Month: July 2026

Le Bureau Spotlight – Shawna’s Journey in Pilates: A Teacher’s Perspective

by lebureauetc, posted in Uncategorized

Shawna has been practicing with me since 2018.  I met Shawna at Atlas Pilates in 2017.  At that time, Shawna was doing her apprenticeship under Lori Coleman-brown and observed many of my sessions.

(I was practicing Pilates at Atlas 2x a week to keep my body well conditioned as I was undergoing The WORK, a master pilates training through Vintage Pilates out of LA with first generational teacher Jay Grimes.)

As a teacher herself, I am honored that Shawna has chosen me to share and enhance her practice with.  Its always exciting to have someone who already understands the method in their body to trust you to help guide them and find better connections. 

I appreciate her devotion to her practice.  She works hard, practices with an open-mind, and is curious to dig deeper and understand more.

Shawna is no stranger to movement.  She knows the demands of being a gymnast and has experienced first hand the consequences of dogmatic movement!  She also was an engineer for many years before she decided to pursue a career as a Pilates instructor, so she understands ‘lines of energy’ and how essential it is to feel these inner lines within our own bodies in order to integrate and enhance energetic flow within the human body.  

Soon, Shawna will be moving to Oregon with her husband Chris to start a new chapter in their lives and also have more time to care for her aging parents.  I will miss you Shawna (although I know its not goodbye) and wish you all the best in this transition.

“Pilates helps my body feel more balanced, healthy, and efficient. The exercises require me to move in the moment and to intentionally choose the path to move forward. This sometimes helps me to find ways to let go of tightness to discover strength from other places. Practicing offers me an opportunity to play with moving and it even occasionally gives me a reason to be upside down!”

“The studio at Le Bureau provides a beautiful, serene environment to focus on challenging exercises, to experiment with movement techniques, and to push myself mentally and physically with Brooke as a knowledgeable guide. Brooke’s expertise in Pilates exercises and body mechanics shines through as she is teaching. She’s patient and kind while offering insightful and discerning cues that make every session enjoyable and effective.”

-Shawna

Pelvic Placement for Better Balance

by lebureauetc, posted in Pilates, sel love, tucking, whole body

We stand every day and the simple act of standing should never be taken for granted. In fact, Joseph Pilates would often have his new clients stand for their whole session. He instructed his clients to pay attention to how they were standing to feel balanced and whole front to back and side to side, and breathe! when Joe saw that they were able to stand with this attention he would invite them to begin practicing the beginner system he created.

I find most times ‘we’ are unaware of how we stand. This lack of paying attention overtime can cause imbalance and structural/functional imbalance.

One postural habit I see a lot is the positioning of the pelvis…it shows up all the time! The pelvis often time is forward which not only causes tightness in the hip flexors and quadriceps but a lack of connection in the gluteals and hamstrings.

When this is the case, your bottom may feel like 2 squished raisons.

My hope for all of us is that our bottoms are more like 2 plump grapes than raisons:).

I believe, most times it’s building awareness in your body and being attentive to how we stand that will make the biggest impact on how we function day-to-day and move in our bodies.

Exercises can definitely help your build strength, but with everything, if they are done without attention to posture for the purpose of creating overall balance in the body, exercises can cause more imbalance and more unnecessary stress on your structure…its not what you do, its how you do it!

If you feel you have 2 squished raisons for your derrière, consider your pelvic placement when you are standing, sitting, and exercising…

Check out my beginner mat workout on YOUTube where I focus on Pelvic Placement and “standing in our body” with attention.