Philosophy

A Holistic Approach to Personal Training

My personal training philosophy is about bringing balance, strength, and awareness into your daily life and exercise regimen.

Balance

The thoughtful combination of strength training, cardiovascular training, flexibility, nutrition, and stress reduction.

Strength

The energy and power to do things required by life, and how you perceive and value yourself in the world around you.

Awareness

Attention to your actions, thoughts, and breath, and the choices you make as you are making them.

How to Get There Together

People hire personal trainers for a number of reasons. They need to lose weight, they need to gain weight, they want to build muscle, or they need greater strength and agility.

When we start a program, I ask a lot of questions. The more we both understand what you need, the more you can achieve the healthier lifestyle you want.

How you do things, and why, are important to understand. Noticing healthy and unhealthy habits and patterns is essential to improving your total wellness. Our communication, session to session, help us reshape the training for balance. Together we'll combine the following in beneficial ways for you.

Strength training builds muscle and helps enhance lean body mass.

Cardiovascular training helps the heart and lungs endure long periods of strenuous movement.

Flexibility is about lengthening the muscles and relaxing them so they do not remain tight and contract the body against its natural state.

Nutrition is important because how, when, and what we eat affects every aspect of our well being.

Stress reduction is essential in our everyday worlds of work and personal challenges.

My job is to help you better understand yourself and your body more with each meeting. I don't set up a rigid or strict programs for my clients. We are not the same person every day. We are constantly evolving and no two people are the same, so programs vary. I refine our work together, session tosession, by "checking in": Happy? Tired? Stressed? The session is built in response, holistically - yoga, a long walk, lifting, high intensity, stretching, whatever is needed, from a thoughtful, strategic, and individualized training.

There is a lot to learn about healthy ways of living, especially to counter our cultural perceptions. We think we need to look like models, we eat fast foods. We beat ourselves up for not looking like "those other people," which makes us harm ourselves more. It's a vicious cycle. We need to break that cycle in small stages.

Tuning into moments as they happen brings you more fully into your body and your life. With awareness, you increase your ability to better build your strength and achieve balance.

Starting a program shouldn't be looked at as a dramatic lifestyle change. It should be looked at as an opportunity to try out new ideas and to experience new things.

—Denny

One glimpse of the present moment...
Watch the world fall into stillness and silence around you.
Surrender to the peace and calm that you know exists within you.
A smile forms from deep within and you experience bliss...
...and then you breathe for the first time.
Your senses come alive and everything is fresh and new.

Yoga builds strength, balance and awareness to the mind, body and spirit.

We begin where we are and how we are, and whatever happens, happens. Yoga is adaptable. It can be done by anyone, at anytime, on any level of fitness. It is a state of mind.

"Yogas Citti Vritti Nirodah" The goal of all yoga is clarity of mind. Remove the veils of misperception. Yoga is a tool to help us understand ourselves better, on a deeper, more personal level. It teaches us to live in each moment as they happen. The more we practice yoga, the more we understand our body, mind and spirit.

Yoga Practice:

Take in a deep breath... I am aware of the breath coming into my body.

Relax on the exhale... I am aware of the breath going out of my body.

Take another deep breath, make it longer and deeper than the last one... I am aware of the breath coming into my body.

Relax and let go of tension on the exhale... I am aware of the breath going out of my body.

Breathe in filling up the abdomen, then the chest, then when you think you can't get any more air in, gulp in another sip of air... I am aware of the breath coming into my body.

Relax when you breathe out... I am aware of the breath going out of my body.

Let your breath sweep you off your feet, let yourself live in awe at all that life has to offer.

Namaste.