The Mind/Body connection with Kimi Broadbent

“The body and the mind are one.

When you identify with yourself as an athlete, and physical strength is your strength, and then you take a hit there (with an injury), you learn a lot about yourself and it can be really mentally debilitating. You can feel really worthless and lost, but it you can make it through it, and learn the lessons that it gives you, it can give you an incredible amount of insight and as a Pilates instructor, insight into helping your clients.

Having an injury makes you appreciate the gold in the basic Pilates exercises.

As Pilates instructors, our battle with clients that may be coming from a personal training world, it that we need to teach our clients that Pilates is not linear. We are constantly trying to go ‘is this beginner exercise, is this an intermediate exercise, is this an advanced exercise.’ It is too hard to do that because it changes from body to body, but it also changes from day to day depending on what the person is going through and how they are feeling. I guess that’s what that journey is about.

When we’re stressed, there is a hormonal effect. You’ll have a cascade of hormonal drugs pumping through your body, so your cortisol levels go up. As your cortisol levels increase, that does affect your tissue integrity. This is what happens, and what I believe contributed to my injuries.

We do hold emotions in our body.

My advice for Pilates instructors who are just starting out, if I can inspire you to be gentle, to identify that there is more to movement than just movement – it goes deeper, to create space for your clients, to be a little bit intuitive, to feel like an impostor but do what intuition tells you to do anyway. You are about to go on an amazing journey; it is more than just exercise. Pilates is so much more than just exercise and I think everybody should do it.”