Contrology is designed to give you suppleness, natural grace and skill that will be unmistakably reflected in the way you walk, play and work. Joseph Pilates
Claire offers one to one and small group classes. Her studio is fully equipped with a range of original spring driven apparatus designed and created by Joseph Pilates. The Contrology Pilates Method practiced in her studio is a completely unique way to practice Pilates. She has taken the original form of exercises designed by Joseph Pilates and adapted his repetoire in accordance with the amazing findings of ‘Thomas W Myres’ Anatomy Trains Lines.
You will find equipment and mat based classes in the studio. All the exercises are based very much on Joseph Pilates original form of pilates with small variations using the most up to date knowledge on the fascial system to ensure everyone gains the absolute best from every pilates session.If our core is contracted and tight, nothing in the body can move with fluidity. Claire will encourage you to find space within your body and connect into all areas. If you can connect into every part of your body every time you do something, you will distribute the load evenly through your body rather than loading into an area of tightness.
If our core is contracted and tight, nothing in the body can move with fluidity. Claire will encourage you to find space within your body and connect into all areas. If you can connect into every part of your body every time you do something, you will distribute the load evenly through your body rather than loading into an area of tightness.
Claire’s form of Pilates is very different from most forms of Pilates. She works in expansion rather than contraction. This way any postural imblances or injuries are allowed to leave the body rather than permanently being held in place by contraction. Claire will never ask you to ‘squeeze your core in’ to gain strength. We all tend to hold a lot of our stress and emotional trauma within our core so if we continue to squeeze it in, we continue to hold onto it. The Contrology Pilates Method addresses this issue by helping to release such stress and emotional trauma
Our body contains fascia - a 3D interconnective tissue (you can find more about fascia on the MFR page). Claire will help you to learn how to feel into your body so you can connect with your fascia and make changes at a much deeper level. This allows the body to become incredibly strong and lean with new efficient movement patterns through conscious connection.
If practiced on a regular basis, you will feel profound effects on your body, reach new fitness levels and ultimately become as passionate about this form of Pilates as Claire is.
Pilates is a uniquely precise and intelligent approach to exercise and body-conditioning, which gives you a leaner, suppler, more toned body and a calmer, more relaxed mind.
It takes its name from Joseph Pilates, a German-born emigré to Britain and then America, who devised it in the early part of the last century.
Popular among dancers, gymnasts and others who knew of it, Pilates has now been discovered by a wider public – from those who want a stronger back or flatter stomach to those with specific injuries or medical problems that Pilates can help; or else, simply those who want to get fit or de-stress.
Pilates lengthens and strengthens the muscles, and improves posture, without stressing the joints or the heart. Indeed, physiotherapists, osteopaths, chiropractors and doctors now recommend Pilates as one of the safest forms of exercise available.
Wherever you learn Pilates, you should make sure that your teacher is properly qualified, since Pilates taught by someone without the right training can do you more harm than good. Yet, many exercise teachers in gyms and elsewhere now include Pilates exercises in their classes, despite themselves never having had any training at all.
Pilates is more dynamic than yoga but less aggressive, sweaty and high-impact than aerobics, jogging or gym-work, which, unlike Pilates, can all place damaging strain on the joints and/or heart.
Whereas most forms of exercise build the body’s stronger muscles, Pilates exercises work as much or more to strengthen the weaker ones too. The result is a properly balanced body, with better joint mobility, a firm musculature and good, natural posture.
Pilates helps you achieve such posture by strengthening the centre of the body so that it supports your lower back, helping you to stand straight and hold your upper body correctly.
Pilates is still popular with dancers, gymnasts and athletes but it is equally suitable for most men and women, from nine to 90, and beyond.
Pilates takes its name from Joseph Pilates, the German-born emigré to Britain and then America, who devised it as a new approach to exercise and body-conditioning in the early decades of the last century.
Joseph Pilates was born near Dusseldorf in 1880. He was a sickly child who determined to make himself strong and healthy. He took up body-building, to the point where by his teens he was getting work as a model for anatomical drawings.
He was perhaps the first influential figure to combine Western and Eastern ideas about health and physical fitness.
He researched and practised every kind of exercise he could, ranging from classical Roman and Greek exercise regimes to body-building and gymnastics, alongside the the Eastern disciplines of yoga, tai chi, martial arts and Zen meditation.
He studied anatomy and animal movements. He sampled every kind of exercise that he could and carefully recorded the results.
In 1912, aged 32, he left Germany for this country, where he became a professional boxer, an expert skier and diver, taught self-defence to Scotland Yard detectives and found work as a circus acrobat.
On the outbreak of World War I, the British interned him as a German enemy alien. He used his time as an internee to start developing a new approach to exercise and body-conditioning – the start of what is known today as Pilates.
During his internment, he also got the chance to work as a nurse. This, in turn, gave him the chance to experiment by attaching springs to hospital beds, so that patients could start toning their muscles even while they were still bed-bound. Such were the origins of the first Pilates machines, which were shaped like a sliding bed and used springs as resistance.
Returning to Germany after World War I, Pilates worked with pioneers of movement technique such as Rudolph Laban, who created the basic system of dance notation still used today.
In 1923, Pilates moved to America, where he opened his first studio in New York, along with Clara, his wife and assistant, whom he had met on the Atlantic crossing.
His new method was an instant hit, particularly among dancers such as Martha Graham and George Balanchine. Other dancers, who found the Pilates method the best way both to recover from injuries and to prevent their recurrence, also became devotees. Gradually, a wider audience got to hear of it.
Pilates called his technique ‘Controlology’ – only later did it become known by his own surname. He conceived it as a mental as well as a physical conditioning in which individuals could work their bodies to their full potential.
In explaining Controlology’s guiding principle, he liked to quote Schiller: ‘lt is the mind itself which builds the body’.
The Pilates method did not return to Britain until 1970, when it was brought back to this country by Alan Herdman, after the latter had been asked by the London School of Contemporary Dance to visit New York and investigate the methods of Joseph Pilates. Herdman established Britain’s first Pilates studio at The Place in London that year.
The best way to start is by sending me an email or giving me a call.
If you like what you hear and want to take things further, I offer a 30 min free trial to enable you to meet me and see how we work in the studio. There is absolutely no pressure as you must feel very happy in the studio to get the most from your practice.
Any comfortable clothing, such as a T-shirt with leggings or tracksuit bottoms, or else shorts and socks please.
‘In ten sessions’, suggested Joseph Pilates himself, ‘you will feel the difference; in 20 you will see the difference; and in 30 you will have a whole new body’.
Most people do start to feel a difference after 10 sessions, getting the sense, for example, that they are walking taller and moving in a looser, suppler way.
The longer they persist, the more they will tend to see and feel the shape of their body slowly change.
A one to one session lasts around an hour and is priced at £30. Equipment classes are £8 and mat classes are £6 per session, these also last about an hour including a relaxation session at the end, with full payment for the term.