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Editorial Review
Over the past few years, the buzz about Pilates has inspired a boom of new studios around New York. Even some of the chain fitness giants are starting to carry Pilates and Gyrotonic® equipment. Now that’s fine and good, but just offering someone the right tools and expecting them to sculpt their body is the equivalent of handing them a chisel and a piece of stone and expecting them to sculpt David. I, for one, am no Michelangelo. I need direction. For those of you who share this sentiment, Backbone & Wingspan will be your saving grace. They provide hands on instruction toward a truly unique and effective take on Pilates. Backbone & Wingspan will train your mind and body in a method that not only increases overall fitness, but creates better posture, eliminates back pain, and allows for better mobility.
Backbone owner, Tim, brings his experienced background with resistance band training, and a strong understanding of the universal principals of movement to his unique Pilates-based teachings. Unlike weightlifting or other strenuous, repetition-based exercises, Backbone and Wingspan focuses more on sustained work, allowing you to better find your deep, posturally supportive core strength. By doing these sustained poses with light resistance, you can more actively engage your mind into your workout, allowing you to forge a connection with the exact muscles, even the exact parts of the muscle that you wish to work. The time allotted for each sustained pose provides the opportunity to make the slightest of adjustments to the muscles (adjustments that are virtually impossible to make if you’re doing rapid repetitions), making every movement in your workout that much more valuable.
While Pilates is often misconceived as a workout just for ballet dancers, the methods employed at Backbone & Wingspan can benefit people from all walks of life. Really, who doesn’t want to increase their mobility and create better posture? If you sit behind a desk all day, working in the business world, these methods are ideal for you. I know by the end of the workday—with my shoulders pulled up, spine lopsided so I can keep one hand on the mouse, neck craned down looking at my laptop—I go home feeling like the hunchback of Notre Dame. Tim’s focus on properly orienting the movement of the extremities as they connect to the spine (hence the name Backbone & Wingspan) had me immediately walking taller, more upright, and more aware of how my posture affects all of my other movements. With coaching on how to make more of a mind-body connection, I learned how to make a back-body connection, aligning my head from the occipital bone rather than the chin, my shoulders from the scapula rather than the traps, and my legs from just above the butt rather than, well, the butt. Over the course of my training, I became the living embodiment of the evolutionary chart, dragging my knuckles in as a Neanderthal, and walking taller from even my first session as Cro-Magnon man. Tim’s teachings kept me focused on my posture for days after sessions, and after a short time, I can finally claim to have evolved to the posture of modern man.
Backbone & Wingspan also offers one-on-one training in several methods that compliment the mind-body benefits of Pilates. Gyrotonic® is a method based on the natural flow of the body’s movements in swimming, gymnastics, and other full range exercises. Think Pilates, but with sustained poses replaced by flowing, weight resisted movements. In a session with Cathy, you’ll emphasize multiple joint movements in their full and natural three-dimensional range, stabilizing ligaments and muscles to create a balanced support system for the skeleton. Coordinated breathing work and a progression in exercises during the course of the session, give you the ideal cardiovascular workout, while allowing you to relax and enjoy.
The Feldenkrais Method®, taught by Backbone’s other Kathy, is an interesting combination of biomechanics, psychology, and martial arts. Through gentle, almost massage-like guidance, Kathy will help your body to relearn its movements. Combining stretching, breathing control, and a slow, non-strenuous exploration of your full range of motion, Feldenkrais creates self-awareness and restores a grace to your movement. The method has been known to alleviate chronic pain, refine physical and mental skills, and can help to reduce the neuromuscular effects of serious conditions like Stroke and Parkinson’s. Having had serious shoulder injuries in the past, I was a prime candidate to benefit from the Feldenkrais Method. And after only one session, I already noticed a lasting return to a range of motion I hadn’t experienced in years.
These three methods, in combination or individually, will help to lengthen your body, giving you a sleek and slender new physique. But unlike other more cosmetic workouts, the work you’ll do at Backbone & Wingspan will give you a whole new perspective on yourself and how you move through your daily experience. No matter what your prior conceptions or fitness background, Pilates, Gyrotonic, and Feldenkrais can help sculpt a whole new you. You can’t expect to get the chiseled results of Michelangelo on your own—yet the caring instructors at Backbone & Wingspan already have me ten steps closer to resembling David.
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Fitness Center Information
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Gyrotonic®
Pilates
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Member Reviews -- Sorted by
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Showing: 1 of 5 | | User Rating: Highly Recommended | Claire Scherzer Posted by silvia reiter on 8/25/07 | With great pleasure I post this review.
Gabriel has helped me get rid of a pain I developed on my left arm after I fell on that side and bruised it.
Before he treated me I was unable to sleep and kept tossing and turning without finding any comfortable position.
Right after Gabriel gave me Cranio-Sacral therapy I had an overall feeling of well being but still felt a slight discomfort in my arm which towards the end of the day was gone.
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