Passing the Torch

I am so grateful for the opportunity to share and mentor from the rich experience of my lifelong journey to awaken my own unique inner teacher. I hold this journey much like the creation of a precious gemstone. It takes eons to make a gemstone - extremes of heat and cold, and the passage of time. Likewise, to create a life and career of "passion, purpose and vitality" (this has always been my mantra) requires a willingness to ongoingly discover knowledge of self, and unearth the wisdom of one's inner voice, all while enhancing the perception, skill, understanding and commitment to act on this wisdom.

This is the journey we will take together



• PHASE I - LIGHTING THE TORCH: In this initial phase, we will return to our roots to rekindle the spark that ignites a passion for our life's work, inspires a fresh curiosity, and challenges our edges.
  
  
• PHASE II - SUSTAINING THE FLAME: Here we'll explore what it takes to keep the torch lit, that sense of "being in the zone" in our practice and teaching, as an ongoing creative act.
  
  
• PHASE III - PASSING THE TORCH: Finally, we will examine what it takes to powerfully share the "magic", to inspire and empower ourselves, our clients and our colleagues, and in doing so, reconnect with the legacy that is your life's contribution to this amazing work.

In this Year-Long Program students will have extensive personal access to Wendy, both on and off-site, supported by journaling, special studies, email contact, and monthly zoom meetings. The year will be anchored with 3 Week-long Intensives (June/Pilates Center of Austin, and October & March/ My Cottage Studio in Asheville). Each student will undertake a personal project that inspires them, and submit a final presentation paper. Each course is limited to 6 teachers.

If it is your heart’s desire to discover the part you will play in passing the torch to the generations that come after you, let’s spend an incredible year together exploring our depths in the depth of this amazing work. I promise you a true breakthrough in who YOU are for yourself, and your clients.

Intended Audience

Graduates of a comprehensive teacher training program, with a minimum of 3 years of concentrated teaching experience. 

I’d now like to share with you, the philosophical underpinnings, of my 3CoreConnections Embodied Perspective, that form the contextual framework for my year-long Passing the Torch Apprenticeship

After almost 40 years of teaching, I am clearer than ever that true learning does not happen from the outside-in. True learning doesn’t come from an information download. Or from proclamations of ”the truth”. True learning is transformational, and it comes from deep personal exploration, in the partnership of well-traveled guidance and wisdom. To be transformed is to emerge with an expanded awareness, a clearer vision, and a renewed sense of oneself, and the difference that that can make in the world. When we shift our attention to nurturing awareness, rather than getting our clients "to do it the right way", we create a safe, empowering, illuminating space for them to discover the real possibility of embodied movement in their lives.

Joseph Pilates was a true visionary, who taught from a coordinated trinity of body, mind and spirit. His exercises always "lived" for him in a much larger vision... cultivating our own inner wisdom, our ability to self-heal, and reconnect with the vital forces that constitute our true nature.

Standing on the shoulders of his legacy, we will ground ourselves in the deep roots of the Pilates Method, nourished by universal principals that form the foundation of all great body/mind systems. This will form the context, for our deep dive into our natural, primal way of moving, honoring the uniqueness of each participant.

To bring forth Joe Pilates’ vision, we will first learn to distinguish between: re-examining the current way we assess anatomical problems from a bio-mechanical, “pieces and parts” approach, as distinct from a “whole body systems” living anatomy perspective. This will give us a unique portal into the body's understanding of itself, in relationship with the gravitational field. This whole body approach invites us into a dynamic exploration of the true nature of how we develop and move. This contextual way of looking will challenge everything you think you “know”, and empower teaching, in inspiring and profound ways.

This mentoring program is for those who yearn to be inspiring, creative, passionate teachers/practitioners, with a personal practice that is deeply nourishing and inspiring, for Teachers who want to cultivate their deep curiosity and creativity, who are willing to investigate their beliefs and habits to discover new ways of supporting themselves and their clients, who are interested in knowing what the client in front of us right now has to teach us, especially that client we are uncomfortable being with, who are curious about allowing their own bodies teach and guide them ongoingly within the repertoire, rather than just doing what someone else tells us to do.

It is my deep privilege to journey with you, into this visionary body of work, as we develop, nurture and give voice to our own unique Inner Teacher/Guide.

In your apprenticeship, together we will

• Ignite the flame of curiosity from the body's experience of: "Core as Relationship with gravity, ourselves, one another and our environment".

• Re-examine the Pilates vision, along with primal, functional human movement patterns, from the expanded 3Core Connections® Embodied Perspective, a self-healing, embodied approach to human movement re-orienting fascial matrix awareness from Fundamentals to Flow.

• Develop an innate ability to guide clients to become masterful coaches for their own health and well-being, along with generating a deep understanding of the Pilates repertoire from Basic and how it organically builds to Advanced.

• Experience a transformation in your relationship with the power of “breath”, moving in a vibrational, symphonic concert with your body’s biotensegrity.

• Explore multi-sensory teaching skills (speaking, listening, seeing, touching, sensing and cueing) empowering new perceptions that build client confidence, post-rehab to elite athlete, along with your own.

• Explore the latest research in neuroscience, energy medicine and fascial matrix awareness, along with the pioneering wisdom from the fields of yoga, somatic arts and sciences, myofascial bodywork, social nervous system co-regulation and embryology.

• Develop and/or refine your personal practice in order to cultivate and continue to mature a practice of movement and stillness.

• Support you in creating your business as a thriving, empowering, participatory studio environment, that enables you to also have a life of your own!

• And, of course, we will always seek to lead with the wisdom of our hearts, as we plant seeds that blossom into fresh, new growth, all in the embrace of this amazing body of work, and with each other’s amazing selves. Oh, and developing lifelong friends while having lots of rollicking fun together!
  

Some Closing Thoughts

Perhaps more than anything else, my journey has brought this realization: one can "master" every move through to the super-advanced work, and know how to teach it, and still come up far short of making the kind of lasting and profound impact that is possible in our visionary work.

For without the ability to create space, to get underneath the conditions, circumstances and mindsets that stop us/our clients, such that an opening is created that propels us/them to grand, new possibilities, we will not have mastery. Because mastery is not just about lighting up a room, but the ability to light up another, in essence "to pass the torch" of possibility, where little or none was seen before.

Marry this with a deep understanding of the principles and practice of an embodied approach to movement and life, then you have real mastery. This is what lights me up, empowering people to discover their own true voice, their "inner mastery". This is the "container", so to speak, within which my 3Core Connections® Embodied Perspective lives.

About Wendy LeBlanc-Arbuckle

A holistic coach and movement facilitator for almost 40 years, Wendy considers herself to be a lifelong student. Over the years, she has studied with 5 of the Pilates Elders, and has been inspired by their individual expressions. These mentors, along with her apprenticeships with noted pioneers in yoga, the somatic arts and sciences, craniosacral, shiatsu and Structural Integration bodywork, embryology, breathwork and perceptual ontology, inspired her creation of the unique 3Core Connections® Embodied Perspective, a profound study of the universal principles that underlie embodied movement and the possibility for whole organism change.