Harnessing Hypermobility: A Review of Sarah Philomena Schmidt's Ballet Fit
I have been attending Sarah Philomena Schmidt's Ballet Fit classes once a week for 3 months now and the experience has been one of the most renewing and transformative experiences imaginable because of how precisely Sarah has helped me reprogram long-inactive and mis-used muscle groups. I can hardly believe I am the same person I was 3 months ago. I can't believe the sense of resurrected grace I am gaining as I continue to learn from her.
When I first began classes, I had very limited mobility and diminished strength in my right foot and ankle from a ruptured achilles tendon and other complications. After a lifetime of mounting joint-related injuries, it dawned on me that they all came from never having learned to manage my hypermobile nature. Before I started Ballet Fit, I was unable to bend my foot to stand on my toes and that made me feel hopeless about regaining strength in it. Movement and dance had at one time been a huge part of my lifestyle and identity and losing my old, however dysfunctional, relationship to my body affected my self-confidence and self-esteem on a number of levels.
When I train with Sarah, she offers me expansive intuitive coaching as she guides her students through even the most subtle adjustments. She is able to lead a whole class by shining example while helping individual students achieve each position and movement to the best of their ability. She has helped me develop more body awareness than I ever thought possible. She has helped me learn to trust in my own somatic wisdom again, after it had been terribly broken.
Sarah offers so much more than just another run-of-the-mill exercise class. She is a gifted instructor and a beautiful person who I am blessed to know. The repetitions are challenging enough that I am working hard to achieve them, but never so difficult that I struggle to maintain self-awareness or articulation throughout the sets. I can now stand on my toes perfectly without pain, The spinal subluxations that I have lived with for over a decade are healing on their own as I become more and more attuned to functional movement. I can't believe it. I feel like I'm being reborn. I can't believe the progress I have made and where I am finding postural integrity, strength and active engagement in places that I had not known existed.