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2076 Westwood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 446-1720
Grow stable roots for a happier, healthier you
One Mat a Day for the entire year of 2020 was my new year’s resolution, to grow and learn to love the Mat. To stay motivated and go for the long run, I needed a visual of my accomplishments. I marked each day of my monthly planner with a "MAT!".
Read MoreFitness with function is ideal; and this is what we find in our beloved Pilates practice. One of the many reasons I love this practice, is that so many of the exercises actually help us efficiently navigate through our world everyday.
Read MoreMeet Nicole Bush, our studio assistant who is also a newly certified Pilates instructor. Find out how Pilates helped relieve her lower back pain making her eventually fall in love with the method.
Read MoreI started learning about Parkinson’s Disease mostly out of necessity..at 75 years old, my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. At the time, he had been in great shape, going for weekly 30 mile bike rides, practicing Pilates weekly, and walking tons and traveling the world. In the six years since then…
Read MoreThe Mat series brought me visible physical changes, and the continuity of my mindfulness practice created invisible emotional changes. The Mat and the mindfulness met in my center. I knew it would be a difficult retreat for me emotionally, and I was correct. I had an intuition that having the Mat series would be supportive, and I had no idea how much it would actually benefit me.
Read MoreWhen I began practicing Vipassana, or Insight Meditation regularly, I noticed immediately how much I relied on my core to sit upright. My first love was the abdominal series. So when I attended my first long silent Vipassana meditation retreat in 2016, I committed to doing the abdominal series every day while on retreat.
Read MoreNathalie Gonthier-Thomas first discovered Classical Pilates after her pregnancy. She decided to become certified to deepen her practice and share the benefits of Pilates with others. She discovered a passion for teaching during her training and was certified through the Pilates Technique Certification Program with Jill Cassady.
Read on to learn more about Nathalie, including what inspires her as both a teacher and practitioner!
Read MoreMy body feels different every time I step onto the reformer. There will be days when I feel great. And then there are days when my old rib injury will take over my breathing and take me a few steps back in my twisting motions. Other days, my shoulder injury often creates a crooked imbalance between my right and left sides.
So how do we know what exercises our bodies really should be working on?
Read MoreCongratulations to Janet Kooba for completing Joe’s System Intensive! She has been hard at work for the past few weeks, and we are so proud of how much she has accomplished!
Read about her thoughts on the intensive below!
Read MoreJanet Kooba first became interested in Pilates when she read about how “one could achieve long, lean muscles through this practice” and has now been training for over a decade. In June 2018, she trained with second-generation teacher Samantha Walley and has been teaching ever since. She also completed her Joe’s System Intensive with Pamela Debiase and Daniela Escobar in January 2019!
Read on to learn more about Janet’s Pilates journey, including where she gets some of her Pilates inspiration!
Read MoreAlison Manheim is passionate about the benefits of Pilates at any life stage. A former professional writer, Alison discovered that Pilates was an excellent antidote to the neck and shoulder issues that come from working at a desk. In 2013, she became a certified instructor through Jill Cassady, who studied with Romana Kryzanowska in New York City. She has been happily teaching ever since and continues to study under Ken Krech and Dena Drotar, among others.
Read on to learn more about Alison’s background and her favorite thing about being a Pilates instructor!
Read MoreUp until this point we have had our hands attached to the straps a lot, but now we get to switch things up beginning this chapter with our hands on the footbar. I love how this chapter flows. It’s not filled with complicated movements of the body, it’s pretty simple in and out of the carriage (by simple I don’t mean easy!) that gets your heart rate up. I was told that Romana Kryzanowska called this section “The Dance of the Thick Pad”. We move the thickpad from the the headrest, to the carriage, then down to the edge of the carriage as we progress through the exercises. While the thick pad is merely so you don’t slip on the carriage, it’s hardly the hero of the chapter, the name sure did help me remember what came next while I was trying to learn my order!
Read MoreSpices like turmeric, cinnamon and garlic have anti-inflammatory properties. Paiche is also a nod to Brazil, which is where co-owner Daniela Escobar is from! Try this stew perfect for the fall season!
Read MoreI have spent years trying to listen to my body and figure out what foods my body likes best, and which ones don’t make me feel good. I have a sensitive digestive system and have found eating whole foods cooked at home is always best. This can be hard when you lead a busy lifestyle, so my partner and I always seek out quick and easy cooking options. This recipe is a big favorite in my household (the cats love it too!), it’s super quick and easy to throw together and an absolute TASTE SENSATION!
Read MoreIla is a lifelong athlete, born and raised here in Los Angeles, California. Sports and exercise have always been second nature. For 10 plus years Ila was an avid gym rat, lifting heavy and not completely understanding the damage she was doing to her body. As a collegiate athlete Ila suffered injuries which brought her to Pilates. In 2012, Ila discovered Pilates and immediately fell in love with the practice. Due to her spinal injury, Ila knew that Pilates would be the only thing that would allow for an active lifestyle with longevity. She said “For the first time I had control over my own body. My back and overall strength had never felt better.”
Read MoreAyanna has dedicated her life to teaching movement arts and fitness with nearly 40 years of experience teaching movement & dance and over 6 years teaching Pilates. Ayanna has also performed in numerous stage concerts, music videos, movies, and television shows. Ayanna is a certified group fitness instructor (ACE), pilates instructor, certified personal trainer, and Level 1-2 Precision Nutrition Consultant.
Ayanna is passionate about teaching Pilates and says, “My experience as a lifelong student has made it possible to help each client work their mind and body together to find their center.”
Read MoreThere is something exciting about getting your long box up on your Reformer for the first time! You have gotten a pretty good warm up so far from Footwork to the end of the Rowing series. You’ve connected your center with your breath, warmed up the lower body and upper body separately and also coordinated them together in the exercise so aptly named: Coordination. You’ve been lying flat on the Reformer for the warm up or sitting during the rowing series, however now you have to balance on this box. Ooh….. cue music for the cirque troop. Just kidding, there is a lot of box, but “raising things up a notch” challenges you a little more.
Read MoreIt’s mainly to keep my family healthy and introduce healthy eating habits to my child. My daughter is 5 years old and I always want to make sure she is trying different types of food. Most of all, I am working to recreate what my mom did for me as a kid. My mom always cooked no matter how busy she was. This left a big impression on me and I realize how important eating at home with my family is to me.
Read MoreRight after I was certified in Pilates, one of the first continuing education workshops I took was about how to teach pregnant women. I was terrified of the idea of being a new teacher, which is hard as it is, AND having to teach a pregnant client. One could ask, why? Shouldn’t a client keep the same workout she did prior to getting pregnant? Like when you run, don’t you just keep running?
Read MoreRecently in a group class, one of my students was finishing up her Kneeling Thigh stretch on the Reformer and hopped off saying “So next I should set up for Frogs and Circles because I have to do that Corkscrew chapter right? Corkscrew, Tic Toc, Frogs and Circles….”. She has not yet learned the Arm Circles, Snake/Twist, and some other exercises on the list, so I said yes. She then told me how her order is making so much more sense to her now, and that she sees her exercises grouped together in chapters. Each chapter being a different little story for her body. Well I tell you I was beaming from ear to ear hearing this! Yes! Yes! Yes! She gets it, I didn’t even have to tell her, she feels it in her body.
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