Strengthen Your Body, Calm Your Mind

Kimberly completed her intermediate 200 hr training in New York City in 2007. This inspired her to literally quit her day job and move to Conoor, India where she did her advanced 500hr training in traditional Hatha Yoga therapy and meditation.

The yoga she teaches to this day is deeply rooted in the traditional practices as given to her by her teacher Suma Kunthar who studied directly with B.K.S. Iyengar. Over the years Kimberly has taught vinyasa, hatha and yin yoga.

On a physical level, yoga improves muscle flexibility and can soften “frozen” connective tissues, like the stiff feeling around an old shoulder injury. Yoga also reconnects the mind with the body through breath and this has the greatest effect on stress levels, well being, digestion, hormone balance and many other concerns that may not at first seem connected to physical movement.

Kimberly is a certified E-RYT® 500 yoga instructor and an TUV ISÖ 9001 European Union International yoga therapist.

Kimberly discovered Pilates while teaching vinyasa yoga in New York City in 2009. She noticed that Pilates targets the deeper muscles of the core in a way that yoga can not. She then studied under Jennifer Kries, one of the world’s foremost and well known Pilates instructors in her New York City studio.

Pilates was invented for dancers and athletes to help heal and prevent the injuries they gather from training too hard for too long. Pilates movements are extremely gentle on the joints but focus on the strength of the deeper muscle groups that protect and strengthen the core, the lower back and vulnerable joints of the spine, shoulders, hips and knees.

Kimberly has taught mat pilates in both group and individual settings in New York City and Miami Beach, Florida since her training in 2009.

Kimberly discovered calisthenics as a way to augment her own personal practice. Calisthenics is body weight only and nearly zero impact on the joints, while being very effective at strengthening the entire body through movement patterns that optimize both strength and range of motion.

Calisthenics focuses on strengthening all of the muscle groups, both major and minor, with a particular emphasis on the muscles that maintain our range of motion and coordination. Flexibility is how far a muscle is willing to lengthen, as in: can you touch your toes? Range of motion on the other hand, is when a muscle is at once lengthened and also engaged, as in: how high up can you kick your leg out straight while standing? Once she began adding calisthenics to her students’ practices, they noticed old injuries heal and overall strength increase faster than ever before.

Calisthenics on its own is very intense and is not often accessible to those without a substantial history of movement. When blended properly with yoga and pilates in the Empowerful Body method, the body learns to heal and strengthen through the unique challenge that calisthenics provides.

Meditation and breathwork were fundamental to Kimberly’s yoga therapy training in India. She personally discovered how regular meditation and breathwork can have a profound effect on managing stress and energy levels, but also noted that many traditional methods would work best for the western student if adapted here and there.
When she tailored the traditional methods for her students, she saw them also experience profound and long lasting changes in their levels of stress, mental clarity and general life outlook.

Kimberly believes that ten minutes of the right meditation and breathing technique can bring you back to center and give you the skills to navigate the challenges in life better than any pill or supplement. The key is finding the technique that works best for you. Depending on the student’s desires and needs, meditation and/or breath work are incorporated into each practice.

Since Kimberly believes that meditation is a state of being more than some “thing” you do, she teaches her students to bring a meditative mindset to those challenging moments in the practice to help the mind work with the body, not against it, to breathe in a way that keeps the thoughts centered and the muscles fueled.

Think of that moment when the muscles are shaking, the breath is heavy and we almost want to give up. When we integrate meditation into the practice, instead of saying “this is too much, I give up”, we hear, “we can do this, this means we are getting rid of the old and becoming stronger.”