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movement

Marie-Jose Blom RETURNS to Toronto!!

***ONLY TWO SPOTS LEFT FOR BODY LOGIC!!!***

***WAITING LIST FOR FOOT!!!!***

Ugly Duckling Pilates is delighted to present Marie-José Blom for two workshops over three days (friday may 4th to sunday may 6th) in lovely downtown Toronto, Canada.  [scroll down for workshop description and printable pdf poster]

Marie-José Blom has been combining Pilates technique and dance medicine for well over twenty years. Her mission statement is “the implementation of movement sciences elevating Pilates into the twenty-first century.” Marie-José Blom pioneered and founded her comprehensive Teacher Training courses as a master teacher in 1991 at Long Beach Dance Conditioning. She remains committed to research and continuing education in her specialty subjects of pelvic and lumbar stability and movement techniques.

Marie-José is currently on faculty at Southern California’s Loyola Marymount University where she teaches Anatomy/Kinesiology and Physiology for the department of dance; concurrently with her directorship of LBDC and her teacher training courses. Marie-José has established programs at various international facilities and is in demand for lectures both locally and internationally for institutes, physical therapists and movement educators.

Workshops:

• From the Soul of the Foot to the Core of the Body (friday – 8 hours)
• Body Logic (sat/sun – 16 hours)

Instructor: Marie-José Blom
Location: Ugly Duckling Pilates – Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada – 130 Rosedale Valley Road (#508)
Workshop Size: 20 Participants
Total Cost: $650 for all three days – 250 for one day – 450 for two

Full and printable PDF:  Marie-Jose_Blom_2012 (Right Click and select “Save Link As …”)

Please note: CATS IN THE STUDIO .

From the Soul of the Foot to the Core of the Body

This two-part workshop introduces the relationship between the proper placement of the foot and ankle and the performance of the entire body. The morning session includes an introduction to the functional anatomy of the foot and ankle, embodying the information by locating the structures on your own body and developing an understanding of the movement of the bones through seeing, feeling and understanding. The afternoon session includes dynamic alignment and strength exercises for the foot and ankle, integration of optimal placement of the feet in Reformer and Trapeze Table exercises, and understanding the effects of foot placement on the rest of the body.

Objectives

• Develop a deep understanding of the relationship between the foot and ankle and the entire body
• Form a strong physiological appreciation for the significance of the foot and ankle, and their potential affect on body performance
• Learn to integrate Pilates exercise protocol through existing repertoire for foot and ankle

Füße in guten Händen (Feet in Good Hands), Christian Larsen – German, ISBN-10: 3131355522
The Endless Web: Fascial Anatomy and Physical Reality, R. Louis Schultz – ISBN-10: 1556432283
Anatomy Trains 2nd Edition, Thomas Meyers – ISBN-10: 044310283X
Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, James Oschman – ISBN-10: 0750654007
Fascia Research, Robert Schleip – ISBN-10: 3437550098
Muscles and Meridians: The Manipulation of Shape, Phillip Beach – ISBN-10: 070203109

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Body Logic

Merging Wellness and Fitness to Create Real-Life Pilates Programs

Discover Pilates as a vital and meaningful integration methodology that bridges the gap between the therapeutic and conventional studio environment. Body Logic content focuses on improving the instructional quality and biomechanical understanding of Pilates exercises using Pilates equipment. This workshop aims to deepen the teaching skill level of the practitioner to merge wellness and fitness into true vitality for the client/patient.

Objectives

• Improving and deepening the teaching skill according to new movement biomechanics through concept of length tension: dynamic core control
• The understanding of a new model of human movement as the foundation of our teachings (according to Phillip Beach)
• Expanding the repertoire with:
  • Variations and modifications suitable for therapeutic or clinical application
  • Further using variations to deepen the body of work

Course Curriculum includes:

• In-depth functional anatomy biomechanics illustrated by 3D presentations and PowerPoint
• Practical applications of these teachings are applied in the analysis of the movement repertoire
• The course is taught in a noncompetitive supportive environment

Bibliography

The Pelvic Girdle, Diane Lee – ISBN-10: 0443073732

Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance, James Oshman – ISBN-10: 0750654007

Anatomy of Breathing, Blandine Calais-Germain – ISBN-10: 0939616556

Anatomy of Movement, Blandine Calais-Germain – ISBN-10: 0939616572

Core Intelligence, Marie-Jose Blom – 2002

Muscles and Meridians: The Manipulation of Shape, Phillip Beach – ISBN-10: 0702031097

perception

wow i could go a lot of places with a title like that!

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a long time ago; approximately forty two seconds after i started teaching, i took a workshop with an elder by the name of ron fletcher.  mr. fletcher is ninety years old now so he would have been something 82 at the time and he was suffering from neuralgia or something similar (bear with me, it was seven or eight years ago) that caused him to have something like less control of his extremities or pain along the nerve paths.  i’m being vague because i don’t feel comfortable being “factual” since this was so long ago and is not actually my own medical history and it isn’t really any of my business anyway.

he was hilarious and picky and persnickety and very opinionated and i learned a lot from him but three things really stuck in my head.  the first was his control.  he could lie on a machine and stick his leg out at whatever angle he felt like maintaining and then perfectly extend his leg without even a millimeter of movement in his knee or thigh even as his foot went wherever he wanted.  i was so amazed that i stuck my hands on his leg and demanded that he do it again!  (oh the nerve of me!  but that one second fundamentally changed my feeling about leg mechanics so i’m really glad that i did it!)  that he did it in his eighties while suffering a nerve disorder serves only to illustrate just how good a mover he really is!

the second was this funny moment where we’re all standing in front of machines and he stops, mid-sentence, and says “what is up with your head, you always hold it like this” and then he imitated my posture and for the first time i *got* what was up with my head and i understood (because i could always “see” even when i couldn’t “do”) why i couldn’t find the place in my body where my head was easy on my spine.  he was the first of many senior teachers to interrupt workshops so they could move my head into place or comment on it’s position.  they don’t do it anymore and i guess that means it’s better now; for six years every time i went to a workshop or conference the most senior teacher in the place would fix my head at least once, i kind of miss the attention! [for those who don't know, my seventh whiplash incident drove me into my first pilates lesson so it took a very long time to get my neck and head working correctly again.  it's still not entirely there but it's OH so much better.]

but the thing that stuck in my mind forever?  that really just bugged me and yet didn’t?  he commented that you should be able to tell a good teacher by the way they looked when they were walking down the street.  that you could see the movement in them simply from their walk.

at the time i was incensed.  as a baby teacher who couldn’t yet stand up for more than five minutes at a time or do much of the advanced work, i just *knew* that he was wrong because i could *see* dammit.  i got it, what i was supposed to be teaching and sharing; what i was meant to do for the body in front of me.  i instinctively understood what movement training was trying to accomplish and every time that my teacher showed me something i could immediately see it in the bodies i worked with or passed on the street.

i certainly didn’t believe that i knew “everything” although in retrospect i did suffer from the idea that i was supposed to know more than i did.  the longer i teach the faster i am to refer people to osteopaths or physiotherapists.  the more quickly i am willing to say “uh, this isn’t right, can you go see xyz and tell them lmnop and then let me know what they think?” instead of plugging away at something that isn’t working like it should.  i’ve discussed this with other healers and most of them say the same thing.  when you start you think you have to be everything to your client, as you mature in your practice you learn what you can actually give (and ironically have FAR more to offer!) and become significantly happier to refer them to others for their specific skills.

i also didn’t believe that i understood the full depth of anatomical movement or pilates, in fact i still don’t and i now realise that i never will.  no, not ever.  the second i think i know it all is the moment i stop being able to teach from an open and learning heart and is the identical moment that i stop being of any real use to my clients because i’ll also stop seeing them and start seeing what i “know about them” instead.

but i was really struck by this idea that i couldn’t teach well because i couldn’t “be” pilates the way a “real teacher” could.

and then the other day i was striding down the street feeling my hamstrings move my legs and playing with the idea of spreading the bridge of my foot through the roll of my bones on the ground and i could feel my lungs fill with air and my hamstrings pull me more vertical as i really dialed into my foot.

and i heard mr. fletcher again and knew exactly what he meant.  now, with something like eight years of teaching under my belt i look like a pilates teacher no matter what i do.  you can see from the way i climb stairs, stride down the street, run for the subway, walk in high heels, wait for the elevator, etc that i am a mover.

and so, i guess you could argue then that you can see that i’m a good teacher, or at least that’s what i think mr. fletcher was saying.  that until you could see movement alive and healthy in my body you probably weren’t going to get a very good lesson.  and i still find myself half in agreement and half incensed by the idea of judging a book by it’s cover.

when i was a young swimmer i moved lithely and with grace and probably had no conscious awareness of my body even as i fully inhabited and used it.  so i probably looked like a movement teacher even then.  but i wasn’t one.  i didn’t “get” movement patterns until mine were shattered and i had to put them back together.

and while i certainly move like a professional mover *now* i have been helping people for a lot longer than that was true.  i am most definitely a better teacher now, quicker to adapt and to see fundamental patterns instead of “symptoms” or isolated issues and far more likely to get to the meat of the problem faster and cleaner.  the same way that karen carlson is three times as efficient as i am after thirty years in practice (oh karen please come teach another workshop in toronto i miss you!!) i am three times as efficient as i was after eight and that will only continue to be more and more true.

but that doesn’t make those early lessons “bad” just because the ones i teach now are “better” and that’s where i think mr. fletcher was slightly wrong.  he was mostly right, certainly anyone teaching for at least a decade should move like it’s an instinct but at the same time it’s the hurt bodies that learn.  every single time i’ve injured myself and had to rehabilitate that particular part of myself i’ve become immeasurably better at dealing with clients problems in that same area.  every time. to the point that one teacher i know said “you’re so lucky” when i was cataloguing my litany of injuries!

anyway it’s been almost ten years since i started pilates and there are still pieces of me that i am rebuilding and parts of the work that i cannot do (neck pull anyone?) or at least not without a ton of warm up and maybe some assistance from a band or a spring and of course so much more to learn…

i can’t apologise for those early lessons, the clients were served to the very best of my ability (and don’t forget i had 8 years of competitive swim training [much at a national level] that incorporated many many other forms of movement so i was far more educated than even i understood when i started) and many of them were healed or continue to see me today and have never implied that i was ever anything but “good” at my job.

so here it is seven or eight years later and i still hear mr. fletcher in my head saying that you can tell a good teacher by her walk and half of me goes “yes yes of course you can!!!” and half of me goes “dude, you are missing so many other factors” but i do appreciate that i finally “feel” what he meant when he said that!

accidente!

so this is another post from ye olde blogge… which i see no reason to write again :

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(originally posted in 2006)

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okay, y’all are asking about my accident. i was waiting until i scanned in some photos from just before i started pilates so you guys could see the difference but i can do that some other time. three people have asked me in the last maybe ten days which implies that it’s time.

this is actually a really long story and it starts somewhere around when i was in grade seven and came down with achilles tendonitis (achilles tendon, start at your heel, go up, feel that thick elastickey thing?) over the next ten years i layered on a pulled muscle in my sternum. mild tendonitis in my right shoulder (they called it tendonitis but i now know that they were not correct and that it was problems with pec major and minor, but whatev), a pile of knee problems they called condromalasia and wasn’t [the doctor, after a year of physio and ONE x-ray says to me 'there's no sign of condromalasia on the x-ray, let's do exploratory surgery' and i left of course], some trouble with a hip, i can’t remember which one but i think right, shin splints, uh…..

anyway you get the gist. lots of little niggles that got put back together with duct tape and bubble gum.

so then at seventeen i have a couple of car incidents that both involve pulling the muscles on the right side of my neck and thinking i’m fine after a few weeks of drugs that made my muscles melt like butter on a hot skillet.

please note the total lack of rehab except for on the knee and that was the wrong work for the issues in question anyway.

throw in piles of heavy metal concerts and then shortly thereafter i’m learning to jump a dirtbike. a dirtbike i jumped off of numerous times due to sucking at driving while doing tricks or racing along at 90k on trails i didn’t know well.

i’m supposed to be practising going ‘up and over slow’ to get the idea of how the bike will move and then i’ll add gas a little at a time. so yeah, i over pop the gas and wham! into the air i go!

no idea how to land of course, we hadn’t covered that yet.

and i land and my helmet cracks off the little metal rod that runs between the handlebars and my feet, right especially, slam into the footpegs.

do i land? fucking right.

does it hurt? d-uh.

so i think i broke my right ankle and drag my mom into taking me for an x-ray and they tell me that it isn’t broken and send me on my way. [interestingly i have since sprained my ankle badly enough to need another xray and bone scan - at that time i dislodged the chip i made this day and didn't find at the time.]

cut to twelve years and two more instances of whiplash later (note we’re up to five or six depending if metallica concert incidents count or not… i say yes, my neck hurt for weeks) and tr (boyfriend at the time) and i are sitting at jane and bloor and chatting while we wait to turn right.

it’s snowing and the roads are slick and i’ve left a car length between me and the car i’m waiting for. that car is waiting it’s turn and tr and i are chatting it up and my head slams forward… and then i realise i got hit.

because we were chatting i barely had my foot on the brake so we bounced off the car in front of us. hard enough for him to look at me, look at his bumper and get in his car and leave. yeah are you getting this? i hardly got hit at all. [i drive a stick and that corner is flat, brakes weren't really required, looking behind me was...]

tr was mildly achy for a day or two and then he was fine and i went and got some drugs and went home early that day. and i shrugged it off.

i’ve had whiplash a zillion times, i’ll be fine.

*laughs ass off*

what hubris.

about six weeks later the tip of my pinky finger on my right hand went numb. so i hit the doc after a couple of days (the emerg so i can get the x-ray fast *evil smile*) and he says that this kind of ‘nerve damage’ is ‘normal’ after whiplash incidents and to contact my family doctor.

WHAT THE FUCK???

NORMAL?

i haven’t felt the tip of my right pinky in three days and that’s NORMAL? you’re fucked in the head buddy!

so i find a family doctor and he prescribes me drugs and i try physio and it fails and at this point i bring in insurance and meet the hot doctor and try more physio and nothing. my physio keeps telling me i’m better but i’m just getting worse.

so i go back to the hot doctor (this is now late august and the accident was in january) and tell him i can’t walk and that the physio hurts and i feel like i’m getting worse. so he checks me with emg and stuff [stuck needles into my muscles and listened to them with radio and also stuck me with sparks to see if my nerves responded] and finds out that my nervous system and all that are working.

so i don’t have fibromyalgia hiding as an accident problem anyway.

and he looks at me and he shrugs and he says ‘i don’t know what to tell you, your options are pilates or pain management and the waiting list for pain management is nine or ten months so you may as well try pilates in the meantime.’

pilates, the thing uncle fester had been telling me about since BEFORE my accident. since after my accident. since whenever i complained about my back.

i, of course, knew better.

this is where the old cliche ‘it’s not the things that happen to you it’s your reaction to them’ starts to get really true.

so i call uncle fester and tell him this and manfully he doesn’t laugh at me and he directs me to a choice of two studios but really steers me in one direction. and that was to rr who fit me in immediately because i dropped uncle fester’s name.

you know the day i met her i weighed 65 pounds more than i do now (80 now)
the day i got in my accident i weighed what i weigh now nearly to the pound
that day i had skiied all weekend the previous two days
that day i was probably going climbing since i went three times a week
that day i was in love with and planning to move in with tr
that day that i was delighted to go to my work that i loved
when i met rr she described my muscles as dead and i hated my job and tr and i were already shattering under the strain [a LOT of other stuff happened in there that has nothing to do with my accident] and i hadn’t been climbing since the accident.

ten months. amazing.

four years later [nine now] and i’m still fixing this shit. currently the neck and the ankle from when i was seventeen… the things that are preventing the new damage from all the way healing.

life really is a circle.

captain kirk i presume?

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i have this thing that i do when i teach, where i talk about star trek because almost everyone on earth has seen something regarding original star trek.  sort of like how i haven’t seen logan’s run but i know the punch line because it’s referenced in tons of popular culture.  anyway, i have this habit of saying things like:

“okay so your pelvic floor is captain kirk and your hamstrings all the way into your arches are mister spock and your quads are the red shirted ensign that everyone knows is going to die before the first commercial break!”

along with this i have a habit when i work out myself of designating a place to work from that session.  sometimes it’s my pelvic floor, sometimes breath, sometimes one of the arches of my foot, sometimes the ends in and sometimes the ins out and so on.  just vary the routine so it stays interesting.

yesterday i was working from the pelvic floor, or perhaps i should say your actual center.

well then, what the heck is a center?

is it your belly button?

is it your kiri as the martial artists describe it?  something which is slightly lower in the abdomen but still above the pubic hair?  is it your solar plexus (also sometimes called the brain of the abdomen)? is it your breath or your mind?  is it your center of gravity?  is it center or centre?  how about that pelvic floor?

i tend to think of the pelvic floor as the mouth of your center.  oh dear, now i’m writing smut.  regardless, if you think of your pelvic floor as the power lifter for all your movement everything will start to come together.  your inner thighs will connect to the base of your big toes and you’ll feel your whole abdomen come into play as you go.

of course if you don’t do it well you’ll clench your butt and restrict movement in your lower spine, but that’s a story for another post.

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ages ago one of my teachers started a class by hooking us in to the metatarsal arch of our feet.  she took us through some exercises designed to bring our awareness into the soles of our feet and to harness them and teach them to work without clenching maniacally.

she spent like ten minutes on this one day and then started the class as usual with all the same exercises.  that day she kept drawing our attention back to our feet and to the connections we should be feeling up into our ham strings and the rest of our bodies.  every exercise came back to that point in the body.

i walked out transformed.

suddenly i could feel all sorts of connections and had new language for a pile of things i’d had trouble with with several clients.

so of course it became a thing in my own workouts, working from different places.

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so the other day i worked out from my pelvic floor and two days later i STILL hurt in muscles that usually find those exercises easy.  lovely.

we’ve stopped

this post was actually written by dr. brian dower, chiropractor who works out of park road healing arts.  since i found myself nodding in agreement through the entire read i asked permission to post it here and he was kind enough to grant it.

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We’ve stopped.

As a species, we’ve stopped moving. Over the last few centuries, we’ve stopped spending days in the fields, planting and farming. We’ve stopped walking for hours to get to fresh water and food sources. We’ve stopped playing tag after school. We’ve stopped struggling with manually-operated clothes washing machines and pull-start lawn-movers. We’ve just stopped.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating going back to the times of beating your clothes against a rock down by the river, or spending days in the bush, looking for edible berries. But I am strongly advocating more movement.

I see it everyday with our patients. We lives in times of efficiency and expediency. We have our automatic dishwashers and lawn-less condos and grocery delivery services. And….we have our computers. We love our computers. We sit and are entranced by their shimmering screens all day long, and for many of us, all night long as well. Research shows us that total energy expenditure of contemporary humans is approx. 65% of the Stone Age crowd. 1

So you’re getting the point, correct? In the past 50 years, we’ve become more sedentary than at other time in the evolution of our species. The problem is that evolution (from a DNA perspective) takes a lot more time (a lot!) to adapt to environmental changes than a generation or two. Your DNA expects you to be out there, moving and shaking and lifting and pushing, throughout your day. It doesn’t expect us to sit with one hand hovering over a piece of plastic, craning our necks to look at a shiny screen, all day long.

When we move, we stimulate a part of our brainstem called the cerebellum, which in turn, stimulates our brain’s learning centres, hormone control centres, emotional control centres, etc. in an extremely positive way. And when we don’t move, those parts of the brain receive less stimulation.

So what can you do on a daily basis to increase your movement if it’s likely that you’ll be in an office job for the next 20 years? Take the stairs, get off the subway 2 stops earlier, get to the gym at lunch, and stretch every 20-30 mins at your desk.

Want to impress management with your forward thinking and your knowledge of ways to increase productivity of the brains they employ? Suggest what I like to call “Walk-It and Talk-It” meetings. The next time you need to sit down with a colleague or two and brainstorm, suggest that you have a walking meeting. Grab a pad and pen (or smartphone) for note-taking and get out there. Walk for those 20 mins instead of slumping over a table in that drab, cramped boardroom. Get some fresh air; stimulate that brain by getting your spine and limbs moving. Creativity is sure to be enhanced, as well your physical well-being.

If you need some help convincing your managers that they need to find ways to bring movement back into their employees’ days, just ask me. I’d be pleased to come in and conduct a 45 min lunchtime workshop, explaining how this could just be that competitive edge they’ve been searching for!

Now get up from your computer and stretch for the next 3 minutes!

Thanks for your interest,

Dr. Brian Dower

1 Booth et al. Waging war on physical inactivity: using modern molecular ammunition against an ancient enemy. J Appl Physiol 93: 3-30, 2002

Marie-Jose Blom

Ugly Duckling Pilates is delighted to present Marie Jose Blom for two workshops over three days (friday april 22nd to sunday april 24) in lovely downtown Toronto, Canada.

Workshops:

• The Essential Role of the Shoulder Girdle and Thorax in Taking the Weight From the Shoulders (sunday – 8 hours)
• Embrace the Curves and Unravel the Mystery of Scoliosis (fri/sat - 16 hours)

Instructor: Marie Jose Blom
Location: Ugly Duckling Pilates
Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada
130 Rosedale Valley Road
Workshop Size: 20 Participants
Total Cost: $650 for all three days
250 for one day
450 for two

Full and printable PDF: Maria-Jose Blom Workshops (Right Click and select “Save Link As …”)

Please note: CATS IN THE STUDIO

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