Back in 2019, I was in chronic pain.
Like, a 6, 7, or 8 out of 10, every day.
I didnโt know it at the time, but I had not recovered optimally from an abdominal surgery in 2014 to remove this fibroid.
And I contend that my employers could have set me up for longevity and did not.
I had postural distortions and muscular hypertonicity. My muscles and connective tissues were not working optimally, they felt tense.
I lacked the range of motion I once had.
I had lots of hypersensitive, trigger point spots in my muscles.
I went to a pancake breakfast at a local firehouse when I was traveling nomadically around the US. I remember needing to leave early because standing around chatting caused so much pain, it brought me to tears.
The pain led to choosing Portland, Oregon as a home base.
When I found a loft with 21-foot ceilings and moved in to the Southeast neighborhood in 2019, I was sat right next door to ReForm Pilates and Movement. I knew I finally had to commit to pilates.
But I didnโt know what Gyrotonic was and that Gyrokinesis was going to win my heart first.
I worked one on one with an instructor each week on both pilates and also Gyrotonic equipment, as seen here:
Taking private lessons gave me access to unlimited group classes.
I wanted out of this pain and I was a freelancer, so I went to as many classes as I could.
One late morning, I found myself the only student at a class called ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ยฎ.
The teacher invited me to get a stool and a mat and set it up like her.
I was sat a few feet in front of her and she asked me to feel for my sit bones, the two places where your pelvis meets the chair, deep in each glute. Then she asked me to inhale and tip my head and body forward a few inches as I exhaled.
We rocked back and forth. Slowly. And breathed.
Then we switched to swaying left to right.
I thought, โOh, no!โ
โIโm in chair aerobics!โ
โIโm going to have to do this for an hour without laughing at this woman!โ
This woman who was perhaps a little older than me, with a far more mobile body than mine.
I refocused and kept copying her moves.
It slowly got more complex.
My deltoids were burning by 10 minutes in.
By 20 minutes in, Iโd decided I would get certified in this (mostly) seated, moving yoga.
Now I practice ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ยฎ all the time.
At the end of May, I completed my certification process with my three day โFinal Certificate Review.โ
A process that started with six days of โPre-trainingโ in September 2020.
Followed by eleven days of โFoundations trainingโ in the summer of 2021.
And three more days in February 2022 for an โApprentice Review.โ
I had to log at least 30 hours of teaching. I went on NextDoor and offered intro classes to my neighbors for free. Iโve taught my friends.
Iโve spent over $4,000 on the courses listed above to learn this movement method.
And Iโve invested a lot more in time.
Why would I do such a thing?
Because, even after having done a 28 day yoga certification, my body responded to ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ยฎ more.
And because I believe in developing autonomy when it comes to movement.
Needing an instructor leaves me in a weakened position. I want to be strong. I want to be robust until Iโm 100.
There are a lot of brand and trademark lessons to be learned from the pocket universes of pilates and yoga.
The Gyrotonic company has reacted to the loss of control those systems have experienced with strict authoritarian control of their marks.
Juliu Horvath is the living, octogenarian creator and founder of the method.
He is Hungarian by descent, born in Romania.
He discovered ballet and his life journey brought him to the US, performing in New York, becoming a company member of the Houston ballet.
He suffered a devastating injury to his Achillesโ tendon and spent six months in solitude on St. Thomas, starting to invent his method.
The method differs from everything else I have tried because the entire system emanates from the range of motion of the 24 vertebrae that make up our spines.
Our spines want to arch, curl, side arch, spiral, and undulate. Every damn day.
Theyโre demanding, spines are.
The movements also stimulate the organs.
To the degree that PERHAPS I WOULD NEVER HAVE DEVELOPED A FIBROID IF WE DID A FEW MINUTES OF THESE MOVES AT THE END OF EVERY MEETING.
Juliu named his company Gyrotonic.
It is similar to pilates in that they are also tying to sell you 1:1 appointments on their bespoke machines where the movements have added resistance.
Also similar to pilates, there are exercises that can be done without a multi-thousand dollar machine. Pilates calls theirs โmat class;" Gyrotonic calls theirs ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ยฎ.
I even signed a form saying I would write it that way in any public forum!
WHEN NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT IS.
NO ONE IS SEEKING IT OUT.
Yes, there is some anger I have not yet processed.
I also found the certification process made me feel like Alex, the welder/dancer in Flashdance, going into the conservatory, requesting an application while all the dancers were looking down their noses.
Not that Gyrotonic people arenโt nice.
They just mostly come from dancing backgrounds.
People drawn to dance, gymnastics, and yoga at a professional level tend to have hypermobile muscles. Their bones tend not to compress before their elbows and knees extend to beyond 180 degrees.
They also think in eight counts, have dope proprioception and can memorize choreography quickly.
So it is not easy to do ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ยฎ if you are not a dancer.
But I did have massage school on my side making me more mobile before I started the training. I learned anatomy and the ability to slow way down.
And I do have my own dope proprioception skills.
You can check out my journey and what the movements are like in this video:
I hope you will try ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ยฎ. And if youโre in the Bay Area, letโs Gyro together.