The Early Years

Clare was born with a natural love and enthusiasm for movement, an innate ability that is, to this day, a source of great joy for her. Perhaps she inherited these genes from her Dad, a great athlete, 77 years old, who can still be found in his self-made home gym training 5 days a week. As a child Clare especially loved gymnastics and exploring the many ways the body could move, tumble and balance. It was a natural progression for her to go on to study Physical Education, combined with Chemistry, at University, a then, 4 year honours degree programme. Clare spent 12 years teaching Physical Education and Chemistry at high school level and enjoyed every minute of it. During this time she honed her teaching skills; skills she no doubt inherited from her Mother who was a teacher for nearly 40 years. One of Clare’s greatest joys as a school teacher was to help kids find something they were gifted at in sports, or movement, so that they never had to label themselves as uncoordinated or un-sporty. So that they could feel good about themselves, a confidence—Clare noticed—that they would then naturally bring into other areas of their lives.

Beefing up

Clare was immediately hooked when she first had a taste for weight training in University. It appealed to those ‘fast twitch muscle fibres’ that drew her to gymnastics. It also appealed to her driven work ethic. Bodybuilding back then was all about getting to the gym 6 days a week. She would get up early for some morning cardio before school. She readily admits to being a “Drill Sargent” to herself. She thought working harder and going for “the burn” was the only choice. It was no surprise then that she found herself getting injured and ill more frequently. At the time she was yet to realise that her over-zealous training had anything to do with it! That was before she was introduced to Pilates.

Reformed

It was at her first Pilates workshop at an Expo in Germany when Clare made a huge realisation regarding her own fitness. She couldn’t wait to jump on the “reformer” (a specialised piece of Pilates equipment) and demonstrate her strength! Boy, was she in for a surprise! Years of heavy lifting had brought her body into a state of extreme imbalance. While she still managed to have great flexibility (thanks to her innate love of stretching borne of her gymnastic days) her body’s “stabiliser system” was dangerously compromised.

What a wakeup call. No wonder she was getting injured and had certain body parts (in her case her legs) which seemed to refuse to respond to training. The 15 years of gymnastics had left her ‘upper body dominant’ and very ‘posterior chain dominant’ (the muscles in the back of the body). Structural balance was not a concept discussed at University, a lesson Clare learned the hard way.

Thus began a 13-year journey of study in Pilates, corrective exercise and strength and conditioning with many of the leading experts in the world. It was while on that journey that she learned what has now become the foundational structure of her own lifestyle and what she bases her work with her clients on.

The Lesson

What Clare wishes to share with the world is the joy of movement and the massive rewards that come from caring and nurturing the body. Her role is to facilitate a new way of relating to the body, a new way of communicating with it. This new way of communication is a two-way street. We talk to our body every time we ask it to perform a task, every time we desire it to look a certain way and every time we judge it. What if this communication process could be a two-way street? What if we were willing to learn the language of the body (Kinaesthetic intelligence and Biofeedback)? What new possibilities would become available to us if we were able to hear what the body itself thinks?

Clare grew up in a paradigm where she learned that being mentally tough and getting her mind to be the dictator of her body would give her the best “result” in terms of athletic performance, health and aesthetics. This certainly worked… up to a point. Yes, she got the gold medals, yes, she got a pretty decent physique, but at what cost?

Like all dictatorships, eventually there was a revolt. Clare’s body revolted through injury, illness and a feeling that it was never truly quite up to scratch. The lessons gained through this process were very painful.

Through her explorations in Pilates, Corrective Exercise, Biofeedback, Nutrition and principles of Eastern medicine (Ayurveda and Chinese medicine) she learned to interpret and receive the awareness her body was so desperately trying to communicate to her during all those years. She learned to listen to the whispers her body was giving her instead of waiting for the screams (pain/illness/injury).

Working with the body is both a science and an art. The piece that was missing for Clare all those years ago was the art of including her body in the equation by listening to the unique intelligence it communicated to her. By learning that language. By working with her body in partnership, not in dictatorship over it.

Today Clare utilises, for both herself and her clients, the Science of Biomechanical assessment, Nutrition and Programme design coupled with the art of listening to and including the wisdom of the body to optimise how the body looks, feels and functions.

It is her joy to facilitate her clients in awakening to this new paradigm, a paradigm whereby the mind is no longer the dictator of the body, a paradigm where the wisdom of the body takes the centre stage.