Waking Energy
By Jennifer Kries

Editor’s note: In the November/December issue of ‘Pilates Style,’ master Pilates teacher, dancer, choreographer and yogini Jennifer Kries brings us deeper into our spiritual and physical selves by calling upon four powerful practices: Pilates, Chi-Gong, 5 Tibetans and Yin Yoga.

Of course we’re all intimately familiar with Pilates, but Kries created a primer—just for our newsletter subscribers—on how it and the other three practices can awaken the energy within us all. Intrigued? Be sure to try the workout in the magazine. If you want to go even deeper, experience the extended in the first two DVDs of Kries’ new four-part DVD series, ‘Hot Body Cool Mind: The Life Force Power Workout, Level 1’ and ‘Hot Body Cool Mind: Waking Energy,’ available at jenniferkries.com and razordigitalent.com.

Every moment in a Chi-Gong, Pilates, 5 Tibetans or Yin session involves deep breathing and total mind-body intention, leading to an ever-deepening awareness of our inner landscape and helping us return to a more natural rhythm. When we are able to find a kind of calm and stillness within, we are able to cultivate something called “defensive chi”—protective energy that boosts our immune systems to defy age and improve our overall health and well-being.

Pilates is a non-impact, non–weight-bearing system of physical and mental conditioning that lengthens and strengthens the entire body and creates unparalleled core strength. With a focus on alignment and increasing awareness of the body’s capabilities and untapped resources, Pilates’ six principles—concentration, control, centering, breath, flow and precision—enable you to move with maximum efficiency while minimizing stress on the body. The central concept, economy of movement (using the fewest repetitions to achieve the desired result), occurs by focusing on the core as well as breathing patterns for each exercise. This allows energy to be directed to targeted areas while relaxing the rest of the body. Pilates stimulates the lymphatic system, sending oxygenated blood into the farthest reaches of the body, flushing out toxins in what Joe Pilates called an “internal shower.” It also activates the body’s endorphins, calming the central nervous system and creating a sense of tranquility and total well-being.

Chi-Gong means energy mastery. “Qi” or Chi means air, breath of life, or vital energy of the body, and “gong” means the skill of working with or achievement. Chi-Gong is a flowing heaven and earth practice that enhances your body’s natural energy potential by supercharging it with “universal chi”—the energy that surrounds you as you awaken and channel the energy within your own body to create a powerful internal awareness, balance and peace of mind. Chi-Gong reduces stress, builds stamina, increases vitality and enhances the immune system. It also improves cardiovascular, respiratory, circulatory, lymphatic and digestive functions.

The 5 Tibetans, also called the “Rites of Rejuvenation,” are an ancient secret discovered in the late ’30s by a British naval officer Peter Kelder, who learned the exercises from Tibetan lamas in the Himalayas. The 5 Tibetans are so powerful that they are purported to hold the secret to the fountain of youth. They defy age by toning and conditioning the outer body as they restore balanced movement in the chakras, clearing energy blockages and balancing the body’s organ systems that are connected to them and restoring them to health. The end result? An undeniable outer glow.

Yin Yoga. Whereas the yoga most people are familiar with works with the muscles or “yang” tissues of the body, yin yoga targets the more interior supportive structures—the fasciae. Long held, deeply relaxing stretching poses stimulate and open the meridians, restoring youthful joint mobility as you quietly harmonize your body and mind, recharging your batteries. You find stillness and go deeper into your inner world, exploring your internal topography and liberating chronic holding patterns in the body and repressed emotions for an incredible catharsis and an unparalleled feeling of calm.

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Sweet Christina's Herbed Chicken Salad

Weighed down by all the holiday heaviness? Lighten up with this delicious and light chicken-topped salad from chef Bonnie McDaniel, owner of Sweet Christina’s Café and Bakery in Old Town Fairfax, VA, and author of In The Eye of The Storm: A Celebration of Family and the Real Purpose of Home.

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients
For Chicken:
4 chicken breasts
1 tablespoon each basil, thyme and oregano
White wine to taste
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
Pinch sea salt

For Salad:
6 cups Mesclun salad greens
1 cup fresh strawberries, sliced
½ cup grape tomatoes
¼ cup toasted walnuts

For Vinaigrette:
½ cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon water
pinch of rosemary
pinch of kosher salt
 

1. Mix together wine, herbs, garlic, and salt in a medium bowl. Add chicken and marinade for 30 minutes.
2. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large pan. Sear chicken breasts on both sides and sauté until cooked through.
3. Mix together all vinaigrette ingredients in a small bowl.

Arrange greens on individual plates and top with strawberries, tomatoes and nuts. Drizzle dressing over salad and place a chicken breast on top of each.

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Close-up: Roll Over
By Linda Farrell (lindafit.com)

Roll Over is a spinal articulation exercise that provides a deep stretch for the back and posterior hip muscles. It also challenges the spine and hips to move fluidly and with control throughout the action. It offers a little “inversion therapy” through reverse blood flow, deep abdominal contraction and stimulation of the inner organs.

Note: Avoid if you have a bad neck.

Set-Up: Lie on your back, arms by your sides, palms down and legs pressed together at a 90-degree angle from the pelvis. 

Begin the Move: Engage your abdominals deeply by narrowing the distance between your front hip points and drawing your navel in toward your spine. Inhale into the sides and back of your rib cage and squeeze your upper inner thighs together. Draw your muscles in and up from the pubis to the ribs to lift your hips off the floor, keeping your legs at a 90-degree angle to the pelvis. Exhale and bring your legs slowly over your head. Your feet can touch the floor behind your head and open to hip-width apart, with toes tucked under to stretch the lower back and hamstrings. If this is too much of a flexibility challenge, you can support your lower back with your hands or simply keep your legs parallel to the floor. Inhale and lift your legs parallel to the floor, keeping them hip-width apart. Exhale and slowly roll down one vertebra at a time, controlling the descent of the spine and legs until the tailbone is completely on the floor. As you roll down, make sure the sides of your back and pelvis are even. Then bring your legs together again and repeat. For the last two repetitions, reverse the starting position, with the legs beginning at hip-width apart and then closing together on the roll down.
 
Modification: Bend your legs at the knees.

Advanced: Angle your legs at 60 degrees or start with them on the floor. To enhance resistance, wrap a stretch band around your feet and grab either end with your hands, anchoring your extended arms and band to the floor as you prepare to roll up and over.  

Visualization: As you roll down, imagine your spine like a string of pearls lengthening out to the floor, pearl by pearl. Roll down with control, trying to put more space between each pearl and keeping them in one straight line.

Tips:

• Initiate of the roll-up with the abdominals curling the pelvis off the floor—not the legs moving toward the head. If done correctly, the legs stay at 90 degrees to the pelvis as the hips curl up slowly from the floor. The abdominals stay deeply engaged as the legs go overhead with control.
• Avoid undue tension in the neck, shoulders or lower back when the legs go overhead. When done correctly, the weight is mostly on the shoulder blades—not the neck.
• If you have tightness in the neck, low back or hamstrings on the Roll Over, bend your knees and support your lower back with your hands. If tension persists, omit the exercise.

• On the roll down, the collar bones and shoulders should broaden and the front ribs soften so the spine can lower fluidly. Tightness in the shoulders can impede fluidity and create tension in the upper body. Breathe deeply to reduce tension and encourage release. If tension persists, omit the exercise.
• Collapsing the spine to the mat on the roll down indicates a weak core and lack of control. Put on the brakes as the spine sequences back to the floor; sustained engagement of the abdominal and hip muscles will provide the necessary control.
• Veering more to one side on the roll down indicates an imbalance or perhaps a dominant side. Try to remain centered.
• Instructors: Assist those who are weak or less flexible by gently holding their feet and guiding their bodies down back to the mat.
• To enhance the stretch along the posterior chain, keep the thighs close to the chest on the roll down.

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So You Wanna Be in Pictures?
By Lisa Johnson

Enter a megastore, turn on the TV or surf the web, and you’re entering the world of the ubiquitous fitness DVD. Seems every fitness professional worth her salt has made it onto the big (or little) screen, so why not you? Appearing in a Pilates video can boost your business and provide extra income—but only if you do it right.

To learn what it takes to do a video well, we talked to the undisputed expert in Pilates videos, Mari Winsor. Winsor’s videos—now numbering around 30—have outsold not only the Tae Bo products, but even the collected works of Jane Fonda. If you’ve ever seen one of Winsor’s videos, you know why she’s so successful: She’s energetic, talented, entertaining and driven. Plus, she partnered with the best people she could find.

Winsor’s entrée into the media world was as author of a book. After it was published, several companies approached her to do a video. Instead of signing on with the first person to make an offer, though, she practiced a little patience. “I waited for the best company to approach me,” she says. After turning down a few offers, “the best people called me. After some meetings I realized they respected my creativity and that this was the way to go.” Winsor was able to create the workouts she wanted and have a great video production/marketing company behind her to promote her product. The end result: over 50 million videos sold.

Of course, Winsor was on the scene early; the market is now diluted enough that none of us are likely to replicate her level of success. But two other Pilates experts have made a name for themselves more recently with their own videos. Maria Leone of Bodyline Studio in Beverly Hills, CA, and Lara Hudson of Mercury Fitness in San Francisco have both produced successful videos. Their approaches were quite different, though: Leone produced her first video on her own; Hudson worked with a production company.

Leone embarked on her video endeavor after clients remarked they wished they had a video of her when they traveled. She had prior experience in television production and thought it would be good to combine her prior experience with her love of Pilates. “I researched other videos; I wanted to see what else was out there and I was looking for what sets people used, the choreography, how they handled transitions, even what they wore.” To prepare for the shoot, “I would literally just rehearse at my house and go through the workout and then go back and watch and critique my horrible form,” she says. 

Leone acted as the producer for her first shoot, hiring the crew and scouting locations herself. She did the marketing and distribution on her own, learning the ropes as she went. Within months, and after investing approximately $10,000, she had a successful video. She decided to produce two more videos, shot simultaneously. For these she hired a professional producer, which significantly improved quality. The price tag rose as well, to $40,000 for both videos. 

It was worth it, though. The videos gave Leone some street cred. “I think it brings more legitimacy to the studio,” she says. “It got my name out there to people who otherwise wouldn’t have known me. It helps to draw staff to me, because they’ve heard of me before.” As for making money, Leone says, “I had our hardwood floors redone in my home, a new stainless steel gas range, and a few other extras. We made money, but not a ton of money.”

Lara Hudson had a different, but equally positive, experience. She interviewed with a producer who was looking for an instructor to appear in a Pilates video. The production company was well established and had a successful series of “10 Minute Solution” videos. For Hudson’s video, she developed the choreography for the segments but was directed as to what those segments would be and had to adjust to the professionals’ critiques. That produced a good final project, but it wasn’t without its challenges. “You have to have a pretty thick skin,” she notes. “You have to be adaptable if you don’t sound right or a cue isn’t working.” 

The shoot itself was a three- or four-day process. “A couple of days before the shoot I went to the director’s home and did the exercises right in front of her,” she says. “We spend an entire day rehearsing, then a whole day on wardrobe and finally a full day to shoot the entire thing.”

Of course as talent for an established producer, you don’t have as much creative control—but you don’t have to wait to get paid either. “For the first video you can get paid in the mid-four figures,” says Hudson. “After you’re established it can go up into the five-figure range.”

With the growth of the video industry, quality has improved dramatically. “The days of being able to do a homemade production are past,” says Jill Ross, co-owner of Collage Video, a fitness video retailer. “We are used to good-quality productions that we pay $15 for, so why would anyone buy a poor quality one?” 

Ross also says that the Pilates market is tough to break into right now. “We accept about 20 percent of the videos we receive, but for Pilates it’s more like 5 to 10 percent.” To produce a successful video, Ross suggests, “you need at least a three-camera shoot and good music—and dress in something other than black. Keep in mind that you’re doing a video people are going to use repeatedly. Don’t use clever text that is going to be annoying the 14th time you’ve heard it.”

Producing a video can be demanding and expensive, and—especially if you’re doing it on your own—there’s the risk that it might not be successful. But if you do it, and do it well, you have potential to build a national reputation, draw clients and instructors, and take home some very nice paychecks. Are you up for the adventure?

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What’s in Your Gym Bag?

Cristin Schult, cover model for our April 2007 issue, made quite an impression on Pilates Style staff and readers. The California-based Pilates instructor and decorated triathlete was so creative and energetic that we invited her to design the cover workout for the January 2008 issue (“Gonna Make You Sweat”). We wanted to know what makes this superwoman tick, so we peeked inside her Timbuk2 gym bag. Here’s what we found:

• Her iPod  Shuffle. “It not only keeps me motivated while I’m running,” she tells us, “but it also helps me chill out during down time.”
• A Lululemon zip-up hoodie to keep her warm and stylish.
• Colorescience Sunforgettable SPF mineral makeup. “It protects my face and makes my complexion look great,” Schult says. “It is sweat-proof, so it will not clog my pores when I am active.”
• Bottled water. 
• ColoreScience Lip Candy Glaze. “After my workout it adds a little sheer color and nutrients to my lips,” she says. “This product line is all natural, no dyes, no talc and so good for your skin.”
• And, of course, the latest issue of Pilates Style magazine.

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How About Some Gyro with That?
By Deirdre Shevlin Bell

In September of 2006, Jennifer Daly brought Gyrotonic to Manhattan’s Madison Square Park neighborhood when she opened her studio, Kinespirit. Not long after, she invited her friend and former colleague Chantal Deeble, a master Gyrotonic trainer and Pilates instructor, to bring Pilates to the business. The relationship has developed into such a strong partnership that Deeble became co-owner of the studio in September of this year.

The key to combining Pilates and Gyrotonic in one space, according to Deeble, is to keep both practices distinct. “I love when a client comes in and doesn’t know much about either practice,” Deeble says. “I give them as unbiased a synopsis as I can of the two and let the client, from an intuitive level, decide what they’d prefer to start with.” Once the client has a solid foundation in one practice, Deeble will introduce him to the other if he expresses an interest, but she never combines the two. “They experience them as two completely unique and separate modalities that complement each other and their lifestyles,” she says.

With clients who already know either Gyrotonic or Pilates, Deeble’s dual-knowledge is an asset. “I know their language, and that’s a great big benefit right there,” she notes. “I know the things that they’re going to think—it’s human nature when you’re learning something new to reference what you already know. I know what they’re going to say inside their body, even if they’re not saying it out loud. And although there are definite similarities, there are also differences.” Because Deeble is intimately familiar with both practices, she can guide the client properly so he learns the movements within a new frame of reference.

Knowing both modalities can be a challenge, too, because many instructors are tempted to fuse the two. Deeble insists that this does a disservice to both practices. “The reason is they’re both so fulfilled, and within every session, each modality has a specific arc, a journey that happens within that hour, and they don’t quite come together,” she explains. “The arc gets diluted. But separately they’re fantastic.”

For Pilates teachers considering becoming certified in Gyrotonic, Deeble has this advice: “Remember back to when you were learning to teach Pilates. The thing that gives you the most information as a teacher is practicing yourself. Get yourself into a session, start doing it, and if you like it, do it for a while and let it resonate in your body first, then dive headfirst into the process with a real curiosity and be open to becoming a student again.”

Starting a Gyrotonic business can be easier for an already-established Pilates instructor than for a newbie, Deeble points out. “If you’re fulfilled in it, your students know it. You have a built-in client base, and now you have a whole other process that you can do with them that’s fulfilling to both of you.”

Don’t think your clients will feel they need to choose one over the other, either. “I have one client who does one Gyrotonic and one Pilates session a week,” Deeble says. She described it with this dance metaphor: ‘Pilates is the barre, Gyrotonic is the center.” She’d never consider having to choose between the two.”

Kinespirit is located at 40 E. 23rd Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY. Phone: (212) 228-5787; website: kinespirit.com.