It sounds like some arcane mechanical device you'd need years of training and a state certificate just to install. But, according to Capitol Hill-based fitness trainer Michele McCauley, the Gyrotonic Expansion System is actually an exercise program that combines the fluidity and integrated movement of ballet with the toning and core support one finds in Pilates.
McCauley, who runs Body Fitness out of the Oddfellows Building on East Pine Street, said the gyrotonic system has a broad range of applications for folks of all ages - from people wanting a basic exercise regiment, to golfers looking to improve their game, to individuals hoping to find long-term relief from physical injuries like a slipped disk.
"It has applications both in fitness and in therapy," says McCauley, who has been a certified Gyrotonic trainer since 2000. Because she works exclusively in a one-on-one setting, McCauley says she "can cater it to what people want," adding that she has seen everything from dancers wanting to "perfect their pirouette" to "some people who want the exercise but they also need something that's not going to tweak their back."
The Gyrotonic Expansion System was developed by Juliu Horvath, a professional dancer whose ballet career was ended by a debilitating injury. According to McCauley, Horvath's path to recovery led him first to yoga and then to creating a new exercise technique that utilizes the grace and good body mechanics of ballet.
"Yes, it develops muscle tone and flexibility, but it really works with how you move," McCauley explains. Because of its foundations in dance and yoga, the technique is very rhythmic, with a focus on coordinating breathing and energy flow in a way that integrates the person's whole body.
McCauley said because of this the benefits can be very similar to those of yoga or acupuncture, extending to such things as emotional health and organ function. She says people who practice the technique can reach meditative states.
Despite some similarities, "it is not Pilates," McCauley insists when describing how the gyrotonic system works. "It's light years beyond Pilates," which, she added, "does not incorporate the energetic component." She said her technique "does develop the core support, which is why Pilates is so good for you. This has that element in it, but it goes about it in a different way. It's more fluid, and it feels better when you're done."
McCauley, who earned an academic degree at Bryn Mawr College and studied dance at Cornish, first discovered the Gyrotonic technique when she signed up for a class in 1996. "On the first session, I was hooked," she says. "My body felt better. It felt easier to move. It just felt better in the joints. I felt like I had more power, more facility, more ease." What really hooked her, she adds, is that during a dance class the next day she felt the same sense of well-being.
McCauley said she believes these positive results derive in large part from the system's focus on what she calls good body mechanics. These are not the just the more linear mechanics as understood by doctors, she says; because it was developed by a dancer, there's a kind of awareness of physicality that is more fluid and holistic. "While it's consistent with the mechanics that you might see with a physical therapist, it's more intuitive," she explains.
Because of this, McCauley said she'd put Gyrotonics in the category of alternative medicine rather than traditional allopathic - meaning the system is guided by an idea of optimal health rather than pathology.
As an instructor, McCauley says she is very engaged and tuned in to a student at all times. Beginning trainees are introduced to a set of exercises she uses to get them started, and which also give her an idea of specific areas they might need to focus on in the long term. She uses a single piece of equipment, a bench and tower rigged with cables and pulleys.
"There's a fairly standard starting place," she says, which involves a battery of exercises designed to strengthen core support. "As I'm doing this, I'm also familiarizing them with their own developing body awareness, and trying to open up certain places and release tension."
Another benefit of the system, McCauley says, is that just about anyone can do it. "It's very accessible work," she stresses. "There are people that don't stretch like yoga. They don't just fold in half like Gumby, and yoga is painful for them. This is much more user friendly."
Certainly, more and more people are finding the Gyrotonic program an accessible and effective way of staying fit. Madonna scrapped her Pilates routines for it, McCauley points out in her press release, adding that "at 48, the pop diva has a body that most 20-year-olds envy."
McCauley says when she first walked into a Gyrotonic studio some 10 years ago, "there were five places in the entire world you could do this." Now there are at least a dozen that she knows of just in the greater Seattle area, and the last time she looked "there were over a hundred in the United States."
The system itself is open-ended, McCauley says, meaning that, like the game of chess, it's easy to learn but impossible to master. She likes that. "It's a body of work and a body of knowledge that you're always exploring," she says. "One of the really cool things about it is there's always something more to get."
Body Symphony is located above the Century Ballroom in the Oddfellows Building at 915 E. Pine St. Certified Gyrotonic Expansion System trainer Michele McCauley can be reached at 725-7331 or by e-mail at michele@BodySymphony.net
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