal. They may become emotional, anxious, or irritated and feel their movements ‘disintegrate’. It is important for the client to experience whether this shift is positive for them or not. They can revert back to their previous way of breathing if they need to. 

If you would like to learn more about my approach to working with the breath in Pilates you may be interested in my upcoming workshop “The Movement of Breathing” which I will be running for Polestar Pilates UK in November 2022. For more information please contact me @kristinloeer_movement .

Kristin Loeer

5 Ways Pilates Can Support Your Mental Health

by Leave a Comment

You are here: Home / Archives for Polestar Pilates

“If you can relate to overwhelm, anxiety, or perhaps being ‘tired and wired’, then read on for ways in which Pilates as a practice can help you, and support your positive mental health.”

Sarah Edwards is a Doctor of Education and Comprehensive Polestar Graduate of Polestar Pilates UK.

Pilates is often promoted as being great for ‘core strength’ or ‘reducing back pain’, both of which it certainly can do. (I know, as back pain was the main reason I took up Pilates in the first place). Through personal experience and in teaching clients in private and group settings, I now know that Pilates has consistently supported me in managing my own anxiety. The practice can be instrumental in supporting the positive mental health of others.

Prior to teaching with Polestar and while I attended my weekly Pilates class, I was working as a Teaching and learning director in higher education. I completed a Doctorate in Education, raised a family, and I also experienced a number of traumatic experiences regarding my children’s health. Not surprisingly, I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder. 

Thankfully, Pilates really brought me out of that very busy headspace and, at times, my overwhelm. My experiences led me to train with Polestar as a Comprehensive Practitioner. I also trained as a mental health first-aider and, safe to say, I haven’t looked back.

Joseph’s Mind-Body Method

Joseph Pilates advocated a mind-body practice much before his time. In many aspects of holistic health, the context of “typical daily life” has changed in drastic ways. Modern lifestyle habits including chronic sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and even social media use and ‘doom scrolling’, have fuelled the anxiety epidemic. Mental Health disorders, including anxiety, have also increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the context has changed, the practice of Pilates, for the main part, hasn’t.  

How can Pilates specifically help? If you can relate to overwhelm, anxiety, or perhaps being ‘tired and wired’ then read on for ways in which Pilates as a practice can help you, and support your positive mental health.

1. Regular Practice

Pilates as part of your regular schedule will interrupt your overthinking and helps ‘press pause’ on any overwhelm. In our digitized, and always “on call” culture, we need to step away from our devices, and literally and figuratively “switch off”.

2. Break The Cycle

In turn, positive movement experiences can help break the chronic stress cycle. Chronic stress affects the nervous system, and influences related anxiety disorders. Stress can also have profound physiological effects. The long-term stimulation of the fight-or-flight response leads to the constant production and secretion of hormones such as cortisol. Long-term excessive cortisol is associated with a variety of consequences, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

3. Connect With The Breath

Pilates focuses on breath (it’s the first Principle of Polestar Pilates). Focusing on the breath, and particularly an extended exhale can help access the parasympathetic nervous system. This sends signals to the brain that all is well. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the “rest and digest” function of the body which is why you can likely hear your digestive system at work once you relax!

4. Practice Embodyment 

A skilled teacher will give you both internal and external cues that allow you to move in a mindful way. When you focus on the internal sense of your body (interoception) you cannot be thinking about your overwhelming to-do list. Teachers who have also embraced an element of psychological fitness training (such as with Polestar) can also help clients come out of their ‘thinking brain’ by stimulating the vagus nerve. This can support reducing stress, anxiety, and even depression.

5. Empowerment

The benefits in strength, posture, and mobility you gain from Pilates can help your self-confidence (we call this self-efficacy) and your self-esteem. Any positive movement experience will release endorphins, and hormones that will reduce pain and stress, and improve your mood.

Sarah Edwards @positivepilateswithsarah is a Doctor of Education (with specializations in Teaching and Learning), a Comprehensive Pilates Instructor with Polestar, and a Mental Health First Aider. She is particularly interested in promoting Pilates for mental health and runs one-to-one, and on-demand classes from her recently completed garden studio in England (gardening being another of her passion projects)!

References:

i Vora, E. (2022) The Anatomy of Anxiety. Harper Collins publishing.

ii Mental Health First Aid England, 2020.

iii The Parasympathetic Nervous System (2022) Brittanica Science. Available at : Sciencehttps://www.britannica.com/science/parasympathetic-nervous-system (accessed 8th August 2022).

iv The Counselling Directory. What is the vagus nerve? Available at http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/member-articles Accessed 24th August 2022.

v As a Mental Health First Aider (1) I am trained to recognize when someone is struggling with an anxiety disorder, depression, or psychotic episode and to signpost them to appropriate help. It is not within my scope to diagnose these conditions.

How To Make Your Movement Look Good And Feel Good With Dynamic Alignment

by Leave a Comment

You are here: Home / Archives for Polestar Pilates

BA:  I like the idea of observation, the observer, and the observed. We talk about the quality of movement versus quantity of movement and often I feel we are stuck in the quantity. We feel and see a quality movement, we don’t quite know how to identify it but we try to mimic it sometimes by trying to position correctly what we saw or interpreted rather than what really is happening in the movement.

Were they allowing themselves to move?  The idea of novice to expert moving, the novel mover will always over recruit, not sure where the organization is going to come from. I often think about riding a bike. From week one to week two they are riding very efficiently with no hands. This idea of moving from unconscious incompetent movement, not knowing what they don’t know, into unconsciously competent movement. 

Do We Teach Movement Or Position?

I love the idea that you can teach movement from a position. I think that’s really important for the Pilates teacher and physical therapists because so often everything is assessed in static. Does static alignment really tell us anything about movement? I want to preface this in the sense that most of us in this community work within the spectrum of pathokinesiology or performance kinesiology. We study the science of movement. As a physical therapist, I’m trying to restore movement to a level of function. As a performance practitioner, I’m trying to enhance their movement performance however I can with whatever tools I can use. 

EF: One great question is “what does the person want to achieve”? Obviously, if they come to you in pain, and they have an issue the number one goal is to remove the pain. This will mostly involve improving function and improving efficiency but interestingly, not always. Compensation patterns sometimes are the name of the game. If you have a broken bone or something like that, you have to do a “dance” around it. It might not be the ideal most efficient thing but it brings you out of pain. 

Let’s say you want to improve your performance. It’s one thing if we’re are talking about walking, running and the things were structured for but let’s say it’s dance, Pilates and yoga. Now, I’m going to contradict myself on a level here. You have form and you cannot get away from form. There is form!  If you want to be a dancer or demonstrate a Pilates exercise you have you show good form and this involves a position.

The question is: How can you teach the kind of forms we work with, but still maintain that dynamic alignment? 

Eric Franklin

Say the goal as a dancer is to look good in the mirror. What if it also feels good and is also efficient?  Learning how to create that would be the goal.  I’ve had conversations with people saying “Ballet wrecks your body”, but I disagree. Ballet can be a great exercise but you have to work on achieving those forms with good function and in dialogue with whoever is trying to achieve them. This is especially true if you look a the traditional forms. Dialogue doesn’t exist. You have the expert, the guru, and there is a sense of “this is how it is”. You have to get that form into your body and it doesn’t matter if it breaks. If it breaks? Next in line…So that’s the other extreme and we’re trying to be the nice ones here and say we can achieve that healthily. We need that dialogue and a lot of that world is not used to what we call student-centered teaching

BA: A lot of Juan Nieto’s language lately has been talking about tissue adaptation. We’re excited to see Ido Portal’s work and Mike Fitch’s work in animal flow. These practices are exciting, how they are looking at different ranges of motion and mixed martial arts. The body needs to go into these ranges over time and gradually increase the load in different directions and different planes. This ensures that there is tissue and neurological neuromuscular adaptation.

What The Client Wants

You said something earlier I love, “what the client wants”.  One of the things we use a lot at Polestar is the ICF model. What does the client want to participate in? How are their beliefs connected to this? Do they believe they should be participating in activities that they are not comfortable participating in right now? What activities does that involve? Is the demand on the body to participate in those activities where it needs to be?  So many questions!

For example, here are some things you need to be able to do to be a semi-professional ballet dancer. The body needs to be able to do these things, and this is where you are today. Perhaps there is there a big gap between where you are today and where you want to be as a semi-professional dancer. Oftentimes we keep thinking there is some kind of recipe that takes you from one point to another point. This is where anthropometrics come into play. There are many types and shapes and conditions of bodies. Longer or shorter torso, arms, and legs. How do you look at this idea in particular from a teacher’s perspective of receiving these different bodies and goals?  Can we progress safely but also take them to where they want to participate?  They want to do MMA or Cirque du Soleil, how do we help them get there?

Creating a Motivational Climate

EF: It definitely depends on what kind of martial arts. If it’s going to be acrobatics, gymnastics, or dance they could come in and you can say “sorry – not enough hip mobility, thoracic spine too stiff, you shouldn’t do this”. What you often end up seeing is someone doing ballet, and they have the “perfect” body but their movement is not interesting to look at because they are like a machine.  They “have it all” but there’s no sense of rhythm or space and no musicality. These are the important factors! 

There’s a sense of moving your body in space with a certain rhythm and grace.  Often you have to reteach people in that field why they even started to do Pilates. And why did they start to dance? Because they liked doing it! What has it turned into now? All those factors come into play.  It’s tricky also with different body types. 

If someone doesn’t seem to have the body type for an activity, I would still say “go for it!”. Who knows, they might have some other amazing quality which they will bring out in that form and blow us all away. 

BA:  We’ve seen this over and over again. Tenacity even in sports far exceeds the natural ability in people who achieve high levels of performance. I think especially in dance it’s their emotion and motivation and their passion. That’s why I always ask, what do you believe you should be able to participate in? What do you believe is not allowing you to do this?  I love to know what they think.  What’s their belief on why they can’t?  Do they believe their body doesn’t let them?  Is that a pre-conceived belief that controls the actual movement of their body? I happen to believe belief can do this in a lot of ways. How do we recreate an environment in which they can optimize their ability?  We may not know what that will look like, but we can give it a shot.  

EF: This is one of the biggies – creating a motivational climate! Creating a climate within which the student can excel.  Lean into that and forget about teaching technique and the efficiency and all that. Just create an environment in which they feel they can do their best. This is a completely different factor not related to “this joint” or “that fascia”. 

We say in Franklin Method “You don’t get what you want, you get what you believe”. 

Eric Franklin

You want to be able to do these exercises or dance steps really well but you don’t believe that you can do it.  We can examine what the client really believes in and then be careful with the information. We have simple ways in Franklin Method where we do a small movement like an arm gesture while you say “I love moving my arms – It’s really healthy because it really gets my scapula moving – it’s fantastic”. You say this as you do the movement and then you ask the question “how much did you actually believe in that?”.  And a lot of people say 80%, 50%, or no I don’t really love moving.

Watch #PilatesHour Episode 108 “Dynamic Alignment” With Brent Anderson and Eric Franklin. Learn more about the Franklin Method here.

How To Maximize Neuroplastic Processes: Keep Your Clients Focused!

by Leave a Comment

You are here: Home / Archives for Polestar Pilates

Watch #PilatesHour Episode 120 “Neuro-Concepts And Pilates” with Brent Anderson and special guest Kate Strozak MSc Applied Neuroscience, LMT, NCPT. New to Neuro-Concepts? Check out the blog “Fascinating Neuro-Concepts You Need To Know As A Pilates Instructor”.

BA:  As Pilates teachers, how do we make what we do in one or two hours a week potentially influence a positive neuroplastic change? We know that one or two hours a week may not be enough to influence this. What else needs to happen, and what needs to be influenced in that one or two hours a week? 

KS:  Giving people good appropriate challenges is really important for this process.  Also, I try to stimulate them in multiple ways.  The use of imagery is incredibly impactful and profound for people to help them embody these new experiences. Imagery helps them build different relationships between a movement and their perception of that movement or their relationship to that movement.

Many of these things are built into the Polestar curriculum actually!  Utilizing imagery, utilizing tactile cueing in order to tie in sensory nerves and proprioception thus integrating the brain on another level.

Kate Strozak

Now more than ever I talk to my clients about their sleep habits. I remind them it’s out of the scope of my practice, and that I am not a professional sleep consultant. I encourage them if they feel like their sleep could be better quality than it is right now to reach out to a sleep professional and get some help in that arena. It’s when we are in our deep states of sleep that a lot of these neuroplastic changes occur in our brain.  

Being “Chatty” With Clients

Another important thing is mindfulness. Prior to studying neuroscience, I was inclined to be chit chatty and casual with my clients. In part, thanks to Alexander Bohlander and my experience with him in his meditation workshop at the Polestar experience I dove deep into studying mindfulness and meditation. It’s fascinating the effects of these on the brain and profound in terms of stress reduction and sleep quality.  If you are doing something that supports the quality of your sleep you are, therefore, hopefully then supporting the process of neuroplasticity.  So it’s a very long-winded answer to say there is a lot!

BA: That is excellent Kate!  I just learned this year from an Andrew Huberman podcast about the idea of neuroplasticity occurring typically when we’re sleeping.  We challenge the body and challenge the nervous system during the day, challenging ourselves to learn.  I’ve been using this with the students at the university as well. Especially the ones who are struggling with retaining information or integrating and synthesizing information.  It’s so interesting that it’s the sleep that is going to allow you to synthesize this information.  This leads into the “interleaved” learning where we’re stressing you a little bit to recall information to make it challenging and difficult.  At first, you can’t remember what it is, but when you go back and look at it again after the stress of trying to remember it (and a good night’s sleep), it is amazing the amount of synthesis that happens on the following day or two of processing that information.  

Creating Demand And “Struggle”

The same thing is true with movement of course and some of the things you mentioned.  If I could get my client to remember what we did last week, “do you remember where your body was when we had that really good experience? “Can you show that to me again?”, and maybe they fail, that’s ok.  They are trying to figure it out and recall it, but that’s the internal feedback and the mindfulness that we’re talking about that allows information to be synthesized.  They need this demand and the struggle of the recall. And don’t just give it to them and show them, let them struggle with it, we don’t want to make it so easy.  We want them to understand that struggle is good, that failure is good, and that these are learning processes that will help them in the long run. If we don’t challenge them with that struggle we don’t challenge the nervous system to change.  

KS: Absolutely, there is no incentive to change if you are not being challenged or having that moment where you have those slight releases of cortisol and adrenaline. Your palms start sweating and we have to have those moments, it’s part of the human experience.  

I don’t know about all of you but I was very prone to just having casual conversations with my clients. When the client has done footwork a million times with me, which in and of itself presents another problem, but if I’m talking with them about something, I’m taking them out of their experience and out of their body, so I limit that.  I’m not cold or stoic and not available to them but I really get them to focus on what they’re doing and to really be present and attentive to their movement. 

If I’m talking with them about what they are doing this weekend, they start thinking about it and they are not aware of what their body is doing at the present moment in time. 

Kate Strozak

BA: I really appreciate you saying that.  Our friend Polestar Educator Juan Nieto calls it “being the butler”, and I call it “gum holding”. The point is that we get into a chatty, chummy kind of relationship with them and were really not challenging the nervous system. We become a “paid friend” in that situation.  If they are doing the same thing they always do with you, you are not challenging any improvement or any change other than maybe being a listening ear.  Even worse when we bring our own problems to our clients.  

Supporting Neuroplastic Processes

In group classes when there is flow and purpose, there is more internal reflection going on and feedback that is more likely to create change than in a chatty one-on-one session.  We can create incredible challenges and demands on the nervous system when we’re working with a group of ten people.  If we’re not having that same intensity with our clients one-on-one they are not going to have the same neuroplastic challenges.  

KS: And if you’re not supporting these neuroplastic processes then what are you doing? The neuroplastic process is just a really fancy way of saying that you’re helping to create a repatterning, working on movement efficiency, or working on a tissue adaptation.  If you’re not really supporting those processes you’re not really supporting the longevity of the Pilates work you are doing with them.  So maybe Brent, you, and I are suggesting to everyone that our challenge to you is to try to support more quiet and focus in your pilates sessions.  If your client` is really keen on talking and carrying on a conversation, you might not be challenging them enough!  There is a time and place for all of it as you know!  

BA:  Let’s see how chatty they are when it’s time for jackknife…time for hip circles!

KS: Yes! Can you juggle while doing feet in straps?  

Watch #PilatesHour Episode 120 “Neuro-Concepts And Pilates” with Brent Anderson and special guest Kate Strozak.