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Transcript
- 4:58 What is Pilates?
- 16:22 Issues with newer Pilates studios
- 21:11 How Pilates can help different health conditions
- 21:32 Pilates and pregnancy
- 31:58 How Pilates improves scoliosis?
- 42:42 Multiple sclerosis improves with Pilates
- 48:09 Does Pilates helps stall the progression of the multiple sclerosis?
- 49:36 Stenosis
Wendy Myers: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. My name is Wendy Myers. I’m a Health and Nutrition Coach in Los Angeles California. I started myersdetox.com to educate you about how to get healthy, how to treat your health conditions naturally without medication and how to detoxify from heavy metals and industrial chemicals that are the major underlying cause of disease. My goal with Live to 110.com is to help you avoid disease and live a long healthy life. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition because that would be illegal. Live to 110 radio is solely informational in nature. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment that I suggest on the show. So anyone out there, if you have a comment or question for our guest today about Pilates and if it can help your health condition, please call in at 917-889-2838. Pick up that phone and call in, ask her questions, don’t be shy, we want to answer your questions live on the air.
Last week show was fantastic. I interviewed Dr. Lider Chan, a doctor of physical therapy of Orthopedic Therapy and Associates in West Los Angeles near UCLA. Dr. Lider, explained to us why it’s so important to see a physical therapist if you’re in pain or have any kind of injury because waiting to treat an injury only makes it worst. Next week, I will interview my new god because I worship him. His name is Dr. Lawrence Wilson. He’s an expert in Nutritional Balancing with Hair Mineral Analysis . I’ve had such amazing results with the Nutritional Balancing with hair mineral analysis with my health and with my client’s health that I’m currently receiving a certification in this protocol. Dr. Wilson is going to discuss how to rid yourself of brain fog and fatigue and he’s going to reveal the underlying causes of these epidemic problems in our society and how to address them by healing the entire body with Nutritional Balancing science. You can get a preview of what he is all about on his brilliant huge website Drlwilson.com. So please listen in to this very important show on Saturday, May 4th.
Now for today’s show this week, I’m interviewing Amahl Van Halsema, she’s a master Pilates instructor with 25 years of experience. She teaches at Foundation Pilates on Montana Ave. in Santa Monica. And today, we’re going to explore how Pilates improves your body, how it helps you rehab from injury and gives you an amazing body with long lean beautiful muscles. You can check out her website on vhpilates.com to find out more of what she’s all about. Today, I’m going to talk about a few subjects regarding Pilates, of course the benefits of Pilates, Pilates for pregnancy and post natal recovery, Pilates for multiple sclerosis, for stenosis and injury rehab and how Pilates compliments cross training and other kinds of sports like golf and equestrian etc. and how Pilates benefit men. There are a lot of men going to Pilates this days so don’t be shy men. You have to come and do some Pilates. So Amahl, thank you so much for coming in to the show.
Amahl Van Halsema: You’re welcome, Wendy. It’s nice to be here. Thank you.
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Amahl Van Halsema: Actually, most people call me Van.
Wendy Myers: Van.
Amahl Van Halsema: It’s Van in the Pilates world.
Wendy Myers: Ok.
Amahl Van Halsema: So, we’ll just stick with that. Thank you.
Wendy Myers: Ok. Great. So my question to you is how did you discover Pilates?
Amahl Van Halsema: At 1982, I was doing some modeling and the girls in Spain and London and Germany were doing it so I just wanted to see what it was about. Pilates originated in Germany in the first half of the 20th century with Joseph Pilates and I began doing some work on the Pilates equipment with the girls between our jobs in Milan and Ibiza and places like that. It’s very stabilizing, very femme like and I can do whatever place my body was at, whether it’s really tired or highly energized or just needed to stretch and tone a little bit. So that’s why I started.
Wendy Myers: Ok so for people who don’t really know about Pilates, what exactly is Pilates?
Amahl Van Halsema: Pilates is a system of strengthening and stretching and lengthening that was started many years ago by a man named Joseph Pilates. He was born in Germany and he was living in England and working as a circus performer and a boxer when he was placed in forced internment in England at the outbreak of World War I. And while he’s in the internment camp, he begins to develop the four exercises known as mat Pilates today. And as time went by, Joseph was asked to work with some of the injured soldiers in the hospital and out of that, he was inspired to utilize items that were just available to him like hospital bed springs or the rings that were around beer kegs and some of the other things you see on the modern Pilates equipment, and he began to make them and work with them. He had a lot of experience in fitness himself. He was very sickly as a child and he would do it for both eastern practices and then Buddhism. The Greek ideal that was very popular in Germany at the turn of the century that felt that men really wanted to focus on perception of the body, mind and spirit as a whole to different systems of body movements.
And on his way to developing Pilates, he also studied a lot of anatomy and developed himself as a body builder, he was a gymnast, he was a boxer, he was a skier. So after World War I, Joseph returned to Germany for a while and he worked a little while even with the military police, physical trainings of the German MPs but in 1925, he really felt that he didn’t want to begin training the German army so he got in the boat and packed his bags and came to New York City. On his way to America in the boat, he met his wife, Clara and she was a nurse and she became his wife. He established a beautiful studio in New York City, a very, very humble studio but he and Clara just worked and worked and worked to evolve the Pilates system and then they were around a lot of dancers, the dance world found him. At that time in the early 20s and 30s if you had a mastectomy or a fractured a hip as a dancer, you could very well end your career and Joe knew how to rehab so many of the dancer’s injuries that male and female ballerinas would come to him and then, Martha Graham and Bill Murray and many other, even Henri Bendel, the department store owner came into the site.
So, the first generation of teachers who trained directly under Joe are often referred to as the Pilates elders, and some of them really committed themselves to just preserve his classical teachings and passing those on. And then others went off to study more anatomy and physiology and got modern day physical therapist and doctors to look at the exercises and dissect them and take them apart. So there are different ways that applies that is presented these days. He passed away in 1967 by the way. He really had maintained a beautifully fit physical physique for his whole life but he was known to smoke cigars and party and he liked this little glass of certain European liquor, and he wore his exercise shorts all over the place even in the streets of New York. So he has been called sometimes intimidating by some but he was deeply passionately committed to his work and his wife was committed to his work also and continued to run the studio about 10 years after he passed away. He wrote a couple of books. He used to call it, System Contrology because it was control of the body. And it was called Pilates as an identifier for he being the founder of this way of movement of the system.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I really like that you stick to the classical style of Pilates because today, there are many different variations. I mean people are kind of building on just the Pilates classical style and why is that that you adhere to the classical style?
Amahl Van Halsema: Well, I’m a purist. And like if I were to speak Hebrew or Arabic or something, I don’t feel like I could ever know it well enough and there’s so much that exist in the essential choreography that is necessary and informed that I don’t see any reason to go into fusions or add in other things. You can get that in other places. So, I don’t think that I can ever know enough about it. There are so many devices he invented that is not even time to present or use in one session. A lot of the studios today just use the main pieces that he invented.
Wendy Myers: What are those pieces?
Amahl Van Halsema: There’s the reformer which is the bed like device with springs on it that can be adjusted to different settings and it has ropes or leather straps that one uses to move the whole body on ball bearings, you’re lengthening and stretching and toning the whole body as you do different workouts.
Wendy Myers: Yeah and I love that you lay down while you’re working out. Haha. It’s my favorite part of it. I love lying down while working out. Haha.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. And especially because he started working with injured people, a lot of them couldn’t even walk at those posts and some of them were amputees and he was still working to make them strong hard bodies with great success. In the US, he developed something called the Cadillac which modern manufacturers sometimes called it the Trap Table and that’s a whole other device with springs and trapeze and bars and everything can be adjusted to different heights. A whole other set of exercises can be done on there. There’s something called the “chair” which is a pumping pedal that he had used. It’s a little more challenging. It requires you to stabilize yourself about being laying against anything. The ladder barrel, you can do a lot of lateral faction and side exercises on another piece. The pieces are endless but those are often the main ones. The reformer, the Cadillac/Trap Table, the chair and did I say the ladder barrel?
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I continue to be amazed; I’ve been doing Pilates for, since I was 25 years old so 15 years, dating myself just a little bit. But I continue to be amazed at how many exercises there are. And when I do Pilates today, I still am discovering you know, having my instructors do knew exercises. It was just amazing to me that you can get a completely different workout every time you do a Pilates session. And it really keeps your body challenged because you really want to do it with your body, you want to do a different exercise, a different routine every time so your body doesn’t get used to that, so it constantly challenges it and changes your body in such a beautiful way and create such a beautiful shape.
Amahl Van Halsema: That’s right Wendy. Joseph believed so strongly that Greek models, that mental and physical health are interrelated. And, it didn’t take World War II or maniacal Hitler to introduce a physical culture to Germany. Way before that at the turn of the century, there were a lot of physical cultures in Germany and they had specific camps and groups on Saturday nights that would meet and Joe often felt that he fell short because he didn’t have a healthy body and he couldn’t join the boys in the gym or at training camps and all of that. So he developed a system that was to fully strengthen the human mind and the body. You can’t get Pilates without using your mind. Process go by very fast to people because you have to focus on what you are doing all the time to get the results. A lot of his physical training regimens were available in Germany to the youth culture and his connections to the physical culture of the late 19th century are really, really clear because they used a lot of specially invented apparatuses and claimed that exercises could cure illness and all kinds of stuff. So there are related concepts such as corrective exercise or medical gymnastics, those terms have been used.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It is kind of like gymnastics because when I did sessions, you’re working 2 or 3 or even 4 different body parts that you have to coordinate and it really takes a lot of concentration to be able to do those all at once. And that’s what I love within that hour. You’re working so many different body parts at the same time. It’s like a two hour workout even though it’s just one hour. Even though, everything is very, very slowly, it’s exhausting, you burn a lot of calories and you’re tired even though your movements have been very slow because you have to concentrate and that burns more calories.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yup. I said it twice already, he had such a high regard to the Greeks in the physical prowess demonstrated by the Greeks. He wrote two books if any of you are interested. The one is called “Your Health: A Corrective System of Exercising that Revolutionizes the Entire Field of Physical Education”, that was in 1934 and then “Return to Life Through Contrology”, it was in 1945. And the first generation of students, a lot of them were dancers who studied with Joe. They wanted to open their own studios and teach the method that is collectively known as the Pilates or the Pilates method. There are a lot of prominent names in there, Romana Kryzanowska and Kathy Grant and Jay Grimes and Ron Fletcher, Mary Bowen, Carola Trier, Bob Seed, Lolita San Miguel, Mary Pilates, Denise with Joseph and Clara, Booth King, Eve Gentry, many of them. I’ve been able to study with Kathy Grant and Jay Grimes gratefully but the contemporary Pilates comprises both the modern Pilates and the classical traditional Pilates. And the former, it’s partly derived from the teaching of the first generation students and the ladders were carried down by the first generation students who want to preserve and promote the work of Joseph Pilates as he thought it. You know it used to be really confined to very specialized studios but time has changed and we’re in this great fusion of all these movement systems. So right now you can get yoga Pilates and Pilates with cardio and a lot of different things offered.
Wendy Myers: What are some of the problems that you see with the Pilates studios like Pilates Plus and those things and there are like metal reformers. What are some of the problems?
Amahl Van Halsema: Well without going into any negativity, I will say that the term Pilates has entered the mainstream in the US and there was an unsuccessful intellectual property lawsuit in which the US Federal Court did rule that the term, Pilates was generic and free from unrestricted use. So now anyone in the United States, trained or untrained can offer Pilates as a service to the public. And consequently, a lot of people face extensive and conflicting information about what Pilates is, how it works and what credentials they should seek in an instructor.
Wendy Myers: Yeah because I have taken a class at Pilates Plus and there’s other studios are doing it as well. They have these big classes and its instructor yelling out instructions and I went to just one class and it went so fast but the movement was so fast that the people are going to get hurt doing this fast Pilates because it’s supposed to be slow, right?
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah, there are not a lot of people that would recognize that Pilates being somewhere to the Pilates that I teach. Everyone was trying it their own way. And people had asked me about it. I tell them to be sure that they are strong and do not do anything that they feel uncomfortable with in the session. And to do their homework, I mean to find a Pilates instructor, you really, really don’t want to go so much with who is trained by whom necessarily. But really be specific. What’s the Pilates teacher’s knowledge? Ask them what their experience level is, what their understanding is, what they know about the specific needs for example, you know are you pregnant, do you have scoliosis, do you have stenosis, are you elderly?
My clients go from ages 14 to in their 80’s right now. There are great and not so great teachers out there that have come out of lots of different training programs. So interview your teacher and find out who they studied with, how long they’ve been doing it, maybe how many hours or years they’ve been teaching, you might want to check what other health or fitness or rehabilitation experience they have, if they have experienced working with clients who have whatever your condition is or whatever your goals are and don’t be afraid to ask about references and referrals. This is not a standardized business and you need to pick very carefully. I would try 2 or 3 instructors or 2 or 3 classes.
Wendy Myers: Yeah that’s what I did. I like to try a bunch of different people and see where it feels right.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Because there are some instructors, they do a 3 week certification and they’re just let out of the gate and they’re ready to teach you Pilates, there’s no way. I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot of different Pilates instructors and there are some of them where they just take you through the same routine every single time and I wanted to shoot myself. And there’s other one, they just challenge you and you have like, I’ll come in and I’ll have a backache and they know how to tune your body up. They know how to tune your body up so that when you walk out of there you’re not in pain anymore, they’d stretch you out or they’d work around your injury and I think you’re very ,very good at that Van, yourself.
You have had so much experience. Only someone with a lot of experience like yourself is going to be able to work with someone in such a way, work around their injuries or work with their injuries or health conditions and really help to improve that person’s life, it’s not just exercise. It’s improving their mobility, their quality of life and working to resolve their health conditions. So, you can really make a big difference in choosing so just don’t randomly choose someone. It makes a huge difference between choosing someone has 3 weeks training and someone who had a lot of training and a lot of experience so you definitely have to be discriminating.
Amahl Van Halsema: I would say that everyone, as in to comparing styles with different training background and individuals, you might find that you resonate better with one versus another and that will help you make the decision to pick the best Pilates teacher for you. It’s really no different than picking a doctor or a friend or anything, try different people on. Know that 2 people could say their Pilates teachers and someone could have been maybe studying 10 weeks and then me, I’ve been 25 years, my first schooling was 1988.
Wendy Myers: Yeah I mean that’s a lot, you’ve been in a long time. Haha. I love it.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: And so, let’s talk a little bit about how Pilates can help different health conditions, I think that’s something people are really interested in.
Amahl Van Halsema: OK. Sure.
Wendy Myers: So for me, I started doing Pilates, I was not doing it a long time but when I became pregnant I started doing Pilates again because I heard that it strengthens your pelvic floor and it can really help ease your birth and make your birth easier.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk a little bit about how Pilates helps women that are pregnant?
Amahl Van Halsema: Sure. I mean staying physically fit during pregnancy can be difficult especially if you’re not in shape to begin with. And on a whole even if you’re having a good pregnancy, you can often be more tired and more uncomfortable and even concerned about some of the exercises you may have been doing up to that point of getting pregnant. So Pilates is a one full alternative. It helps you to stabilize your body during pregnancy. Your body is changing shape in so many ways, every part of it, front and the back and all over and you’re getting wider all over and the Pilates exercises focus all around the center of your body or your core between the neck to the top of your legs and that helps you hold up your extra weight and your size. Now, good teachers also really strengthen the upper back muscles and that will help you with folding forward with the weight of the baby with your shoulders and give you help in carrying the baby in the front and prepare you for carrying the baby as it grows. Your flexibility is increasing because your body is flooding with hormones and so your ligaments are getting looser. And you want a teacher that will help you to get stronger but knows how to modify the movement so that they don’t over train or over stretch you.
You don’t want to have any chance of doing too much or having too much impact on your body with exercise. So flexibility will also help you with labor and delivery as you’re using your whole body to have that baby come into the world. Pilates also can be very Zen-like. It can help to center your mind. A lot of us from when we get into a session even me. I mean even when I’m upset about a lot of other things or very absorbed with other parts of my life going on, when I teach for an hour, I just forget about it because you have to focus so much, on what’s going on in the session that you have a vacation from other things going on. And the time, most of my clients say the time goes by so fast because you’re turning your attention just to one thing at a time, going on in your body. The brain can only focus on one thing at a time. And all these worries and anxieties and things about the baby coming and the unknown and everything going on, you can go back to that if you want to after the session but you really don’t have time to be so full of that.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I was fine also when I was pregnant, just the first 3 months I had a little touch of morning sickness.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: But even if I was a little bit nauseous, I’d come to the session and it would go away by the end because of all the breathing like for whatever reason, it relieved my nausea.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah, yes.
Wendy Myers: So, I just really loved it when I was pregnant also because just towards the end of the pregnancy, I was having some back issues and the Pilates is helping to strengthen in my back and I know the whole big thing about pregnancy is strengthening that pelvic floor and no other exercise does that. I mean, there’s just isn’t any. There is no pelvic strengthening machine at the gym you know.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. Well, the huge muscle that’s around the core the transverse abdominis it’s one of the biggest stabilizers in the whole body. I mean, it’s your baby’s sling right around there. And it’s under the rectus, with guy’s with six packs, this is deeper. And it connects all the way from the front of the body to the back of the body. And so, if that gets stronger, you also are able to overcome some of the tiredness in your body during pregnancy because so much damage required a pregnant woman to cope with their fatigue during pregnancy. The stronger your body is, the better you can handle it. Also, it can help a little bit with the varicose issues and the leg cramps and the swelling because leg movements while doing the Pilates will help improve your circulation so there’s a lot of leg exercises in the repertoire and ankle muscles are helped too and the leg swelling and cramping can be a little less, because of the good blood flow that’s introduced.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I like that you have your legs up in the air a lot because we don’t assume that position so much. When our legs are up in the air it’s like all the blood can flow down, it doesn’t pull on the leg.
Amahl Van Halsema: Right.
Wendy Myers: Like most women have them when they’re pregnant.
Amahl Van Halsema: And you know Wendy when that abdomen enlarges, it’s just the load point on the body. And there are changes that have so much impact on your joints and muscles so the Pilates exercises help to keep your posture and doesn’t let you go into that sickness or soreness as readily. Now, some people said they don’t want to get fat because of the pregnancy. I hear that quite a bit in LA. But the Pilates movement itself can help the muscles to metabolize and work out in a safe way. There’s this very specific protocols for teaching Pilates during pregnancy. I don’t take women who haven’t done Pilates before they’re pregnant. I will not take a woman who is in her first month of pregnancy who has never done it before. I want those fundamentals to be instilled and then, we can digraph and we put a pillow and support her blood vessels and turn around her side and do other stuff but there’s so much learning. It’s almost like learning a language that I do not, myself accept a person who’s pregnant. They have to start before or after.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It is amazing that’s why a lot Pilates places are called Foundation Pilates because there is this pretty large foundation of learning your body and learning how to use it and get in touch your body because you have to control your muscles so much, so many different muscle groups. And I love Pilates because you have to strengthen your core with every single exercise you have to use your stomach to lift your arm or lift your leg. So by the time I had my baby, my stomach got flat again really quickly and I have a totally flat stomach now even though I got huge. When I was pregnant I gained a lot of weight because I ate everything in sight. Haha
Amahl Van Halsema: Haha. The first time, the second time is like I don’t need to do that anymore.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It was not fun recovering from that 55 pound weight gain. But, I love…
Amahl Van Halsema: You got breakfast in bed did you? Haha.
Wendy Myers: I do. My husband force fed me foie grass. But my stomach got flat again because my muscles were so toned because I was doing Pilates the majority of my pregnancy.
Amahl Van Halsema: I will tell you too that that 9 months journey with the body, if you have been doing Pilates and with doctor’s permission, you’re able to do it to a certain part of your pregnancy, it will help you so much with post-partum care.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And it’s sad because when you’re pregnant, you have so few options to exercise. Like for me I was actually doing a lot of weightlifting before I got pregnant but you can’t do that because you can harm yourself even though you’ve been doing for long time. The doctors don’t want you to do that. So really the options are Pilates, walking, swimming and I think biking which not a lot of pregnant women are going to be doing. But so, it’s really one of your only options and it’s an amazing option.
Amahl Van Halsema: It’s what is strengthening your pelvic floor and that’s your vehicle for delivery. So it helps balance too by the way because your balance shift when you get bigger and you are filled with some of the hormones in the water and you can have some tones to your arms and legs and your buttocks. They’ll help a little bit with cortisol, the hormone levels. And also, I’ve got a couple of girls that really help with sciatica. They have pregnancy sciatica.
Wendy Myers: I had that too.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. And then being able to tone up the muscles in that area, it took some of the pressure off and they didn’t have quite a severe experience. One of them I did sent to a PT, Lider, who you mentioned last week you know my friend Lider who I love dearly and he works very closely with me actually.
Wendy Myers: Wow.
Amahl Van Halsema: It’s fun to work with him. I’m a movement educator. I’m here to move my client or my patient. And if there’s a big obstruction to movement, then I send them to a physical therapist. I’m not a physical therapist, I’m not a doctor and that should be very clear. But there’s a lot that Pilates addresses that’s in a domain of physical therapy and having a good therapist to work with is a wonderful partnership.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love it that you do work with Lider and that’s actually how I met him, through you and he totally changed my life and my physical being and my mobility and whatnot but you have as well because I’ve been doing Pilates with you for about 2 years. And the 2 of you together have just completely changed my body, completely got me back to functioning how I was when I was in my 20’s and got me functioning after my pregnancy because my body just went to pot like most of it that I was having some back problems. But the two of you guys together working in collision, working together, he would tell you exercises I need to strengthen.
Amahl Van Halsema: And I would call him and say “she’s coming in today. Now, what about that ankle or what about that lower back or that pubic symphysis?”. I love having his expertise.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It really added a whole another dynamic to healing my body, not just workout; it really heals your body and gets it functioning correctly. You know and it almost teaches you like how to move. I learn how to have better posture, how I should be walking, how I should be holding my back while I’m walking. It teaches you so many different things. How you should be sitting or what movements you should avoid, it’s just fantastic and like for instance, if anyone has any kind of posture problems like they have scoliosis or any kind of back issues, Pilates is perfect for it. Can you go into a little bit of detail about how Pilates improves scoliosis?
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. I have mild scoliosis and through this system, you cannot tell when you look at my body. I have worked with individuals who have such severe scoliosis that they are endangered of not being able to breathe and some of their internal organs are crushed. I just want to point out that there are three kinds of scoliosis without it being a large lesson in the topic and the subject. There’s idiopathic which is usually an unknown cause of scoliosis and there’s functional which just happens is really poor posture in the body alignment habit. And there’s the structural which is caused by disease or birth defects.
Generally, the lateral curvature of the spinal column, the C shape or the S shape is what you’ll find. And the S shape is considered more stable. There’s a way that the lateral curves and body rotation in one or more of the vertebra at the point of the curvature. And the body of the vertebra rotates to the side of the spine and the spine constantly rotates to another side of the spine and the body. Now, this can pull on the rib center attached to the body and causes the ribs to bulge out. It can be pulling on the sternum in the front of the body and muscles on one side can be really contractive and have to be stretched. And muscles on the other side are over stretched and really need contracting. So, the most common form of scoliosis is the idiopathic or the generic.
There seems to be a genetic factor involved in this form of scoliosis. If you work with a client from puberty, you can do a lot especially while their hormones are still developing. A child all the way up to 18 and 19 years of age can get a lot of benefit from Pilates because he’s so malleable. Older clients are too but not quite the same way. It’s important to know that Pilates doesn’t fix the spine. You have some choices when you have scoliosis, you can be manipulated by a good PT or osteopathic doctor or kinesiologist. You can have electrical stimulation help you. You can think of braces, that’s debatable. On top of it was a lot of debate about the value of braces. The most severe old school option is fusing the spine in surgery to straighten it which puts hardware into your body and create some other big challenges.
And then there’s the fantastic new technology coming out right now for example at Cedar Sinai. They’re using titanium and others things to work with ball bearings and hopefully in the years ahead you will never have to use a fusion which can never redone and puts a certain amount of rigidity and some other things. I mentioned you know we see examples all the time with things that aren’t great. I have one client that actually looked like she was leaning like the Tower of Pisa because she had so many fusions in her spine. The hardware was so heavy that she began to sink.
Wendy Myers: Oh no.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. She had to have it redone a couple of times and then they put the wrong balls in her hip, just a lot of things. So generally the last hardware we can have in our body, the better. I’m not against it though. There are people who do fully benefits with some of it a lot. Over the years from the clients I’ve seen, I’ve seen some amazing gains in strength and mobility. The course do not go back to normal but it’s possible to really learn how to strengthen the body and we train some of the weaker muscles that run all along the spine and are in the core and it really increases body awareness of the good and bad posture habits. It’s really important to learn to avoid falling into the bad alignment that the scoliosis course would prefer. So you know braces are an external support for the spine, a fusion creates permanent internal support for the spine. It has potentials to create other problems. And exercise strengthens the core and back muscles so your body can provide its own muscular support for the spine, that’s where Pilates exercises come in with its focus on core stabilization and function mobility. So all the flexing and extending when you’re going to do a twist of your torso or flex bend over to the side, all those things are helped with the Pilates workout.
Wendy Myers: I can only imagine those stretching and strengthening helps with the pain as well.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. It really, really does. The cool thing about the web right now is everything we’re talking about, you can Google. Just Google benefits of Pilates or scoliosis and you’ll come up with so many different things. I love Jillian Hessel workshop in scoliosis. She’s a ballerina who works with Kathy Grant and Carola Trier and others. And she’s been wonderful. Alan Herdman, a British man who brought Pilates to the UK In 1970, he has written a book called “Curves, Twists and Bends. Pilates for Scoliosis” with the main author, Anette Wellings and she has really severe scoliosis and she has acquired to teach herself. But Pilates is simple and it’s versatile so it can be constantly adjusted to modify to a person who has scoliosis as their spine changes. It has really gradual and profound benefits over time and even if an individual has opted for surgery or not, scoliosis really needs to have that spine kept healthy as long and supple as possible.
And Pilates can provided both either very gentle or more aggressive exercises that can help improve that alignment and that posture and that lengthening because there’s a lot of muscles that go up and down, I decided the spine. The rectus spini and others and think of a muscle if it’s toned and strong, it will help the body to have its most beneficial posture rather than giving in to the push of the curve of the spine. Pilates can’t restructure the spine. It’s just a basic exercise movement that can really be adapted to an individual’s curvature. And again, ask away, you have to ask if an instructor has been trained in this. I have been trained by many different teachers in scoliosis. It’s not your first year learning experience necessarily in being certified for Pilates. You touch on it but I also go into these areas because they fascinate me. You know Wendy, I’ve been to two severe car crashes myself and two severe injuries and Pilates was able to do a lot of rebuilding in my body and I happen to have found the needs for myself and it’s more therapeutic Pilates. So that’s been an area that I love on developing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love that you said that you actually would ask the physical therapist to incorporate Pilates into their treatment.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah, I did.
Wendy Myers:z And I have the same thing too. I have some physical therapy at a different place other than Lider Chan. I went to a different place and they were using a ton of Pilates to rehab me. And I really admire you how you been able to use Pilates and other techniques to completely rehab your body. I mean, injuries that you have sustained. Most people would have not recovered from those but you are able to, using Pilates and other things as well.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. I came to LA to actually be in a movie.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Amahl Van Halsema: Got hit by a car instead so that really enriched and reformed my teaching.
Wendy Myers: Haha.
Amahl Van Halsema: In 1992…
Wendy Myers: You are not able to anticipate it.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yes. I do wanna just mention that, when we have something in our bodies that we don’t just love having, it’s important to get to some point of acceptance not to divide yourself against scoliosis and feel that is an enemy within you. But the more clients I see, the more I recognize that. If they can accept that they have it and how unique they are, I mean it really is important for them to get as much information about the curvature as the can so that they can understand and are aware of what the scoliosis is involved. I mean, what’s the location, what’s the size, what’s the type of the curve and you know there’s so many options, explore them. Don’t just take one doctor’s word for it. Find somebody you trust.
Many times my clients with scoliosis will have a doctor who specializes in scoliosis, maybe a physical therapist, me or a good Pilates instructor. Some kind of cardio that works for them that doesn’t cause too much pain. And these are all things that can be discussed we’re living in a very exciting time. There’s a lot of procedures that would be coming out in the next 10 years that are not licensed or legal yet but that are going to be amazing, everything from stem cell to titanium and ball bearings and other things. I had an OR nurse last year who took classes from me and she became a candidate for one of these studies and she’s had amazing results in her spine with the titanium ball bearing infusion. Absolutely phenomenal. She’s living with no problems at all. So it’s an exciting time even though we recognize the amount of time, energy and money these things can take in our lives you know injury and malformation, maladaptive formations in the body.
Wendy Myers: Well let’s segway a little bit into a topic I’m really interested in. When I’ve been in a lot of Pilates places, I’ve seen a lot of people in there that they’re shaking or they seem like they have multiple sclerosis. And I’m amazed like how many multiple sclerosis patients there are that have been in all the Pilates studios that I’ve worked out at.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Can you tell me about your strengths with having clients with multiple sclerosis and how they’ve improved using Pilates?
Amahl Van Halsema: Well yeah. Again, that’s a very broad subject but I will say that for MS Pilates really helps core strength and even if you learn the mat routine, you do it at home if you’re fatigued. You have to keep in mind, if you don’t remember anything else, just remember Pilates instructors are not created equal. And there is also some of the repertoire that has the chin and chest curl forward and that can create the buzzing symptoms that some MS patients have in their ears, you don’t want to do a lot of that flexing. And if your teacher is working too hard in the class, you can generate heat and fatigue which are two constants in MS that can be debilitating. So that being said, I do bring us back to the fact that Pilates focuses on core muscles. So your deep abs and your muscles are on the spine, they are so important for overall stability and balance and they are common problem areas in MS.
Pilates will help to build strength without bulking you. It will help you to learn awareness especially for some of the MS population that has numbness, it will help you with your posture and also with some of that stiffness, the joint mobility is increased and helped with Pilates. There are some benefits too. A lot of the work can be lying down as Wendy mentioned especially good if you are in one of the stages of MS when you are unsteady in your feet. And it doesn’t have to be aerobic inducing so even if you are in a very tight state, going to see an instructor who’s been trained to teach Pilates for MS clients can be still a restorative and uplifting and refreshing experience for that 50 or 1 hour session, 50 minutes or 1 hour session rather than wrecking your day and not being able to function because you did the workout. I think the biggest downside really is just finding a good instructor but don’t give up on that. And then just be careful that you don’t really have the head down towards the chest too far because that can bring about that buzzing sensation that multiple sclerosis individuals can experience if they bend their head down too far.
Be sure to talk to your doctor, that’s number one. You know you hear that all the time. And as I said before, try out different instructors and classes please. If you do a group, be sure you tell your instructor that you have MS and maybe go to a part of the room where you can see it’s not the hottest part of the room or the lights aren’t glaring the most or just definitely turn the music down if it’s bothering your senses and go at your own pace. It can be done at home and learn through some of the tapes. There’s even a couple of tapes out there for Pilates for MS if it’s a tight budget frame of reference for you or tight time. So the elasticity and the stress, balance, strengthening, awareness of your body, refreshing your mind, it’s a really good alternative.
Some of my MS clients cannot hold the postures of yoga any longer and since Pilates is constantly moving and stretching and strengthening and no posture position is held for a very long time, they also at some stage just find it easier to do. And the tai chi that some of them have in their lives where it could be also required them to be on their feet much of the time, not always they can be seated and so there’s times when they just come and lay down for Pilates session is good. A good instructor will know how to really stretch you too. And you know, the smallest core strengthening muscles can be done right there for your back.
Wendy Myers: Does it help them regain their nerve re-connectivity?
Amahl Van Halsema: There’s so many stages of degeneration. I mean, I have one girl a couple of years ago and she was quite advanced. And I was just learning working with her to be able to get down on the reformer which is for her getting into bed and get out of bed. It took a lot of our session just to learn what muscles she could use and how where to place herself at balance and all of that. So we could prevent that from happening in our body. But it did take away some of the panic and the terror. She was living alone at that time even though her kids were checking in on her and gave her a better strength to walk with her walker.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, just to function.
Amahl Van Halsema: We got in to gait and a lot of things that you can learn to good Pilates education.
Wendy Myers: And I know that you know MS patients they tend to progressively get worst. Does Pilates help stall the progression of the disease?
Amahl Van Halsema: There are pros and cons found in the studies right now. There is a debate over this. All I can say is that I have seen great benefits, I’m careful because I’m not a doctor. But some degeneration seems to go unchecked but having a stronger muscle and being able to work with the areas where you have numbness and learn what you can do and can’t do with them, again I would sometimes work with physical therapist and every week call them, who’s coming in today, you know what do I need to know, how is she doing, what you know. And I don’t know that Pilates can’t take away curvature of spine or can take away, stop the deteriorating in MS but it has real value. And forcing the brain cells to fire, to help to learn new things and keep their attention to make an understatement that that doesn’t hurt. There’s values here that long term double blind studies have not been completed on yet to my knowledge and I need you to see those and what they are because I see it would be very beneficial. Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Is there anything else that you want to talk about in regards to multiple sclerosis?
Amahl Van Halsema: No. I’d love to. We could take a whole hour for that but I do want to maybe, do you mind if I just mention a couple of things about stenosis?
Wendy Myers: Yes. What is stenosis? First off.
Amahl Van Halsema: Well, some of my clients have had spinal stenosis. There are different kinds of a lumbar stenosis that I worked with is a condition that’s due to narrowing of the spinal cord which causes nerve pinching and that can lead to lot of deep pain in your buttocks and limping and lack of feeling in your legs. It will decrease your physical activity. If you have spinal stenosis and you’re working privately with a really, really well trained instructor, there’s a lot of movements that you should not do in Pilates and I won’t go into all of those here. But a lot of the mat work on the floor would have to be avoided. And when you’re on the Pilates equipment, go for pretty light springs, you can still go into a lot of core development. And then, don’t let the legs go higher than the 45 degree angle. You should really keep them on the right angle which in Pilates, we call table top or the 90 degree.
A lot of the twisting and side bending shouldn’t be done because the spine can’t handle that and you don’t want to over arch around the spine. It might sound that you got to eliminate just a lot of the exercises, don’t worry. There’s so many you can do. I recommend you should do reformer if you have stenosis because of the assistance that the springs in the pads will give your body while you’re working out and the footwork and the arms working with something called the short box, long stretch. All of the exercises can be modified but it is beneficial and there is an amount of entity in the spine and compression and deterioration that means you have to be very careful. Often flat back movement is good in Pilates when you have stenosis. It’s another very big topic. I suggest any of you that do have stenosis, you just Google “benefits of Pilates for stenosis” and fortunately, you will come up with a lot of material on this topic.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It seems like they’re overwriting message here is that if you have a health condition or something where you are in pain, you don’t want to be just sitting around a lot to get worse and progress. You need to move your body, you need to move and Pilates provides a very safe way and very, very beneficial way to move and at least help improve your health condition or prevent it from progressing.
Amahl Van Halsema: By the way you know we talked on MS, we talked about stenosis, some of the gals I work with have osteoporosis. Some of them have the pre-cursor which is osteopenia and then some of them have full-blown osteoporosis. I got drug induced osteoporosis. I have great bone density but I was for 7 years on a cocktail with very, very hard drugs due to pain levels that would make me faint, that’s the result of my car accident. And I suddenly in two years time lost my bone density and have been part of a study at one of the major hospitals here and medicine and doctors. And my Pilates with heavier springs or bone density, all of that, I’ve gotten very joyfully out of that. But, it can happen quickly. It isn’t just something an old person’s disease.
You have to be careful with traditional Pilates to avoid really an excess in motion of the spine if you have osteoporosis because it can induce spinal fractures. So a lot of the Pilates mat exercises which are done on the floor are really contraindicated. There was a study done in a major clinic, I think it was the Mayo Clinic in the 80’s that determined that flexing your spine forward can resolve invertible fractures when you have osteoporosis. And you can even go as far as developing that huge Dowager’s hump. So, those of you who haven’t taken the Pilates class know that most of the exercises can involve lifting your head off the ground or you know rolling up and down.
The good thing about Pilates is the alignment factor. You will elongate the spine and align it with your pelvis and your hips and your shoulders and your head. And what better way to correct and to focus on posture and the spinal decompression. Additionally, the breathing and the concentration that it requires are very, very helpful. It will help you to stay centered and grounded. And the exercises that build core strength and develop the small muscles that are supporting the bigger muscles in the body are also all attainable with modifications. So, it can be considered bone density exercise if you’re working with someone who knows what they’re doing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah and also if you have a diagnosis of osteopenia which is a precursor that usually triggers prescription for bisphosponates, you might want to reconsider and start doing some weight bearing exercises and not everyone can do weight lifting or it’s hard to do that. It can be very dangerous for someone with osteopenia or osteoporosis and Pilates is an absolutely wonderful way to just heal your entire body.
Amahl Van Halsema: And it’s focused on the deep stabilizing muscles of the lower back and pelvis down to the deepest layer of your abs. When those are strong can support your body, it will help to come back the effects of osteoporosis.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And that’s something you’re helping me with is that, the back humps because I kind of developed one I think, other people don’t think so but I do think so that when I was pregnant, I was just kind of like your body lean forward. You’re kind of like, your shoulders are hunched forward and you kind of get like a little hump or the hunchback of Silver Lake. Haha.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yes.
Wendy Myers: And Pilates, you’re really focus on strengthen those, not the whole back, really the concerning these upper back muscles to pull the top half of my upper body up and improving my posture. And I just love it like you’re not going to find that in weight lifting. It’s not going to happen.
Amahl Van Halsema: By the way speaking about the gym, I just want to mention that if you want a good teacher and you’re doing private or semiprivate, whatever your choice is, at first, your session might seem to progress quite slowly. There are fundamentals to learn about Pilates and a good teacher will introduce to you to those. I feel it’s like going to language school and you’re learning the basic grammar at first but once you know that basic grammar even after the first 10 or 12 sessions, your sessions can become more intense and about more activity and have a lot more choreography that’s introduced. And don’t give up after the first time or 2 because very soon, it can be made from what might seem like deceptively easy to extremely intense workout.
Wendy Myers: Yeah I found that too. I was a little bit bored at first when I did Pilates because they were just focusing so much on the stomach and it was a very kind of intense stomach workout. And it wasn’t terrible exciting but after a few more sessions, they were able to run you the basics and add more stuff to make it more interesting so don’t give up right away if you have the same experience.
Amahl Van Halsema: I have cross trained a lot of athletes, golfers and basketball player and ESPN runner and a woman training on horses right now, equestrian. All of this Pilates benefit is taking into the core and useful for all of these things. Even a couple of my guys who still do weight training, just remember that the conventional gym workout is based on a lot of pulling or cable or weights being used as resistance and there’s a lot of pushing and pulling of the weights to strength training. But the Pilates apparatus uses a variable link springing to simultaneously lengthen and strengthen the muscle as well as improve your joint flexibility and range of motion while you’re working out throughout the whole session. So the lengthening as well as strengthening sometimes using only the resistance of the body itself in the workout is one of the things that differentiates that between that and going to the gym.
The gym is fantastic for isolating larger muscles. You know I work my abs, I work my triceps, I’m working with my biceps, I’m working my gluts, my hamstrings. I have a couple of good friends who are trainers and I got some clients that I share with one who I think is great who uses some pulleys too because truthfully there’s so much core awareness, much more core awareness than there was in 60s. And there’s a lot of great gym stuff going on right now. But there is a difference between Pilates and our traditional weight training program. Also at the gym you might repeat 2 or 3 sets and increase the weight and diminish the number of reps. And then you have this phases like maxing out your muscle, you reach to a certain point and you’re not able to train the entire body in a given day. And in contrast, Pilates will fit all the muscles all the time, the whole body. It’s sort of a submaximal effort so that the muscle is balanced and you get some symmetry and core stability with every single workout. So, you usually don’t often feel really exhausted and shaky after a Pilates session where that happens more frequently if you’re pushing to weight train at the gym. It’s more energizing and invigorating although I will say this times when I’ve been shaking.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, me too.
Amahl Van Halsema: So those are just a couple of differences that I want to throw in between the weight training, the strengthening and the Pilates to lengthening and strengthening and to balance things out and with the breathing control and the total mental and physical concentration.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I lifted weights for years. I have a personal trainer for like age 20 to probably 25. And definitely have been lifting weights off and on since then. And definitely there’s a huge difference, definitely be at the gym. You are working at your big muscles but Pilates you are working out a lot of your smaller muscles. And lot of these smaller muscles, they’re ignored at the gym. Not need as important or they just don’t know how the right equipment to do it. But my body has just become… because Pilates elongates your muscles, it stretches them and strengthens them at the same time that you just have an overall body health. But it’s something that can also be used in conjunction to do cross training you.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah, a lot of cross training. Yeah. By the way, I love working with men. And right now about 30% of my clients are men.
Wendy Myers: Wow, I didn’t know it’s that many.
Amahl Van Halsema: So to the guys who are listening, please call because I adore working with you. It’s a special challenge. You’re usually stiffer. Sometimes you’re little more resistant. Most of the man who stick with me are often 4o plus because they’ve done so many different things with their backs whether at the computer or while they’re doing sports and then it gets so bad that they get scared and then they really have to try something else.
Wendy Myers: Well, I know how you get more male clients because we were talking a little bit before the show that Pilates has a very interesting side benefit that it can actually help increase your erectile dysfunction or it can help your erectile dysfunction. Haha.
Amahl Van Halsema: But both men and women can benefit in these areas on Pilates because it’s going to strengthen the pelvic area. It helps control everything in that specific region. So it’s better than doing kegel exercises repeatedly. And in some cases, it really has helped to alleviate some erectile dysfunction. Please don’t go quote me and say that I said Pilates fixes that. I’m saying some cases, there were certain things going on with the muscles in that area that’s making that pelvic area and upper legging groin area part of that whole wrap around the core strengthening that area was beneficial.
Wendy Myers: So it’s not Viagra, but it can help you. They can help you in that area.
Amahl Van Halsema: And you know guys, it will also help with all the intricate muscles that are underneath your big ones. So they get ignored at the gym or it’s just not possible to effectively strengthen those muscles at the gym. So if you included in your weekly workout regimen, it can make every exercise at the gym more effective because when their abs are trained and strengthened to activate at the level of Pilates brings them to, they will make your body work in proper alignment. And that alignment will increase how hard the rest of your body is working, make those gym sessions more with your time. And Pilates is very fine tuned to the abdominal muscles that form a corset around you.
It will help your posture and it will add to your playing of your golf of your tennis or your swimming or your running. The physical contribution Pilates plays in increasing the body’s form in sports has brought a lot of lot of macho men in my door. So it isn’t just that women do it because they want to stretch. It’s a really intelligent form to working out. And it can help prevent injury and alleviate pain and it’s right next to physical therapy. And by the way, a good instructor will tell you, should you see a physical therapist rather than her. So it shouldn’t ever be considered as a workout just for women so don’t be scared of it. You’ll probably be happy if you tried it.
Wendy Myers: So that’s a message to all you stiff, muscle down guys out there. Give Van a call. She’s got private lessons, private instruction and group classes that are a little bit more affordable. And she is located in Sta. Monica.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. It’s Van Halsema Pilates at Foundation Pilates.
Wendy Myers: OK, great. Yeah and check out her website and schedule hours on VhPilates.com.
Amahl Van Halsema: We just started the new website. I’ll be blogging on there but it’s a brand new one so I’ll be getting to post blogs in there. My first blog on there was for Pilates and MS. And I’ll be posting some other things probably about once a month.
Wendy Myers: Great. Yeah and I highly recommend her. I’ve been working with her for a couple of years so I definitely encourage you to give her a call. Can you give me your number?
Amahl Van Halsema: Yeah. 310-795-8657.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Definitely give her a call because I’ve worked with a lot of Pilates instructors over the years. I’ve been doing this for 15 years plus and she is absolutely one of the best instructors I have worked with. She’s fantastic and she can definitely help you with any kind of physical ailments like sclerosis, scoliosis, stenosis or any kind of other physical health condition can definitely be improved.
Amahl Van Halsema: Yes. That number is 310-795-8657. Thank you so much for listening.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, great. It was great having you on the show. It was really interesting.
Amahl Van Halsema: Thank you, Wendy. Yeah.
Wendy Myers: So everyone, don’t forget. Next week, I’ll interview the brilliant Dr. Lawrence Wilson from Drlwilson.com.
Amahl Van Halsema: I can’t wait.
Wendy Myers: About the causes of brain fog , my problem, and fatigue and how to relieve these huge problems in our society. So if you would all suffer from fatigue or brain fog which I know that you do, definitely tune in to next week’s show. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening.
Amahl Van Halsema: Bye.
