July 30, 2020Pilates Instructors

In Conversation with the Pilates Instructor Karena Thek

We had a chat with a true Pilates and Scoliosis professional, namely the amazing Karena Thek.

Karena is a Pilates instructor, author and international teacher but she is maybe most known for being the the founder of Scolio-Pilates. Karena helps people all around the world to live a more mobile life despite their scoliosis. Beyond her work she is also a wife, mom, sister, daughter, basset hound wrangler and Karena the avid outdoors person. There’s a lot of sides to all of us!

Instead of a coin, we are more like multi-faceted jewels.

- Karena Thek

Karena has a lot of ongoing online and in-person professional seminars. Every Thursday she offers a free Scolio-Pilates class online.

Do you have a life motto or something that you come back to in order to keep your inspiration going?

I am not sure I have a life motto but there are things I say a lot. The first is, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” The other is “An inch wide, a mile deep.” Those phrases ring in my head. A LOT. I guess that makes them life mottos. Haha!

Right now I am extra curious about nerves, connective tissue, breathing and how it’s all connected to everything else. On a regular basis, I am constantly curious about color and movement. I am always painting and dancing in my head. It helps me to keep my inspiration going.

Karena Thek Scolio Pilates for Pebbles Pilates

We move in order to feel better inside and out, but much focus is still on appearance. What is a beautiful body according to you?

A beautiful body to me is a body where the owner is comfortable and respectful of that body.

One of our Scolio-Pilates practitioners passed away recently, Jen Ainger. She wrote, in one of her final blogs, “I would’ve been nicer to myself.” I like that. I think we could all live by that.

What is Pilates to you?

Pilates to me is opportunity. It gave me an opportunity to have a dance career because it made my dancing better, an opportunity to meet my best friends and to travel the planet to meet them. And for the future, an opportunity to continue moving and living really well throughout life.

Do you have any "go to" sportswear or can you tell us what the perfect Pilates sportswear is according to you?

The perfect Pilates sportswear goes back to what a beautiful body is. The perfect Pilates outfit allows me to move and to express the respect I feel for all that my body can do.

When you are practicing Pilates as much as you do, do you end up with any moves that become your favorite ones?

My favorite Pilates moves are the ones I learned when I was studying dance. I was taught five exercises on the reformer. That was my introduction to Pilates. I did those five exercises for close to five years. I truly thought those were the only exercises that existed. Haha! And they are still my go-to’s: footwork, bridging, arm circles, feet in straps and swan on the long box.

Pilates and movement in general is not really a workout, or even exercise for that matter. It’s about exploration of what this body, that body, can do. We can expand, flow, undulate, explode or burst through motion. Bodies don’t exercise, they live, they are alive. And when we are consciously moving, we are simply living a moment of motion. Exploring that moment in time through our own bodies.