From the heart and guts
No words can describe my first encounter at the hospital in Copenhagen, with the young wounded men returning from Afghanistan. Time stood still, as I listened to the soldiers telling their personal stories and showing us their injuries with sincerity I have not come across since.
5 years down the line, I could never have imagined the impact that day in hospital would have on my life in every way, both professionally and personally.
Rewinding back to the beginning of 2009, Denmark was at war and the fact that the war in Afghanistan brought war casualties, was a new situation in Denmark. Many young soldiers returned with missing limbs from IED bomb blasts and injuries of this kind had not been seen in Denmark before. Denmark was simply not prepared to receive and treat these men, as countries like the US was.
At this time I was going about my daily teaching in my studio, that I had been running for 10 years and also teaching the ballet dancers at the Royal Danish Ballet in the Pilates gym at the Royal Theatre. When I was not teaching, I was in knees deep being a mother of 2 small lively boys, so the war was not particularly present in my mind. An initiative was then taken by The Royal Danish Ballet Foundation to help soldiers with multiple injuries returning from war in Afghanistan, after a media frenzy about the situation of these young men with severe war wounds. Could the rehabilitation methods of the dancers be useful for the soldiers? The choice being Pilates, as it is widely used by dancers for strength and rehabilitation. Perhaps the soldiers could benefit from this method, which was originally designed for rehabilitating interns during World War 1. by Mr. Pilates.
JoJo Bowman at the time a dancer and a Pilates teacher, asked if I would want to be involved in this idea and come with her to the hospital to meet the head surgeon and the soldiers. My initial reaction was: “I don’t have time– I’m busy with my studio – I have 2 children. She convinced me to at least just come to the hospital and support her in this meeting. My curiosity overruled and I went to the hospital.
The impression at the hospital was enormous, it still stands as one of the strongest single moments, where all logical thinking is gone and everything is experienced from the guts and heart.
When we got out of the hospital, I stood for a moment with JoJo and I said: “I’m in, I’m so in” That is one of those moments that stands very clear now, there was no voice in my head saying: “how was I going to manage this, what was our intention with this.” This decision was purely from the heart, and thus began a journey nobody could predict the outcome of.
As JoJo and I began working with the soldiers on a voluntary basis, the logical thinking returned and we soon started to consider where we were going to take this project. Could we continue working on this voluntary basis and provide the guarantee of regular training each week? At this point all training was taking place at the Royal Danish ballet gym and we had to work around the hours of the ballet. My studio was too small and already fully booked, so we couldn’t use this facility on a regular basis. As the demand grew and we were asked if we could take on more soldiers, we had to think ahead. So began a long windy road with many ups and downs and it is this story I would like to share.
Standing at the long and windy road
JoJo and I began to dream about possible scenarios for the wounded soldiers to receive regular Pilates training, not just for a few months, but for a long length of time. They were engaged in rehabilitation at the hospital and many of them were also involved in sports activities such as canooing and sailing. We wanted to offer Pilates to improve their finer coordination and motor control, which would create a more complete training program.
We also felt a certain responsibility for having taken an initiative to help the soldiers and continuing the work.
We looked at different options: could we set up a Pilates unit at the hospital? This proved difficult, as that would entail all kinds of regulations since we are not physiotherapists, and there was not really the space. We have always been clear that we could not be responsible for their initial rehabilitation, we offered our knowledge as Pilates instructors and movement educators and have the deepest of respect for the work the doctors and physiotherapists do at the hospital.
Then we looked at the option of setting up a specific Pilates studio somewhere in town just for the soldiers. This also had its challenges: who was going to run it, and would it be a space that would stand empty a lot of the time? It would also prove expensive to set up a whole new studio and who was going to pay for that?
At that point I was beginning to outgrow my small studio space and had for some time been seeking a bigger space. So the third option came up, whether I could find a bigger space and we could have a Pilates unit for the soldiers within that space? That way we could have the dynamics of being several teachers, having a space that would be used and be economically possible too. Its important to state that the intention has been all along, that the soldiers should not pay for their training, but who was going to pay for it? Some other issues were how would my regular clients react to being reminded of the casualties of war every day? How would it work to have a non – commercial project integrating into a commercial space?
Too many questions
So many questions came up on all planes and we began seeking advice. We began networking and sought advice with a governmental organization that assists firms that want to expand or need advice on financial set ups, legal issues or how do we simply write an application for funds. We also sought advice from voluntary organizations like The Danish Handicap and Sports Knowledge center. We wanted to know the ins and outs of receiving disabled at a commercial space. They were very positive to our idea, and talked of breaking the boundaries of regular clients and disabled clients. The positive impact it could have on both types of clients.
We found that the best advice came from the people who were as committed and passionate about this project as we were. It does take passion to engage in projects that are not profitable. It is however so inspiring to meet people that have that passion and drive, and it was alone meeting people like that, which lifted JoJo and I up from some serious down moments. Moments when we felt we had hit another wall and were as far away from our dream as we could possibly come.
Pursuing the dream
We decided the best option was trying to unite my studio with the DWWP project. This initiated a four year journey of parallel coordination, between JoJo and myself. JoJo began some serious seeking of funds for The DWWP. We realized as we began making budgets, that we needed a lot of money to be able to pay for the training of the soldiers, to pay rent for the space and to buy more equipment for the soldiers. I began looking for suitable spaces, which had specific requirements as it had to be accessible with a wheel chair. Timing was also essential. If I found a bigger space, would I be able to afford it, if the soldier project didn’t succeed? All along there was never the guarantee that we would succeed in finding the funds. And another thing that struck us, was: what if the soldiers would not want to continue training with us? There were so many ifs and it was all about timing and perseverance.
Seeking funds with the help of our network, that continued to expand, proved a journey of its own. As former ballet dancers and now Pilates teachers, we are not exactly prepared for this type of work. Official meetings, budgets, figures and having to explain and account for every single action in our business plan, that we had painstakingly put together. We always met respect for the work we were doing, but we were faced with many doubts about whether Pilates was the right training and why Pilates? Or what were our qualifications? Seeing it from the outside and Pilates not being a regulated form of exercise, like physiotherapy is, I could understand where the doubts were coming from. At the same time I knew we were staying within our professional boundaries and never pretended that we could replace the rehabilitation that the soldiers already had. It became an excellent exercise in defining why Pilates was a great tool for these men. We had the support of the men we were working with who gave us some wonderful statements of how Pilates was helping them and eventually we began to get the interest of the commercial funds.
Juggling too many balls
One of the demands of the funds was that we had to make protocols and some evidence based research, so that we could evaluate whether the training had an effect on the soldiers. This would be very important for further funding and for the success of the project. I found the idea really interesting as Pilates is not well documented yet, but just as I was thinking this thought to an end, came the next big chapter of looking at all the regulations and rules of research. So now we were juggling, research issues, applications for funds, rental space and much more. Let alone trying to keep the regular business going of teaching clients every day.
This was the point where I just wanted to give up and say: “Hey, I’m just a Pilates instructor, I didn’t sign up for this!”
But all along was this internal drive, which had nothing to do with logic, this feeling that had been initiated at the hospital, which now seemed light years ago.
Time was becoming an issue, as we hadn’t considered that the board meetings of the funds only take place a couple of times a year. We were trying to keep all wheels turning and all balls in the air. I found a space that was ideal and was negotiating this space with my studio partner. I felt we had to take a chance, that a space like this may not appear again and we were desperate to move out of our existing studio location, as it was simply too small. So we took on the bigger space, without knowing if the DWWP would get sufficient funding to move in with us or to continue existing at all.
The magic is in the moment
As I write this article for the Pilates Intel, it is now 8 months since we officially opened the doors to the Danish Wounded Warrior project and the long and windy parallel journey has finally been united into one road. It still remains to be seen whether the research protocols will show an effect, or if we can find further funding and many more open ends.
But we are proud and grateful for the support from the people that believed in us and helped fight this cause. We are most of all grateful to be able to work on a continuous basis with these inspiring young men and women.
It is in the moment when the unexpected happens and we see positive, supportive and social interactions between the soldiers and our civilians with multiple injuries. It is in the moment when we are doing what we are trained to do, when we are teaching a concentrated man intent on getting to walk better or stand better or have less pain, it is in those moments that I know why I said yes to this journey outside the hospital five years ago and that it has been worth it every single step of the way.
Jessie Lee
Jessie is of Danish/English nationality. She is a former ballet dancer educated at the Royal Danish Ballet. She has danced with English National Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, and Royal Danish Ballet.
Jessie is a fully certified Pilates instructor with Alan Herdman Pilates Studios, London since 1996. She is also a certified Gyrotonic® and Gyrokinesis® instructor since 2000 and 2003. In 2010 she passed the certification program from Balanced Body “Passing the torch Mentorship program” with Master Pilates instructor Elizabeth Larkam.
Owner of Copenhagen Pilates Studio since 2000, where she teaches Pilates and Gyrotonic® Jessie is part of the Health team at the Royal Danish Ballet and teaches the dancers Pilates at the Royal Danish Ballet Pilates studio.
Jessie is also an author of a Pilates and Nutrition book published in Denmark 2008, and has lectured on Pilates and its application in rehabilitation programs at symposiums and international conferences including: Pilates Method Alliance Conference and 12th Effort Orthopedic Congress in Denmark.