Core Essentials: The Hidden Pilates “Gem”

September 30, 2010
Tracey L. Chavous
Health and Wellness Writer
Healthy Living

Just about every article, website or TV show will agree that exercise is about more than that number on the scale.  Without a doubt, as America’s waistline has more than doubled over the last two decades, more and more people have high stress lives, chronic fatigue and depression.  The cure is not always in a bottle, in a powder or in an overly processed frozen meal.  More often than not, it’s in you!  Physical activity — whether sweat drips down your forehead or not — is a sure fire way to boost your overall quality of life.  It’s an added bonus to know that physical activity is the best solution for the top three illnesses that plague most Americans today: heart disease, high blood pressure/cholesterol and diabetes. In a CBS Evening News article, writer Melissa McNamara wrote that Americans spend about $35 billion a year on weight-loss products. That’s billions of dollars.  Yet, walking costs nothing, nor does dancing to your favorite tunes in the privacy of your own home.  Imagine taking some of the money you have already dished out or are about to dish out for a magic pill or frozen portion controlled meal and investing in some “you” time.

You may not be the outdoors type.  You may loathe gyms and health clubs and feel like you don’t fit in anywhere exercising looms.  For the busy professional, the stay-at home mother, the graduate student or the person who wants to do better but doesn’t know how, consider basic exercising, such as pilates.  Pilates is a system of several hundred different controlled exercises that stimulate the mind and condition the entire body.  It incorporates a balanced marriage of strength and flexibility training that over time will increase posture, reduce stress as well as create long, lean muscles without the muscle “bulk up” look.   Core Essentials Studio pilates instructor, Alex McCrary shared that “pilates is accessible because it’s portable and fits into your life because you can do it in 10 minutes or 60 minutes.” The owner and director (Marla Rice) of Core Essentials Studio in Bethesda, Maryland has taken exercise off the beaten path into an intimate oasis called Core Essentials Studio, located in the Marriott’s World Headquarters building in Bethesda.  Rice was a busy working mother a few years ago when she realized that she was about to send her last young adult child off to college.  She envisioned doing something uniquely catered to herself and her interests. She added, “I decided to really do something for me.”

[cincopa 10778043]

Rice’s husband was taking pilates classes and encouraged her to try it out.  After getting acquainted with the system of controlled exercises, friends suggested that certification was the best next step in order to teach others.  Out of that process, Core Essentials was born.  The studio offers pilates, acupuncture, reiki and massage.

Everything about pilates is about quality, as opposed to quantity, which contributes to a feeling of aliveness, as opposed to exhaustion afterwards.  Core Essentials provides a calendar of pilates classes where visitors can also consider private lessons or sign up for a small group class.  In this way, they ensure individual attention while using the correct form of the exercises.  According to Core Essentials, the following are benefits to incorporating pilates into physical activity routines:

• Improves strength, flexibility and balance

• Tones and builds lean muscles without bulk

• Challenges deep abdominal muscles to support the core

• Engages the mind and enhance body awareness

• Reduces stress, releases tension, boosts energy through deep stretching

• Restores postural alignment

• Increases joint range of motion

• Improves circulation

• Relieves back pain and joint stress

• Enhances mobility, agility and stamina

• Compliments sports training

• Develops functional fitness for daily life activity

• Improves the way your body looks and feels

Core Essentials offers special packages for new and existing clients as well as a free 30 minute trial class for a first time visitor with an appointment.  The other features of the studio include “Body Energies” which include Body Talk, acupuncture and Reiki. “Body Talk is a tool that was developed in the mid 1990s as a means to outwardly communicate with the body mind to affect good health. By combining several techniques from different modalities:  Western anatomy and physiology, Chinese medicine, Applied Kinesiology, Bioenergetics and Yoga, a practitioner can tap into a person’s native voice, discover the communication pathways that have been disrupted by the various stresses both physical and emotional that have blocked the natural flow of optimum health in the body mind and establish the body’s priority for healing.  Body Talk is a safe, non-invasive modality with no side effects. Because the Body Talk practitioner directly communicates with the person’s body, the body itself directs the order and areas to be dealt with.”

Acupuncture incorporates the use of metallic needles which are placed into specific points in the body for attaining and maintaining optimum health.  Acupuncture has been traditionally used to aid in unblocking energies that disrupt the body’s life force energy (“qi”) in order to promote the body’s innate ability to heal itself naturally.  There is a highly trained professional at the studio to work personally with any client that walks through the door with an appointment.

Reiki is a safe, natural, hands-on, non-manipulative energy therapy that promotes healing on all levels of the body mind. Reiki means “universal energy.” Healing begins from within restoring the body to its previous physical, mental, and emotional state of well-being.  This rejuvenating service is also provided by a trained professional by appointment only.  Core Essentials is a diamond in the rough in that it is small enough to provide very personalized services so that you can let go and learn to breathe well and learn how to take time for yourself.  Marla concludes that “taking time for yourself is what it’s all about.” Her clientele has grown through word of mouth.  Her goal is to maintain that personalized service and know her clients as real people with real needs. She insists that she wants Core Essentials “to be a small intimate studio and know everybody’s name as they walk in the door.”

Core Essentials

10400 Fernwood Road,  LL131

Bethesda, MD 20817

301-380-7777

info@coreessentialsstudio.com