The sternum block again: met it with the breath the way I unroll my spine on the mat, and stayed with it.
Draft — awaiting review
The movement practice that taught the body to spiral — twenty years in the making
Gyrotonic. I came to it in Paris in 2003, before I understood what it was asking of me. The movements were there — arch and curl, lobster, frog, thread the needle — but my body wasn't ready to receive them. What I felt immediately was something else: after the leg work, an impression of having an extra layer of cushioning in the hips. Walking out of that first session felt incredible. The desire to move the spine, to undulate — it was there from the start. But the body was not ready. I trained, certified in Gyrokinesis and the Gyrotonic Foundation, and kept returning over the years in Zurich, Rome, New York, Los Angeles. The practice was patient. I took longer. What it taught me — arch and curl, breath-led rhythm, spiral lunges, the perinee — did not arrive as it was taught. It arrived later, through other doors: Foundation Training opened the posterior chain enough for the spirals to land. Swimming showed me what undulation felt like in resistance. Rolfing work in 2005 planted a seed about breathing with the testicles that germinated for twenty years. In April 2026, during a single swimming session, the full undulation finally arrived — thorax and pelvis moving separately, not commanded as one spine. That movement had been building since 2003. Juliu Horvath says: take care of the body like a kitchen — open the windows, fix what needs fixing, clean before you cook. This practice took that long to clean the kitchen.
Gyrotonic Aix-en-Provence, Kings Cross Studios, Muladhara & Storm, Union Square Gyrotonic
What I had to unlearn
Expecting immediate outcomes without putting in the real work
Training with too much willpower and missing the new sensations
Refusing certain disciplines outright, or trying them only to confirm they wouldn't work
Being busy solving the wrong problem because the real job to be done wasn't identified yet
The deeper trap: comparing practices — NLP, meditation, psychoanalysis — looking for the right one. The comparisons were a way of avoiding the actual work: accepting my current physical and mental state during the session itself. Gyrotonic asked me to stop solving and start feeling.
Signs it was working
A streaming or recorded class would suddenly generate new understanding — one or more cues clicking for the first time
Each session produced some form of learning or breakthrough, however small
New mind-body connections began generating their own ideas and cues on how to improve
Watching a video or hearing an instruction and understanding it for the first time, even after years of hearing the same words
These signals appeared across practices — not only on the Gyrotonic equipment. The spiralling breakthrough happened in meditation. The undulation arrived in the pool. The practice had become portable.
Personal journey thread
I came to Gyrotonic in Paris in 2003 at a studio near Pigalle in Paris, after dropping out of a Romana Krizanowska Classical Pilates training. It was love at first sight. I continued in Paris, began pre-training in Zurich in 2005, and completed the full education arc:
Pre-training, Zurich 2005 Foundation, Bern 2005/2006 Apprenticeship, Zurich & London 2006–2008 Final Certification, Germany 2008 Gyrokinesis Pre-training, London 2010 Scoliosis Course, London 2012
Level 1 Gyrotonic Certified in 2008, for my fortieth birthday. After certification, I trained at a studio in Golborne, West London and did scoliosis continued education at King's Cross Studio. In 2021, after Covid, I returned to cardiovascular Gyrokinesis work — and it was absolutely amazing.
Lead instructor signal
Raphael Brand is the instructor whose teaching most shaped my understanding of Gyrotonic — not because his sessions were the most frequent, but because he gave me in 2005 an instruction that took twenty years to land in my body, and when it did, I knew exactly where it came from.
The sternum block again: met it with the breath the way I unroll my spine on the mat, and stayed with it.