Body Balance Pilates
Welcome! During Covid-19 I am offering my classes via Zoom: Flexible Strength Pilates, Pregnancy Mindful Birth preparation for body and mind, and Postnatal Core Restore for pelvic floor recovery and diastasis recti healing.
If you want to find strength and peace in body and mind, you've come to the right place. I've been a Pilates devotee since 2003, and teaching since 2008. It transformed my mind and body for the better, and I've been committed to spreading its magic ever since.
Pilates strengthens your core: abdominals, spinal muscles and pelvic floor. Pilates dramatically improves your strength, flexibility, posture and co-ordination. It restores better movement patterns and alleviate aches and pains, finding balance lost by bad posture and daily misuse of muscles. It's also great for calming the mind, focusing on your body is like a broom to sweep out tension and stress.
Pilates is a fantastic complement to other athletic activities such as running, as it offers strength and muscular endurance, and helps to protect against injury and pelvic floor dysfunction.
Pilates is the perfect exercise regime during pregnancy and for the postnatal period, enhancing flexibility and wellbeing, and regaining the body's strength. It's a sanctuary of calm to counteract overwhelm and anxiety.
I've written a few books about Pilates:
I offer one-to-one coaching packages and workshops for pregnancy and early motherhood, helping you to be the calmer, confident mum you always knew you could be.
Get in touch and let's work together to reignite your sparkle!
Mind–Body Balance
Pilates addresses the Body–Mind beautifully. Mindfulness meditation looks to the Mind–Body. Mindfulness is a mental discipline that enables us to respond differently to stress, challenging circumstances, sensations, emotions and thoughts rather than follow our habitual reactions. Mindfulness can be cultivated through daily habits – noticing your present moment more in the day to day and coming out of autopilot – and by formal meditation practice. It increases awareness of what our habits and behaviours are, allowing for a clearer understanding of how thoughts and emotions can impact on health – and, simply, how much we're enjoying our life.
‘The awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally’ Kabat-Zinn Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), drawing from CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction is now a recommended way of reducing the risk of recurrence in depression and anxiety disorders (NICE 2009). I have trained in MBCT and MBSR with the British Mindfulness Institute.
In my book The Supermum Myth there are plenty of mindfulness-based activities, which will start to foster a deeper connection and awareness of your mental landscape. In Pilates for Pregnancy I offer mindfulness-based approaches for your BODY–MIND, including some hypnobirthing techniques for a calmer birth, whatever birth experience you have.