Issue #401 – Wednesday, May 17, 2022
A SINGLE MOMENT: The Magic of Biotensegrity in My Life
by Mandie Pitre
I had the good fortune of tucking, squeezing, sucking in, and forcing my body to be performative by the time I was a pre-teen. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun making demands of my body with no immediate consequences. Not only that, I had the opportunity to experience a locked up back, and digressing at my craft of dance rather than continuing to blossom, by the time I was 18. My body’s voice started giving me the silent treatment.
How is this good fortune? Because I found out earlier (rather than later) that forcing my body to do things for a quick result had long term consequences. That laid the groundwork, as an adult, for Pilates to be transformative and not performative. This was also the alternative to having zero boundaries in regards to someone else directing and demanding what I do with my body, and me obliging without question. I’m sure many of you relate.
My body is my voice. I relied on movement the way a deaf person might rely on sign language. It was a way to hear and feel myself. It was the place in the world where I felt like myself. What had happened was an invisible injury. If I didn’t know before, I would over the course of many years realize that the way I approached movement had everything to do with the way I related to myself. And something that seemed totally physical — like a bothered back, a pelvic floor unable to relax, and a tight psoas pulling me into an anterior tilt so intense it was like being pulled backward by an energetic force — correlated with how I felt inside and sensed myself in the world. It also answered the question, “Why had my artistry vanished in the dead of the night?” I was stuck in the matrix of my connective tissue. The tensegrity was too compressed. And even though my body felt weak, my strength simply could not expand and express itself.
20 years ago was my first experience with Pilates. I had no idea there were even machines. It was a mat class and I was one of the poor souls that couldn’t roll up, but didn’t know why. I literally could not get up, even with my feet grounded into the wall. Little did I know, this would become a transformative exploration that would span a lifetime. This not only with Pilates, but with repatterning my intense quad dominance. My quads took on years of overwork and compression and were pulling on my back. This journey felt like starting from the beginning. It required patience but it was fascinating. I was learning new ways to move as my body was lovingly rejecting the old. Unraveling my body helped me unravel myself and heal my invisible wounds.
How did this all begin? I was living in Austin, TX and, long story short, I found my way to Wendy Leblanc Arbuckle. I had no idea what she represented in the Pilates community, and I honestly had no idea what Pilates really was. I just knew that Pilates would help my dancing. I think intuitively I knew it would change my life. Here’s also what I also didn’t know. I didn’t know my back was tight until I did Short Spine, I didn’t know my quads were overpowering the rest of my body until I attempted to do Roll Up, and that I had a psoas muscle that was clearly a contracted snail in a shell. Because I came from the dance world, I thought my woes were that I simply wasn’t “skinny”, wasn’t insanely “flexible”, and that I had simply had a “big butt”. But in an instant, my life changed … literally in an instant! Here’s the present tense sensorial experience of the moment.
I’m laying on the reformer doing “footwork” in one of my first private sessions with Wendy. I wasn’t “feeling anything”, except my back and hips involuntarily arching. I knew I didn’t like the feeling, but I thought this was my “big butt” doing its “big butt” thing. I also knew, on a level somewhere between conscious and unconscious, that it was ruining my life as a mover. That it was the giant boulder blocking a pathway in my body that got between me and my deepest level of artistry. I was right, however, it was not because it was big. Turns out “big butts” can move very freely.
Suddenly, I feel Wendy’s hands reach down and embrace my heels with her hands, and something happened. I will never forget the sensation of this for the entirety of my life. She gently pulled on my heels and my tail bone completely released downward. Oh wow, my heels are related to my spine. My bones, organs, muscles are in a deep relationship through my connective tissue, and I feel it! WTF! My physical and mental matrix shifted.
My pelvis was in a place it didn’t even know existed. In a moment, it had taken a journey to a new land, and looked around at its environment, which was the rest of my body, and everything spoke at once, “Shall we dance”?
Tucking, squeezing, and sucking in died in me that day. Those are the things that helped create my tight back, intense anterior tilt, a scared psoas, and my quad dominance. A new conversation started and my inner voice and artistry had just been reborn. That inner voice is patient and not forcing me to make performative shapes. That inner voice allows me not to need “to know” on a timeline. And more so, continue on the path, not knowing. It is curious and has freed me up in regards to what other people think about what I’m doing with my body. I breathed a deep cellular sigh of relief.
Understanding my biotensegrity in a felt sense has become my artist’s tool. Biotensegrity is an omni-directional matrix that has our bodies be whole, and we feel our communication system in real time, in a million single little moments. This is beyond “strength and mobility”, cut off by tucking and squeezing, and allows our bodies and felt self to expand, explore, and naturally educate themselves.
Stay Tuned for Part Two.
Mandie Pitre is a highly specialized pilates/movement coach/athlete and educator with a focus on working with people who desire a more in-depth experience through facial integration. Whether it is the nuances needed for highly effective post rehabilitation, the details to cross train with pilates for enhanced athletic outcomes, or simply the focus, commitment, and drive to learn the classical pilates repertoire and beyond, through a fascial lens. In turn, they discover the deeper athlete that exists in themselves.
As a 40+ dancer, athlete, martial artist, just to name a few, Mandie deeply understands the nuance and education required to continue to excel as we move forward in our movement lives, rather than backward as we age.
Mandie’s movement journey began at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Houston, TX studying ballet extensively from ballet masters from all over the world. At this time she began performing with the Bay Area Houston Ballet, performing in ballets such as The Nutcracker, Coppelia, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, as well as, repertoire performed all over the Southwest, including the Southwest Regional Ballet Festival. She graduated from the High School For the Performing and Visual Arts where she continued to study from and perform under a vast number of movement educators from around the country, and added modern dance to her skill set.
In addition to studying in Houston, Mandie was chosen to study in Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s academy for their summer intensives. She spent many summers studying with the Joffrey Ballet, The Martha Graham School, Steps on Broadway, and Broadway Dance Center.
In Austin, TX she continued her studies and performed with Kate Warren and Kathy Dunn Hamrick. In addition to Ballet and Modern, Mandie loves jazz, hip hop, breakdancing, and choreographing. She currently studies Capoeira under Mestre Pinga Fogo of Ginga Brazil and Cordao de Oro, as well as, previously studied with Contra Meste Metido of Capoeira Evolucao.
Mandie was certified and mentored by Wendy Leblanc Arbuckle and Michael Arbuckle of Pilates Center of Austin, and is certified in the Core Connections method. She also had the great fortune of working for Wendy at the PCA for many years before breaking out and eventually starting her own teaching and coaching business reflective of her 20 years teaching bodies of all backgrounds. Her business is called Movematician Pilates and you may also know of Mandie through her social media handle, Mandie the Movematician.
To top it off, Mandie has a Bachelors of Arts in Communications from St. Edwards University and loves doing just that, communicating with people from all over the world about movement, life, and anything else that floats her boat!