International Yoga Day with Sarah Callaham Margetts, founder of
THE BODY METHOD

does yoga mean to you personally?

I actually credit yoga with saving my life. Even though I first got into Bikram Hot Yoga at the age of 18, I didn’t really start a proper practice until I was 24. My boyfriend of 5 years, who I lived with, came home one day and broke up with me completely unexpectedly. Needless to say, I was devastated and had never felt so worthless in my life. Thankfully I had friends who took me in to live with them so I wasn’t homeless. I threw myself into my Pilates training just to wear myself out, so my brain would stop the self destructive thoughts long enough that I could sleep at night. It was in that initial first week after the breakup, I developed bulimia. Not because I wanted to be thin or was worried about my weight, but because I truly didn’t believe I was deserving of feeling anything good. That my body literally didn’t deserve to feel full, happy, or healthy in any way. I was so broken, that I thought that punishing myself in this way was what I deserved, and it was also a way I could do it to myself physically in secret. When people saw how skinny I had gotten, I just told them I wasn’t hungry anymore; that I was so sad from the breakup that I was nauseous most of the time (which was also true). A few weeks later, a friend of the friends I was living with suggested I try a hot power vinyasa class. She thought it would be a great mix of a hard workout and the mind-stilling qualities and breathwork that yoga provided.

After just one week of classes, I realised there might actually be something to this yoga thing, and a week after that, a friend of mine invited me to join her on the 4 day yoga retreat she was leading. It was there where yoga became not just a physical practice for me, but a new way to look at life. I started going to vinyasa classes almost every day, now not just for the workout, but for the dharma weaved into each class, for the meditation at the end, and for that stillness my mind so desperately craved. I started learning more about the yamas, niyamas, ayurveda, and pranayama. I attended yin yoga and yoga nidra classes, (something I would never have had the interest or the mindfulness to do in the past). I loved going to kirtan events, and finding that emotional release through song.

So it was in that way, slowly but surely, month by month, I started to heal, and grow; finally getting back my sense of self, and confidence I had lost, not just in the breakup, but in the relationship itself. In fact, within 3 months I was able to come to the realization that I was actually grateful for the breakup, because it finally set me free to be me again. I honestly believe if I hadn’t found my yoga practice at the time, to guide me through it all, not only would I not be who I am today, but I am not sure I would be here at all.  

What are three small but meaningful habits you've incorporated into your daily life since beginning your yoga practice?

a . My eating habits have changed a lot since my yoga practice started almost 15 years ago now. I finally started listening to my body and became more aware of the different food intolerances I have to dairy and gluten. I also stopped eating meat not long after I started practicing yoga, because the practice forced me to look at how my actions were not only contributing to more pain and suffering of animals in factory farms, but also how the meat industry was affecting the environment at large. I now have reintroduced fish into my diet for health reasons, but eating another animal is still not something I take lightly.

b . My commitment to ahimsa (non-violence/non-harming) as a way of life, which is one of the Yamas, or 5 ethical restraints in the Yoga sutras. Some of the ways I practice this is through my general communication with others, my eating habits, how I have learned to treat myself (which is still a work in progress), how I run my studios, how I approach my work with clients, through the elevation and support of voices who are marginalised by society, as well as how I interact with my family, friends, and the greater community at large.

c . Valuing the stilling of the mind. That is such a challenge for me! I still struggle with sitting meditation, but I have learned through my yoga practice that I have to have some way to calm the monkey mind. Some of my favorite ways I do this are through mindful moving meditation, focusing on my breath, or meditative creative projects like making jewelry or collages.

How did your personal journey with chronic pain lead you to Pilates and inspire The Body Method?

I have had chronic joint pain since I was 11, but it wasn’t until I was 20 years old when I was first introduced to Pilates. I grew up as a competitive swimmer, and due to hyper-mobility (although I didn’t know it at the time) I developed severe tendonitis in my shoulders at a very early age. But because I was so stubborn and focused on “becoming an Olympian” like my swimming idol Amanda Beard, the pain didn’t stop me. I kept pushing it and pushing it until I literally couldn’t lift my arm higher than my shoulder without pain; meaning I couldn’t lift my arms to reach the cereal box on the top shelf, or hold the top of the steering wheel of my car. So instead of quitting, I was just kicking the entire swim workout (7,000 yards daily on average), still convinced I could make it to the Olympics. Eventually, at the age of 17, I realised it was a tad bit unrealistic, and quit swimming altogether. So naturally as a “type A” personality, I shifted my focus to my other love, snow skiing. For my last year of highschool, I started running more for dryland training and spending every weekend training and racing on the slopes. When I went to university, I made sure that I picked one with a ski team, where I could not only train and race each weekend, but where I could take up a job teaching ski lessons to the next generation of skiers as well. It didn’t take long though to realise that after all of those years of kicking every swim session, (especially as a breaststoker), I had some pretty solid imbalances throughout my body.

The pain started showing up in the extra running and dryland training, which in the beginning I just thought meant I had bad knees like other people in my family, and that we weren’t meant to be runners. But when I started teaching ski lessons and had to be in the wedge with my skis all day long, it got to a point where I couldn’t walk without serious knee pain. I would spend 2 hours 3-5 days a week in my university’s athletic training room trying to rehab my knees. We literally tried everything- strength training, taping, chiropractic, physio, cortisone shots, acupuncture, light therapy, and orthotics. Until finally I had no other options but to see the surgeon. He suggested I stop doing all training and only wear these special knee braces he had for me, for 6 weeks. When I came back and told him my pain was exactly the same, he offered me the option of exploratory surgery, with the possibility of cutting my IT band to make it longer, while he was in there. When I asked how successful that was, he said it only worked 30% of the time, and even just the exploratory surgery without lengthening the IT band, would be an 8 week recovery. When I politely said that seemed like a pretty terrible idea, he suggested I try Pilates to get my core strong. I was so annoyed because I had never been stronger than I was 6 weeks ago, before he told me to stop everything. But surgery seemed like a no win situation, so Pilates it was….whatever that meant. I had never heard of Pilates, and although I was terrified of the crazy looking equipment when I first walked in, it actually worked! With the guidance of my amazing teacher, I did 2 privates per week, plus my homework exercises everyday, and within 4 weeks, I could walk without pain. I was hooked, and knew that I would need to keep it up for the rest of my life to stay pain free, so after 2 years of practicing, I decided to get certified so I could afford weekly sessions.

So for me Pilates has always come from a rehab lens. I have never looked at it in my teaching as purely fitness. When I started teaching, I right away fell in love with working with injuries, and finding new ways to help people to get out of pain. It led me to work with injuries of all types: knees, hips, shoulders, ankles, wrists, brain, paralysis, nerve pain, spinal cord injuries, neck pain, stroke, post surgery rehab, pre-surgery pre-hab, and even with those undergoing treatment for cancer. For me it is always an honour to be a part of someone’s journey out of pain, and into wellness. Working with injuries, and having a place which is inclusive for all bodies, is paramount to me. I want everyone who walks through our doors to know that we will do our best within our scope of practice, to make sure everyone feels like they are included in the session, regardless of where they are physically.

The Body Method emphasizes quality of movement over repetitions. What does technical movement and biomechanics mean in practice, and why is precision key?

When we are talking about technical movement, we are talking about focusing on proper technique of each movement - not just moving for the sake of moving, and biomechanics is understanding how we move when we are responding to external forces. So the two go hand in hand. We practice form under load in a very controlled setting, so that the body can have a better understanding of how it would respond in the “wild,” or outside of class, when it was met with an expected or unexpected force. Mr. Pilates always said his method was for life - meaning that in Pilates exercises we are training for what life throws at us.

How does The Body Method create a warm, compassionate, and knowledgeable environment for healing and growth?

The first thing I tell our teachers, when I bring them on board, is that they are part of our little TBM family, and my main priority is their wellbeing. And I’m not just saying it; I mean it on every level. All of our teachers know that I have their back, that I trust and respect them, and that their health and happiness is more important than any class. I don’t expect them to just take me at face value though, so I make sure to show them this is true day in and day out. When they are sick, we make sure they have someone to cover their class, and if we can't get a cover, we would rather cancel a class than force them to teach. If they are struggling on a personal level, we do everything we can to support them, whether it’s a coffee date to chat it out, a personal flower delivery, free sessions with me to help with their niggling injury, helping to organize some needed time off, or just being that person they know is there if they need something. I believe that if you treat people the way you would want to be treated, if you create that feeling within your staff of mutual respect, caring, and trust, it will just naturally just trickle down to the community. I can’t imagine it would be very easy for our teachers to want to share their love, knowledge, and compassion with their students, if they didn’t feel supported by the studio. Our clients know that when they walk in that door, our teachers are there to take care of them, like we have swooped them up under our “little mama TBM wing.”

Why are foundational movements so crucial in your foundations program, and what common misconceptions do you address?

This course is about understanding how your body moves on a very simple and basic level, because if we don’t understand the foundations, then there is no way we are going to be able to perform fancy choreographed exercises. One of the main causes of pain or injury that I see is because we never learned how to use the little stabilizing muscles in conjunction with the big global mover muscles. It’s rare that a sports team coach, or even personal trainer, talks about engaging your pelvic floor and low core when doing a leg lift, deadlift, or squat, and it’s no fault of the coach, because they don’t know any better. But because of things like this, we naturally end up at the mercy of our body trying to figure out how to do the exercise without the proper understanding of how to engage the little helper muscles, and instead just end up using our quads and low back more than we should. The foundational movements that we are addressing in our Foundations program are in general looking at the basic movements which allow us to interact with the world, but in a way that allows the body to learn how to do them with control and while staying connected to our body’s center. For example, we look at how the femur, or leg bone, connects and moves within the hip socket, without compensating by using our back muscles. Or we look at how the head of the humerus, or arm bone, relates to the shoulder girdle, and the rhythm in which it should move, so as not to overuse our upper traps and therefore put more pressure on the neck. It’s by taking the time to break it down in simple terms, learning how to use our muscles the right/most efficient way, that we can practice movement without pain or adding extra stress to the joints.

The align program focuses on postural alignment and pelvic stability. Why is the pelvis significant for overall alignment and limitless movement?

Let’s imagine a house, and the foundation that it is sitting on is crooked. Well, we can assume that the walls and the roof aren’t going to be straight either; everything will be sitting to some degree off kilter. It’s the same way I look at the body. If the base of the spine, or the pelvis, is crooked then we can assume that the shoulders and head aren’t going to be sitting straight either. And then if we look down to the feet, the legs, knees, and ankles will most likely be struggling too. So in our ALIGN program we start with understanding where our pelvis is in space, which imbalances we have there, so that we can learn how to correct them.

Clients call you the most intuitive body worker. What's your secret to recognising problems and guiding clients through recovery?

I don’t know about being “the most intuitive body worker” out there ;) , but I do know that I come to every session from a place of deep compassion and empathy. The people who I see are generally in pain, or are recovering from some sort of injury/surgery, so it isn’t just about the mechanics that we need to work on. We have to work on dealing with their own identity being tied to their pain, getting them to trust their bodies again, learn that movement isn’t inherently painful/bad, and find ways to focus on what they can do. Chronic pain is so much more than just pain. There is a whole mental and emotional side that goes along with it too, which to be honest, I think is often worse than the pain itself. Working through that part can sometimes be too painful to talk about in the start, where the student might not want to talk about, or can’t talk about it without getting extremely emotional. So knowing other ways to learn about how your student is feeling each day is imperative, and for me reading the body is key. Noticing how they are carrying themselves when they first walk in. Watching where they unintentionally touch, or hold, or favour in their own bodies. How the student's body is holding tension when they lie down on the mat/reformer, in addition to how the tension they are holding responds to the exercises, is all part of reading body language in a session. Of course this takes a lot of years to develop, but the more you pay attention, the more you will learn from someone, before they ever verbally tell you anything about their pain.  

How do you empower clients to integrate studio principles into daily life for sustainable well-being?

Homework is big for me. I know that 1 hour once or twice a week in the studio is just a drop in the bucket, compared to all of the other hours in the week. So I am always looking for ways I can help my clients to translate what they are learning in the studio into their daily life. Whether it is giving them a proper home workout routine to do every day for 5-10mins, simply getting them to focus on their posture while they are brushing their teeth, or having them focus on their leg position when they are walking from one end of their house to the other; I am trying to find manageable ways for clients to integrate the work we are doing in our sessions, into at least one part of their day. Because the more it becomes less about being a “Pilates exercise,” and more about being a normal movement pattern, the sooner they will see real change.

Your work is described as "a calling." How do you maintain such passion and what inspires you to redefine wellness?

My motto has always been “Give a shit and take care of your community.” I feel like too many people are #livingmybestlife and because of that, only focusing on themselves. Now, I am all about people focusing on their own wellbeing in order for them to be the best versions of themselves for their community, but unfortunately, I don’t see that happening very often these days. With the competitive and unhealthy standards presented by social media, I feel like the idea of “living your best life” is more about “what can I do to make myself happy right now, without caring about how it affects, or doesn’t affect others/the planet.” We as humans are social animals, and currently we are at a critical point in humanity where we just can’t afford to not be taking care of each other. So for me, I use the teaching of movement to make a difference in this world through the “ripple effect,” via empowering my clients to make positive changes within their own bodies. I believe that if I can support people to be in less pain, to feel more confident and strong within their own bodies, then that will directly affect how they interact with the world around them. I believe that if you feel like someone cares about you, is invested in you, then there will be a much greater chance that you will then care about others in return. This could look like finally being out of pain enough to have the capacity to be there for your kids in a meaningful way. Or maybe it’s feeling confident enough in your own sense of self that you are able to be a support system for your co-worker who is going through a hard time. Or alternatively, you finally feel physically strong enough in your own body to volunteer at a local organisation, supporting the community at large. All of these ways are just as important as the next; regardless of how big or small they might seem. For me, Pilates isn’t just about the exercises, it’s about the transformation of the whole person that comes with it.  

You can learn more about the Sarah and The Body Method