Places and peopleWhere to train in Zürich
Every place listed below was visited in person by Patrice Gorin for the Agile Body & Mind Guide. No paid placement, no rankings.
Raphael Brand — instructor in Zürich, Switzerland
Structural bodywork and movement coaching as one practice
I first met Raphael in 2005, during a Gyrotonic apprenticeship at Muladhara — before he was a Master Trainer. Twenty-one years on I still return to the same studio, the same hands. What he built there isn't a menu of treatments; it's one composed practice — structural bodywork (Rolfing), movement equipment (Gyrotonic, Garuda, Pilates), high-tech cardio and strength, and the LPG Huber rotating-plateau work — held together by a single quality of attention. Every session starts from where the body is today, not where it was last time, and the cue is never generic: it's the one sequencing correction that makes a habitual movement come alive again. The deeper work is the readiness he builds — so the body goes and finds the breakthrough on its own.
What Raphael Brand works on: Rolfing / Structural Integration; Structural bodywork; Running coaching; Personal training; Gyrotonic.
Noted in session at Raphael Brand: Hip-led blocked the progression, ribs-led opened a new pathway; Standing, the arched back fakes the range; Side-lying, and the lower back stops faking the stretch.
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Priska Lüthi — instructor in Zürich, Switzerland
Movement that's never only about the surface
I go back to Priska every other year, and it's still the most precise movement work I know — not because it is complex, but because of how completely she prepares the ground. She came to movement as a dancer, with a BA in dance theatre from London's Laban Centre, and never stopped gathering languages for it: Gyrotonic first, then Garuda, Yamuna Body Rolling, Aerial Yoga and Aerial Slow Motion, restorative touch and sound baths, all grounded in Traditional Chinese Medicine. What stays with me isn't the range; it's that none of it hardens into a system. She co-founded STORM and teaches at Muladhara from her own sense of movement rather than any technique's grid — endlessly curious, always in her own practice, working in German and English, and (as her studios put it) sensitive, humorous and profound. Her precision is quieter than it is technical: she builds the conditions — props, sequence, positions, her own placement — so the sensation you need has nowhere else to go. And she leaves you treating your body as something precious: not a machine for performance, but something that carries its knowledge in layers, to be met with humor, grace, and respect.
It's fitting that Priska wears an ink-glyph instead of a headshot: she trained where movement was first written down — London's Laban Centre — and our logograms are a pocket-Labanotation, each method boiled down to a few strokes so practices read as one language, not rival logos. Her dot even sits at a bearing from London, where she first learned to read movement.
What Priska Lüthi works on: Gyrotonic; Garuda; Yamuna Body Rolling; Aerial Yoga.
Noted in session at Priska Lüthi: Stillness, not flexibility, frees the legs; Ribs open, not clamped, not flared; The legs close the hips, unseen; Push the ball; the hips draw in; Rotate the arm; the corset crawls awake.
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Muladhara & Storm — studio in Zürich, Switzerland
Restore movement options — then test them under load
Muladhara & STORM share one Zürich address and two deliberately paired ecosystems: a boutique movement studio (Gyrotonic, Garuda, Pilates, Rolfing, HUBER, bodywork) and a calm strength + conditioning space (STORM: Technogym, personal training, running coaching). The proposition is a loop that's unusually explicit: posture + pattern first, then force + endurance — so conditioning reinforces your movement work instead of undoing it. Cardio with form means exactly that: treadmill work and strength training coached under movement technique constraints — the alignment and patterns built in Gyrotonic, Garuda, and Pilates carry over into STORM, rather than being abandoned when the heart rate rises. One of the rare studios in Switzerland where the two spaces are not adjacent by coincidence but designed to be used together.
What Muladhara & Storm works on: Gyrotonic; Garuda; Pilates; Rolfing; Strength & conditioning; Personal training.
Noted in session at Muladhara & Storm: Treadmill as a form-reset environment; Both legs drive — the V, not the limp; Spiral from the hip, not the arch; Adductors coming online again; Geek and dancer paths converge on the same deep muscle; Breath finally lands — the long detour.
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