Awaken Your Body's Healing Power Through Mindful Movement | The Mindvalley Podcast | Ep #70

To be a more spiritual being, you need to be a very physical being first. We're all trying to be in a spiritual journey where we try to ascend and so raise our vibrations because the nervous system connects the body, the mind, the energetic self. This is the place where we raise our frequency. But if our body is not conditioned to have the endurance to welcome that energetic increase, I cannot raise the energy. I'm going to go into a short circuit.

The body is the home for our spiritual growth and we need to take good care of our home. Guys, if you've seen my work before, I never ever read from my phone or a script or teleprompter. But my guest here is too qualified for me to be able to memorize all of her qualifications. But just to give you a little background, Chloe is the only person in this world whom I trust with the health of my body. Her knowledge in about movement and understanding the body and helping you connect with your body is beyond anything I've ever come across in my whole life. But before I dive into that and sharing my personal experience with you, I would like to tell you who Chloe is. Chloe is an international Pilates educator. She's a teacher of teachers and a Pilates Method alliance certified Pilates instructor. Chloe has been doing Pilates for the past 20 years and holds an international second degree Master in Food science. Chloe has studied worldwide in both classical and contemporary Pilates method and has acquired a strong rehabilitation experience by working in some prestigious medical and orthopedic clinics since 2014. Chloe is the owner and the founder of the Pilates Academy Dubai and her passion and her knowledge is to take Pilates Academy worldwide and to help everybody connect with their bodies through movement education. Chloe, firstly, I owe my physical health to your work and to your dedication to educating me about why I need to move my body. What made you get on this path? What inspired you to become who you are?

I started moving my body through Pilates when I was 14 years old. And so it's seen. It's been a path of 26 years of trying to feel alive through moving movement. I've educated myself in various movement practices. I hold more than 800 hours yoga education and a million hours in Pilates education and other movement disciplines. And I've just recognized movement as not only a way to heal myself through the years, but also a way to know myself through the years and to access different aspects of my self, which we've discussed during the whole conference. The physical aspect is a doorway to our emotional self, to our energetic Self and through our mental self.

So do you believe that through movement we can heal our emotional traumas and our spiritual traumas?

100% so. Well, as you know, we are made of many aspects and layers of the self and they're all interconnected to one another. And so if I, for example, let's make it very simple. If I have an emotional turbulence and I'm not feeling okay emotionally, then I'm going to have a physical response, right? So for example, I'm going to clench my teeth or I'm going to feel stress in my stomach, stomach or my shoulders are going to tighten up or my fists are going to squeeze. And that happens also because the nervous system connects the body, the mind, the energetic self. That also happens if I have a weird thought, for example, if I'm thinking of something scary or uncomfortable, I'm going to have a physical reaction. Now what is amazing and not many people talk about this is that this is a two way process. So as much as the emotional self and the mental self and the energetic self can have an impact on the physical body, the physical body can also have an impact on all of the other layers of the self. And so by mindful movement, by really trying to get in touch with our proprioceptive abilities, which is our abilities to sense and feel the internal changes of the body at any physical level, we can talk to our organs. We can, I mean, Dr. Jodi Spencer speaks a lot about all of this. It's not new knowledge, it's very evident. Nowadays we can literally use our body as a gateway to mental, emotional, psychological and energetic well being and healing.

One very interesting thing you mentioned, you mentioned the relationship between the mind and the body is a two way street because most of us think that our mind affects our body. But how can our body affect our mind?

You know, there's science that proves, for example, whenever you're really happy, no matter your age, your social background, your nationality as animals, whenever we're happy, we raise our hands, we look up, we breathe and we smile like that's something that we all do. So that is a physical expression of an emotional state. So for example, and this is something really, really basic, but it's just a very clear example. If you're feeling down, you start breathing a little faster, you look up, you smile and you raise your hands. In less than a minute you can completely change your emotional state by accessing your physical body. Wow.

In all the years of working with thousands of thousands of people, what I've.

Got more than 30,000 hours of teaching under my belt, which is a little scary when I think about it.

30,000 hours of teachers training and individual training, correct, guys. Chloe trains Pilates instructors all around the world. And Pilates Academy is now in how many countries?

Right now we're in three countries, but.

Hopefully in three countries. Hopefully it's going to be worldwide. Over the all these years of working with so many people, have you noticed a big mindset shift in your people working with you?

Well, for sure. People who. I believe the fitness industry is educating the crowd to principles that are not always accurate when it comes to how movement can really benefit your body. And many of my colleagues and my students are afraid that if they don't follow those principles, they're not going to be accepted by the main public. Nevertheless, I've experienced that when people really get in touch with their bodies and they learn how to move more mindfully, they perceive a shift in their being at every level that they don't want to let go of. And so something changes in their mindset. The Pilates Academy, one of one of our principles, is educating the people who get in touch with us so that they can understand and they can feel differently within their bodies. And so education is one of our main pillars because people want to learn, they're curious, and this is a crowd that speaks about that. And once they understand better how their body functions, that's very powerful and it's life changing.

I remember during one of our sessions, you mentioned to me that the body is here as a vessel to release energy, to release unwanted energy.

I mean, the body is here for so many reasons. There's one particular that I'm very. That really has a lot of meaning for me, and I think it would be interesting to talk about it here. If you think about our spiritual journey on the planet, obviously I'm a big believer of energy and the power of energy, and I do a lot of energy healing myself. If you think about the energy that we carry, and we're all trying to be in a spiritual journey where we try to ascend and so raise our vibrations, right? And we have. We're offered a lot of mindfulness practices in order to achieve that. So if my understanding of energy is correct, if I think of a circuit made of cables and I want to raise the energy into the circuit, but my cables are not wired and built to sustain that amount of power. I cannot raise the energy. I'm going to go into a short circuit. So now when we think about the body, this is the place where the energetic ascension happens. This is the place where we raise our frequency. But if our body is not conditioned to have the endurance and to. And the resilience to welcome that energetic in increase in our system, we're going to go into a short circuit, which is what we see very often when yoga practices are not taken forth mindfully and carefully. So if you want to be a more spiritual being, you need to be a very physical being first so that your spiritual growth can have a home. Wow.

So our body is the home for our spiritual growth?

I think so.

So beautiful. That was really, really powerful. For some of us who are struggling with our physical maintenance and are struggling to feel, to be disciplined about going to the gym or moving our bodies. What is the first baby step that you suggest?

Breathing is the first step to be alive and feel alive, I believe. And then committing to small practices, it could be. If you cannot afford to go to a gym or to a studio, even just something online, just making sure that you have 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day to move your body. I know it, it sounds simple, but it is simple.

How many of us move their bodies 20 minutes a day or more? All right, all right. Well, I want you all to take this with you from Chloe and after this interview that the body is the home for our spiritual growth and we need to take good care of our home. Is there any piece of advice that you would like to share with our audience?

Yes, maybe this could be a good takeaway for people. I usually tell my students, whenever we buy a piece of electronic device, whether it's a fridge or a phone or any electronics, what we generally do is we take the manual of instructions and we read what are the shortcuts in order to use it better. But we were not born with the manual of instructions of our body. And therefore, generally, despite education, we're not equipped with enough information to actually take care of our body properly. From a movement perspective. People don't know where muscles are. They don't know what fascia is, they don't know where their organs are. We're generally not equipped to take care of our body, use the shortcuts, and actually use our body at its best performance. Right. So my main, my main advice would be try to be more curious about how your body works and try to engage in disciplines nowadays that are actually make you connect with your body within. And we have something coming up. Actually, this is one of my greatest achievements for 2025. It's called the Body Wise Festival. It's the first time we take mindful movement to Dubai. It's a three days festival. 21st, 2nd and 3rd of February in Dubai. And it's a three days mindful movement festival. Just taking movement as the groundwork to feel different at every level of the mind, of the energy and of, of the emotions of the body. It's held by only 20 plus more years experts in movement and all forms of mindful movement. So I invite you all to join the body wise festival if you want to experience what we're trying to convey at the Pilates academy. Wow. Wow.

So maybe it's time for us to change the term exercise to mindful movements.

I would love that.

Mindful movement. All right, everybody. So I'd like to invite everybody to join the mindful movement. And thank you so much, Chloe, for being with us. And so this is a very important session for me because Chloe changed my life. And I like to share with people whatever tools that I had in my toolbox because there was a time when there were many people who help me by offering me their tools and telling me about what tools they use without gatekeeping. And I decided that that's what what's going to do for the rest of my life. I'm gonna share my most amazing tools and Chloe is one of my most amazing tools in my toolbox.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. My pleasure.