The GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM® at Pilates Core Training in Pensacola uses the Ultima® XS to stretch and strengthen muscles while stimulating the connective tissue in and around the joints, with circular and spiraling movement synchronized to the breath. Pricing matches Pilates private sessions and classes.
About Juliu Horvath, creator of GYROTONIC®
The GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM® was created by Romanian-born Hungarian Juliu Horvath. Juliu Horvath was born in 1942 in Temesvar, Romania. His love for movement was apparent from the time he was a small child. During his youth he excelled at swimming, gymnastics and rowing. He began to study dance when he was 19, and by the time he was 21, was a principal dancer for the Romanian National Ballet Company. While on tour in Italy in 1970, he defected from Romania. He subsequently lived in a refugee camp in Italy for six months. After receiving political asylum in the United States, he moved to New York City.
During the 1970s, Juliu danced with the New York City Opera and was a guest artist at Radio City Music Hall. He also danced for a special tour company with international stars such as Margot Fonteyn, Jacques d’Amboise and Melissa Hayden. Eventually he secured a position as principal dancer with the Houston Ballet. While with the Houston Ballet, Juliu ruptured his Achilles tendon, bringing his dancing career to a sudden halt. After this injury, Juliu moved back to New York City for a short time, where he began a regular yoga practice. As he got deeper into his movement and meditation practices, he began having profound energetic experiences. In an effort to learn more about these experiences, he moved to the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in 1977. There he built a small, one-room hut in the mountains and spent the next six years studying yoga and meditation.
Juliu returned to New York City after his stay on St. Thomas, and in the early 1980s he began teaching a new movement system that was based on what he had learned there. He called this system “Yoga for Dancers”. As demand for his classes grew, and the diversity of his clientele increased, Juliu refined Yoga for Dancers, creating a class format that almost any person could perform, regardless of age or state of health. He named this refined version the GYROKINESIS® Method. At White Cloud Studio he began to develop the GYROTONIC® Method and his world-renowned GYROTONIC® equipment. The GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM® has now grown to encompass over 7,800 trainers in 52 countries. (Courtesy of gyrotonic.com)
How GYROTONIC® works
GYROTONIC® methodology allows users to stretch and strengthen muscles, while simultaneously stimulating and strengthening connective tissues in and around the joints of the body. These exercises are synchronized with corresponding breathing patterns, thus enhancing aerobic and cardiovascular stimulation and promoting neuro-muscular rejuvenation.
GYROTONIC® exercises offer complete freedom of movement. Exercises are performed on the new Ultima® XS, which is a combination unit of the Pulley Tower and GYROTONER®. The system is fully adjustable and can meet the needs of many people with varying body types and levels of strength including those in wheelchairs. Even and constant resistance in the handle unit and pulleys completely eliminates the jarring which takes place at the beginning and end of exercises performed on conventional exercise equipment, where typically many injuries occur. The circular, spiraling and undulating movements which characterize the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM® help to increase the functional capacity of the spine, contributing to a spherical and three-dimensional awareness, resulting in increased equilibrium.
Prices are the same as for Pilates private sessions and classes.
