—This class is for those looking to learn Pilates Reformer basics with fun sequences and safety measures that build confidence and enjoyment. Level: Beginner
—A total body workout focusing on core strength. Level: Mixed
*beginners must have taken at least 20 private equipment classes and/or 10 group Reformer classes to join Mixed Level classes.
Mary Power is a master trainer with over 30 years of experience in Pilates, Gyrotonic, TRX, Feldenkrais, yoga, qi gong, martial arts and dance. Mary is artistic director and producer of MPowerDance Project, author of "Visionary Dance Oracle, A Book of the Soul," and a member of the San Francisco non-profit dance community through Independent Arts and Media.
Mary holds an M.A. in Kinesiology. As Senior Dance Medicine Specialist at St. Francis Sports Medicine Clinic, Mary helped clients return to performance. At UCSF Cancer Resource Center, she taught weekly mindbody fitness classes for all Cancer types. Mary specializes in orthopedic conditioning/re-education programs for elite movement performers. She enjoys qi gong, fresh air and nature, while maintaining awareness to joy and suffering.
Mind-body training (Pilates, Gyrotonic, Yoga, TRX, Martial Arts, Dance, free running/trail running, Butohnics) improves core strength, enhances trunk stability, shock absorption by specific exercises and through specific agility movement itself.
The anatomical focus on the core trains deep transverse abdominal tone, pelvic floor, multifidi, psoas balance, quadratus balance, anterior to posterior, lateral and oblique support systems. Postural and agility drills, provide increased proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) through integrated core control. This PNF feature allows more immediate redirect of centrifugal forces closer to the bone giving the performer opportunity to develop a mind body connection to translate resistance of gravity, weight bearing, and/or other weights with correct dispersion through joints and limbs, the whole body, with its assimilation of control during acceleration and deceleration, additionally improving proprioception.
Learning how to apply mind-body technique with movement stems from training core control with awareness to your good alignment, minimizing abnormal biomechanical compressive forces during full range movement. The quality of movement becomes far more important (and more difficult at first) than the sheer repetition of it.
Weight bearing exercises, jumping, crawling, total body weight resistive movement, and to some extent even repetitive resistance motion, are optimized by application of mind-body technique, along with continued training of mind-body technique. In this way, Mind-body training slows degenerative forces which supports rehab process and maintains rehabilitated injury. So you can play longer, dance smarter. Mind-body training can be applied to any type of workout regime, activity or sport.
However, one has to keep moving to keep in good condition. In functional dynamic motor control, your brain efficiently organizes movement coordination to what it can do with the knowledge you've put in. It's not always the best organization without training. In terms of repetition of your sport, or choreography without cross-training or keeping your core in check, your mind-body connection needs to be refreshed proportional to your movement loads. Without it, a survival mechanism kicks in, sometimes a protective guard is turned on. If you're highly skilled active mover, survival is okay only for short term but not longer. After that, awareness turns to low priority and your movement and body will pay. BTW, maintaining the mind-body connection is not just about strong abs.
Training is all about teaching your system to align with the best solutions for your individual biomechanics (joint angles and forces) in coordination for high quality performance. Train your muscles to do what you want, by focusing and eliminating extraneous non-essential tension. You train to redirect appropriate forces through alignment/position, core strength, and flow of respiration. Training reinforces your ability to listen to your own total body response in movement, total body awareness through space.
Moving with awareness and rhythm creates a healthy and responsive relationship with your brain, your body and your environment. You can learn your own limitations and capabilities thereby minimizing unnecessary injury. Basically you give yourself the time and space to be honest on any given day in your dance practice.
Overtime training is no longer what it started out to be. New levels of awareness are enhanced by experience resulting in ease in performance with speed and power matching your ability and movement.
In Pilates, many exercises look so easy. Difficult movements and tasks appear easy to the bystander. Don't be intimidated when a 90lb. waif out lasts you in apparently "easy" exercises. Here's an insider's training tip: if you want to survive your attempts at mind-body training, DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH, literally.
The right-handed way is the right way. His story built a labyrinthine structure for the purpose of herding sheep, one way in and one way out, so as not to overwhelm by choice. One would rule the world. One would eliminate fear and annihilate the lotus flower of hope. Lost and found, and how it happens. "Don't panic, you're halfway there, find the circle."
Not the end, as the beauty hijacker would like it to be.
The irony is in the full circle.
The dance escapes tyranny, always for freedom.
Hope is just another four letter word twisted into a hex, battered by far fetched wishes and violently shredded by man's inhumanity. But worn like night vision, seeing possibilities in the face of probabilities, hope is the will to survive, even a hair of hope to survive. Then even more so, to reach beyond it. To dream again, to reconnect with life again, with friends, and family, and neighbors, and nature within the nourishment of this planet, hope rides on.
Hope is myth, the legend in the mathematics of rhythmic nature itself if you can see fractals everywhere.
What if you were a circle, with spirals moving strong through and around the center of you? Spirals you create, and didn't create, spirals emanating from the lovemaking of earth and sky.
Gravity holding us close to the bone.
Without center hope is lost. Without center, One wallows sightless not knowing the hugeness of its own ego, help is not asked for. Where is the lost and found? Is there a hope there? Hope scattered like bargaining chips, stolen dreams, false hopes, like an unclaimed lazy hope left aside by the willfully blind. For all of that, spot the claim instead for golden light out from where hope lost resides.
The labyrinthe turns into a sexy adventure of possibilities, not just playing to play, but taking the puzzles and riddles toward the mystics, the unchartered is the not alone, with the aid of alone together wisecracking. Spontaneous combustion of the heart and mind—laughter. Laughter, the wild and uncontainable power moving interstitial space and galaxies with awesomeness supersedes One and contains all.
Mpowerdance Project Event November 13, 2022: THIMBLE
"THIMBLE" extracts the essence of MOTHERpeaceMOTHERwar.
(h/t excellent capture by Bart Frescura)
Mpowerdance Project will host a closing reception for our year long (2021–2022) exhibition of MOTHERpeaceMOTHERwar.
Mark your calendar for community gathering on Sunday, November 13 from 4 to 6 PM at the San Francisco Theosophical Society. To join us for our in person event, we were require proof of fully vaccinated status at the door. For more information email us (mpowerdance.global@gmail.com), or inquire via IG DM.
ARTISTS PRESENTING:
Mary Power, Choreographer and Artistic Director of Mpowerdance Project, will perform a closing dance for MOTHERpeaceMOTHERwar. She will discuss the formation of new dance collective for 2023, working with "Visionary Dance Oracle, A Book of the Soul and the Visionary Dance Oracle Cards.
Sasha Silveanu, Artist and Anthropologist, will present her latest revelations on "My Mother Tapes," sharing inspiration for her current and future works.
Peggy Tahir, Librarian, Poet and Food Alchemist, will perform her poem "24 Radisms," a work formed out from breast Cancer treatment and healing.
Richard Power, Global Security Expert, Author and Yoga Teacher, will discuss climate action and spiritual archeology with his choice reading from any number of books he's authored.
2022 Mpowerdance is currently teaching small outdoor adult classes in Pilates/Gyrotonic/yoga/martial arts core strengthening and movement for choreography (using the Visionary Dance Oracle book and cards.) Classes move around San Francisco. If you're interested in attending, follow us on instagram mpowerdance.project and send us a DM with your experience level and performance interest. Thank you!
Photo: Excerpt of Installation art MOTHERpeaceMOTHERwar including Sasha Silveanu's Mother Tapes from our November 2021 Survivors Dreaming event. Currently, 2022, showing at San Francisco Theosophical Society, as seen here with dancer Emily Shurr.
Time is money, only the 1% richer by the trillions.
Moneyed time, profits off of a life force from underpaid and under-recognized labor, a disposable people, later to be targeted as lazy when the trillions never
Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.
Why wouldn't you love the rainbow?
(Addendum: On March 24, 2022 during the historical confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson, one U.S. Senator Cory Booker opened the portals of light and joy in his famous speech. Here is an excerpt as it pertains to Starlight.
"Harriet Tubman is one of my heroes, because the more I read about this person, the more—I mean she was viciously beaten. Her whole life, she used to fall into spells. Cracked skull. She faced starvation, chased by dogs. And when she got to freedom what did she do? Did she rest? No, she went back, again and again and again. The sky was full of stars. But she found one that was a harbinger of hope for better days, not just for her and those people that were enslaved but a harbinger of hope for this country. And she never gave up on America. She fought in the—led troops in the Civil War. She was involved in the suffrage movement. And as I came back from my run after being near assaulted by someone on the street, I thought about her and how she looked up. She kept looking up. No matter what they did to her, she never stopped looking up. And that star, it was a harbinger of hope.
Today you’re my star. You are my harbinger of hope. This country is getting better and better and better. And when that final vote happens and you ascend onto the highest court in the land, I’m going to rejoice. And I’m going to tell you right now, the greatest country in the world, the United States of America, will be better because of you.")
The observations were possible thanks to a rare cosmic alignment, meaning that Earendel may be the only individual star from this epoch that we will ever see.
The most distant star ever seen has been captured by the Hubble space telescope in images that appear to give a remarkable glimpse into the ancient universe. The name Earandel means ‘morning star’ in Old English.
(Photograph: Space Telescope Science Institut/NASA, ESA, B. Welch (JHU) and D.)
Mary Power is the artistic director of MPOWERDANCE PROJECT, a San Francisco based performance dance art group since 1992.
She has an extensive background teaching mind-body arts including pilates, gyrotonic, TRX, contemporary dance, martial arts practice, dance art performance and dance production, based in San Francisco, California.
