Strandhälsan and Pilates

After a couple of months back in Sweden it was time to meet my former colleges in Qatar. Kristian and Maria Vikström live in Halmstad, but Kristian works at Strandhälsan in Falkenberg, owned partially by Lotta Peltoarvo - our administrative boss in Qatar. What a lovely reunion it was.

Since we live and breath our work, I just had to transform it into a learning visit as well. Strandhälsan isn't like any other rehab clinic. They work hard to get the patients active to make the rehab more efficient, and create a natural way for the patients to move forward from healthcare to wellness, in order to retain the patients health, wellbeing, function and prevent future injury and illness.
There are training groups to fit people at all levels. The oldest participant is well over 90 years! It was a very inspiring and rewarding visit. 

However, there was a specific angle with this visit: Lotta told me earlier how they work with a medical pilates that they are very happy with och helps a lot of patients. Pilates is something I've been quite curious of and it's been on my learning-list for some time. So I just had to take this opportunity to try it and learn some about it. One of their physiotherapists, Jenny, got educated in this in Australia, and works a lot with the pilates as rehab. It fits everyone who needs to train their stability in different joints. With the pilates machines (there are several of them: Called Reformer, Trapeze table and Wunda chair amongst others) you get functional full body exercise and at the same time proper stability training. My body felt great doing these exercises. The machine we used was the Reformer.

Jenny started off doing some tests based on my flaws, finding my weaknesses and the problems they lead to at times. Based on that we started off doing som core-stability exercises on the mat to check if it's the right orientation. After that test again, if positive result we continue the same way, and it was the right kind of exercises. There after we started trying exercises on the Reformer. In approximately one hour we'd spoken about my body's ailments, we did the tests och tried which kind of exercises I'll respond positively to, trained the core, my groin, a strain in my Hamstring and a weakness in my shoulder. Not bad at all. We did some extra stuff so I could try on some different exercises as well. 

I'm definitely interested in learning more about this, and in the future invest more in pilates now that I've felt how effective the training is. Maybe Jenny can agree to an interview as well for a deeper description of this form om training. I'll definitely try to persuade her... :)


Stay healthy!

Acro-Yoga, a newer type of yoga for me.

Acro-yoga: What is that? I had no idea until I was actually standing in the studio and was about to start. OK, so I had an e-mail with a link I could check out, I just never got to it. So, at 8.15 one Monday evening, my friend Rebecca and I found our selves standing in the rehearsal area on Ystadsgatan 53C in Malmö feeling and looking slightly perplexed.

I was a bit surprised to see people working in couples and lifting each other in different ways. One of the leaders of this study circle, Ali, helped us getting started and put us to work on the foundations: to be Base and Flyer. 

For starters, we needed to learn to lift good as a Base, and extend well as a Flyer. Rebecca has some background from yoga (even if the doesn't train as often as she'd like) and I've hardly been in a yoga position these last three years. But we managed to practice anyway. It's certainly an advantage to have a good physical foundation, but don't be discouraged by the name. You don't need to have yoga-mobility to try this out.

During three practices Rebecka and I trained on the classic lift of Bird and transitioning into the Throne. We decided during the third practice to film ourselves while trying this sequence without help and instructions. This shows that you can achieve a lot in a few training session and inspires you to continue with acro-yoga.

So, training or play? To me, it's both! If training isn't fun, it just won't capture me. To summarise; it's fun, but also very good training for the core, the stability and body awareness. There are risks of course, you can't ignore that. Therefor I recommend that you only try this if you're amongst people who have experience of this and somebody who can spot you, and enough space around you! It's also handy to have a first aid kit. And I have to type out the warning; Don't try this at home! ;) 

Best regards,

Shirin