The Pilates Studio

Welcome!

Our aim is to encourage individuals to experience and cultivate awareness about the union between mind and body. In addition to the Pilates Method, our expert instructors offer a variety of exercise and movement approaches for people who want to lead healthier and more vibrant lives. You will learn how to train with self awareness - how to recognize your needs and deepen understanding about your own physicality.

The Pilates Method is accessible to anyone regardless of your current condition, age, or fitness level.  It can be used as simply a more focused and profound way to exercise, a rehabilitative/therapeutic approach, a more basic, rudimentary bridge to any yoga practice, a refined training process for people involved in high level performance, or as a way to become better acquainted with your own body mechanics.   Benefits of the Pilates Method include:

• Strength and flexibility
• Improved posture
• Better balance and coordination
• Fluid movement
• Increased stamina
• Stress reduction and relaxation
• Improved concentration and focus
• Weight loss
• Vibrant health and well being
• Injury rehabilitation
• Improved performance

The studio, located at 1700 Shattuck Ave, in the renowned Gourmet Ghetto neighborhood of North Berkeley, is part of YogaKula, a Yoga and Healing Arts Center, which offers Yoga, Massage, Therapeutics, Nutrition, Tai Chi,  and workshops on health and healing. Our studio features 3 Allegro Reformers, plus 1 Allegro Reformer with a Cadillac conversion, a Chair and several props for exercise variations.

We offer a variety of health and fitness techniques: Physical imbalances can lead to pain, fatigue, and immobility.  Unguided and automatic exercise routines can further limit the body's functional health. Our fitness programs completely engage your body and mind while restoring healthy movement. Below is a description of the types of techniques we use.

The Pilates Method- Based on the teachings of Joseph H. Pilates, this exercise approach addresses imbalances that can contribute to chronic pain and discomfort. By deeply engaging the mind with specificity and precision, and utilizing the breath in every exercise, this method works the body thoroughly and produces extremely efficient and dramatic results.

Joe Pilates' main concern was the mind/body connection - "harmony between mental and physical".  He realized that our mind, the quality of our focus and awareness, creates the physical state we find ourselves in.  He felt that SIMPLE exercise with  precise focus and self awareness, (or, to coin a phrase from Moshe Feldenkrais, "awareness through movement") was the elixir to chronic pain and imbalance, which in his mind, were the main causes for unnecessary, rapid aging and degeneration.  Joe Pilates did not believe in pushing past pain threshold and detested mindless repetition that was prevalent in most exercise techniques of his day.  He believed that if you did one repetition of something with the right quality of focus, all of yourself engaged and present in the effort, with adequate breathing, and precise attention to every last detail of the movement, it would be enough to feel good, alert, and engaged in life.

In observing people moving and functioning in daily life and in his exercise classes he realized that the most mechanically deficient and weak part of the body was the whole abdominal region from front to back.  The pelvic girdle contains many of the most powerful muscles in the body, literally cradles our vital organs, provides the foundation and support for free and easy breathing, and is architecturally the ³keystone² of balance and weight distribution for the entire body.  This is why Joe Pilates felt that primary attention to this crucial part of our physiology was at the root of healthy, fluid movement.

Core strength, adequate breathing, quality of focus, fluidity of movement, and precision of execution are the hallmark principles of the Pilates Method which is why so many dancers studied it, and why it is a method and not a technique.  The Pilates Method is an approach to a healthier way of life, to well being, and to grace inside and out.