Pilates and Dance — My first exposure to Pilates was in the early 1990's as a dance student. I started by taking mat classes with Octavio Galindo (developer of the 'Orbit') in Pasadena, CA. In 1996, I moved to Philadelphia to study dance and anthropology at Bryn Mawr College. While in school I danced in and around Philadelphia, both taking classes and performing. Every school break and every summer I would return home and study Pilates with Octavio by taking mat classes and supplementing them with private sessions on the Pilates Apparatus. I noticed that the Pilates technique of corrective exercise and body conditioning made my dancing stronger and easier. The Pilates goals of full body control, an extremely high degree of abdominal strength, greater range of motion with stability, and the combined power of the body and mind made for much better dancing, and I was able to grasp more information and effect more change in dance class.

In 1998 I was accepted to the coveted Jacob's Pillow Modern Traditions Summer Program. I had been having some foot pain before the program started. The doctors diagnosed it as tendonitis from overuse. Instead of missing my opportunity at Jacob's Pillow I chose to dance the long hours of class and performance and ice my foot at lunch and at the end of the day. Upon returning to Philadelphia, in more pain, I was diagnosed with a fracture of one of the bones in mv foot. It was most likely a stress fracture before the summer and it had been snapped in half while in the summer program.

The doctors prescribed rest and physical therapy for the foot. I rested and healed the bone and received lots of therapy, including acupuncture, massage, manipulation, and foot exercises. The one thing that the doctors did not do was pay attention to way the way my whole body had started compensating. I went back to dance class and life in Philadelphia, but my foot wasn't the same. I started cheating my alignment (unintentionally) to keep the foot from hurting. I didn't notice, but even walking to the subway to get to class or rehearsal, I was walking on the edge of my foot to avoid discomfort. Eventually, this change in the way that I moved resulted in ever-increasing back pain that became debilitating.

It reached a point where I had to stop rehearsals for a dance company and give up my role in the developing show, because I was in so much pain that I couldn't even lift my leg over the edge of the bathtub to take a shower.

The pain would get better for a little while, but something as mundane as a sneeze or pulling on a sock would send me back into such spasms that walking and sitting were excruciating, and lying down was only slightly more comfortable.

Doctors offered me muscle relaxants and pain killers, but they didn't make anything better. A couple of chiropractors tried adjusting me, but they made little to no difference. Finally a doctor suggested back surgery. The only problem was that the doctor couldn't say exactly where the surgery would be or what it would fix. It was at that point, desperate to move again and only in my early 20's, that I turned to Pilates. A friend recommended that I try seeing Karen Carlson, a Pilates teacher known for using her study of functional anatomy, biomechanics and kinesiology as the foundation for her work.

At our first meeting Karen looked me up and down as I related my story of back pain and the search for relief. Then Karen asked, "Did you hurt your foot?" Karen was able to tell me about mv back and bod pain based on m posture and alignment. She explained that my pain was coming from mechanical and structural dysfunction that were a result of the broken foot. She sent me to New York to see some wonderful structural bodyworkers who realigned my body over a few sessions. Then Karen, along with the talented Philadelphia dancer and Pilates/yoga instructor Katharine Livingston, started to teach me how to move again - the right way. They helped me become aware of my compensation patterns and taught me to move with correct alignment. The pain was gone.

After my experience, I wanted to understand what the teachers were seeing. I wanted to know how it all worked, and I wanted to offer others the relief and help that I had found. Karen accepted me into her certification program, and I began my journey to becoming the teacher that I continue to develop today.