I remember not being able to turn my head on the way to work and the alarm going off the day I tried to put a turtleneck sweater over my head when I literally cried because of the pain that action caused. Since I was spending most of my time at home with my child , I had no choice but to resort to an online workout. When I typed “exercises for the spine” into the search engine, Pilates exercises appeared among the first results. The rest is history, I could just finish the story, except that in my case Pilates became my future.

A few years later, I enrolled in the Polestar Pilates school in Paris in the Equilibre Pilates studio, whose owner is the famous French mentor and founder of the Federation of the Pilates professionals in France, Yaelle Penkohoss. Her mentoring, full of knowledge and love for this method, awakened in me the will to keep trying, even if it was sometimes discouraging: I was the only one in the group who had no athletic experience, surrounded by dancers and gymnasts, sports teachers and kinesiotherapists.

In parallel with Pilates, I have been practicing another form of exercise – facial training – for more than a decade. The first signs of age, such as creases around the eyes, a minor ptosis of the eyelids, and an asymmetry between the left and right sides of the face, sparked my interest in the facial workout technique in my early thirties. I read several articles about the face workout when looking for natural skin care techniques. I bought a handful of the commercially available programs, but because none of them totally removed the aforementioned changes in my face, I decided to handle things myself.

THROUGH EXPERIENCE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED

On my own face, I tested the exercises I developed based on my knowledge of the muscles synergists and antagonists and the facial expressions they produce taking into consideration the effects of the different types of contractions on the facial tissues, especially the skin. I realized that the asymmetry in my face was the result of the repeated dominant facial expressions of one side of my face in relation to the other. By working with clients and studying the results of the exercises on their faces, I made a selection of effective and ineffective exercises and came to new conclusions, such as that length and muscle function are important in protecting other facial tissues from sagging, and the crucial factor in maintaining the youthful shape of the face.

The main goal of my work today, whether it is about the body or the face, is to identify the habits that negatively affect health when it comes to the body and/or appearance when it comes to the face.

As a teacher of Pilates and facial training, I work with the largest Croatian sports and educational project Active Croatia, which has been motivating and reminding our fellow citizens of the importance of a healthy and active lifestyle for more than a decade.