Kathleen

Kathleen Conklin

Master Teacher – Pilates, Stretch technique

Creator – Flexagility™;   Refine Your Spine™; Centric 6™  

Inventor – Conscious Body Mat™ – patent pending

Founder – Body Conscious, LLC

Leader – International retreats to Baja and Greece

Author –

  • Wee Small Stretch Book,  showing you how to safely stretch just about everything. Use it everywhere – on your walk, when you run, at a dance, near the pool and while taking a break on the bike route.
  • Breathe. Stretch. Move. A DVD to accompany the Wee Small Stretch Book; photographed and filmed in Baja, wild coast of Pacific.  
  • Who Breathes, an educational and poetic description of how humans breathe and analogies to other aspects of nature. With specific skills for breathing well. A book to browse for visual enjoyment that might rest on a table. A book to read to a child. Illustrated with photos of wildlife in Tanzania.

Purposive Work- About teaching breathing, spine alignment, functional movement, pilates and stretch and strength techniques, she says:

“I want to work with you. I don’t want to limit you with training. Where it is external, quantitive, competitive, tiring and depleting, I think ‘exercise’ is a diversion and misses the point. I have intense appreciation for the potential and the process of healing, and a deep compassion while dealing with physical and mental issues.  I don’t want to ‘exercise’ you; I want to help you do your own healing.

My purpose is to educate you about your own inherently adequate design and your vast capacity to move well. In your body made conscious by intelligent movement and profound breathing, you find energy and a fiercely protective immune system. You reduce pain, injury and discomfort. Ultimately, you improve life options and enjoyment.

Bring me your broken bones, your new hips, old knees, and tired spirit, and let’s figure out how to breathe free and be free of pain.”

In the late 1990’s, Conklin transitioned from a career in law intending to provide health law advocacy, to actually providing health advocacy by teaching from what was then called the Pilates Method of Physical and Mental Conditioning.  In 1997, Conklin completed the teacher training program of The Pilates Studio of the Midwest in Chicago, and continued learning through intensives at The Pilates Center in Boulder, CO.  Several immersives with Michael Miller Pilates, and pilates-elder, Mary Bowen, kept the technique intellectual and fascinating.  Studies continued with Madeline Black, Michele Larsson, and Virginia Nicholas. Kathleen’s teaching is enhanced with techniques from Feldenkreis Method, Alexander Technique, Eric Franklin Method, NVI (neurovascular integration), and profound experiences with the Anatomy in Clay program in Colorado; Dissection Anatomy at the UW, Madison; and the ‘live’ dissection (on unembalmed bodies) courses by Anatomy Trains LLC – Tom Myers, and Laboratories of Anatomical Enlightenment – Todd Garcia.

Conklin is collaborating on workshops to educate about the mental and emotional healing possibilities of brain structure reintegration through rational, conscious and imaginative movement.

Conklin also wrote chapters on “Breathing” and “Stretching” in the manual for CycleOps Pro 300 from Saris Cycling Group.

Even after 55,000 hours of teaching, she remains fascinated by the vast shimmering depths of human movement.