A BIT ABOUT ME

Artist Vision

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I create and perform work that demonstrates skills that make you sit at the edge of your seat that I have practiced many times with dedication & a teachable attitude. My work speaks truthfully to me and uncovers the 'upsidedowness' in patterns & conventions. Through raw curiosity and inquisitiveness, it brings relief from tension through laughter and models the choices of trust, vulnerability, joy, and gratitude as paths of resilience and survival.

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Background & Teaching Philosophy

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My fascination in acrobatics sprang early during my childhood; however, the only option available to me at the time was to teach myself. Much later in life, I studied acrobatics on the pre-professional level at the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts.

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My energy, imagination, tenacity, and hypermobility are what drew me to the circus arts. I began training in Pilates whenI could no longer simply work through my pain. I came to a point of either giving up the circus arts that I love or rehabilitating to be able to train and perform again. I sought out a Pilates instructor with a reputation for being knowledgeable about the body, injuries, and safety to help build me core strength. Despite my innate flexibility and circus training, I struggled enormously with Pilates because it concerns exactly what I’m not naturally good at: stability, coordination, proprioception, listening to verbal cues and translating that into movement, and accessing  deeper body awareness and vulnerability. Dedicating time to learn weaker pathways gave my practice and daily life much more dimension and depth. While there is redundancy in the body, we optimize success and promote sustainability/ resilience if we cultivate the ability to recruit deep, small, often underutilized, stabilizing muscles to work in symphony with the superficial, often dominant global mobilizers to accomplish a task rather than setting ourselves up for burnout and injury. Beyond the physical benefits, Pilates balanced my personality by bringing out the underbelly of my personality-- which is concentration and a love for details. Both in movement and character, I value integrity. Despite not being a natural at Pilates, I was encouraged to become an instructor herself because struggling often gives you the experience to help others get beyond their own blocks in practice. 

I believe that if students work with a teacher more than once, that they should be influenced to cultivate a healthy confidence. Learning unfolds gradually and often in an unpredictable way. There will be times to question, examine, and analyze, as well as times to notice, then let go and maybe laugh. Experience builds off of trying. By approaching exercise with a grounded and present mindset, we will be more prone to let go of anxieties that we’re not good enough and makes room for curiosity and genuine growth. Things will come together. In my teaching, I tend to emphasize joint placement and alignment because they matter for proper muscle activation, patterning, and development, describe what the body should sense in the exercises, explain the benefits and reasoning of the exercises, and intersperse imaginative cues to help students access experiences in their bodies that might be confusing if we only consider things from an anatomical perspective. I tend to come off as overly serious, straightforward, and awkward or zany.

Before becoming a Pilates instructor, I also had careers in ecology and immigrant community work. In my circus life, I mostly train tumbling and contortion. I am a healthier and more skilled acrobat because I was willing to revise her movement strategies with patience, adapt in respect to what my body is willing to offer her moment by moment, and know I am not scarce on time to learn and develop. I find enormous satisfaction in revisiting simple movements and positions to refine and deepen my practice. I draw from other methods as well to enhance my goals. I was diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome/ Generalized Hypermobile Spectrum Disorder-- which explains much of my struggles with unstable joints and makes keeping up with a Pilates practice and education vital to my well-being and in regard to my athletic and artistic dreams.

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I am Stott certified in Level 1 (Essential- Intermediate) Mat & Reformer. I have also taking continuing education workshops and courses in Cadillac, Stability Chair, mini- stability ball, mini- foam roller, sliding mobility disks, Flexibility Foundation Coaches Course & Contortion Trainers Foundation Course through J.S. Creations, and Bend Don't Break Your Students: A Course for Instructors & Coaches by Dr. Su Haves, DPT.

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In addition to teaching independently, I also physically teach at C2 Body, VIM Fitness, through The Active Workplace, and virtually through Mara Core Conditioning.

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