Maggie Downie, Author at Personal Euphoria: Pilates & Fitness Classes in CT

About Maggie Downie

Thank you for giving your time to stop and read my blog. I hope it encourages you to keep moving. Move and the body will be happier. And when you're moving you can hike, run, swim in Jell-O, race over non-Newtonian fluids, travel the world or build igloos--if that's your thing. If not, you can watch me do it. This is just a spot to try and feel good about life.

Did the Microbiome Diet Help Me?

Playing with my food.

My naturopath wanted me to do the microbiome diet for three months. The book by Raphael Kellman suggested six weeks. I was committed for five and half weeks, until Matt and I went on vacation and then I slowly descended into dairy. Though, I didn’t make my three month goal, the real question is did the microbiome diet help me?

I don’t know the answer. It’s why research on humans is so hard. There are so many variables. As I approached six weeks on the diet, the sun was coming out. We were reaching the longest day of the year. Maybe that made all the difference. My workload is less in summer, maybe that helped.

I always feel better when I eat better, so in a general sense I felt better, but never better enough to give up all that I felt I was restricting. I didn’t sleep any better. My gut felt no better. I lost some weight. I experienced some bowel trouble I didn’t have prior. You wanted to know that, right? My psoriasis did improve, but my gut actually tells me that […]

Did the Microbiome Diet Help Me?Maggie Downie2017-12-29T20:38:26-05:00

Golf Lesson

Jeannine, Barb, Jess and I get a golf lesson.

Golf is a good walk spoiled. –Mark Twain

Apparently Mark Twain never had a golf lesson, because it has become clear to me that knowing how to golf makes all the difference. This summer the PE staff took a lesson with Mike Vitale at Stanley Golf Course in New Britain.

As a Pilates instructor it should come as no surprise to me that learning how to do something makes it easier and more fun. I had been to a range before and repeatedly pegged the ball into the ground, and much like Twain drew the conclusion that I didn’t really like golf.

It wasn’t the lesson I doubted as much as myself. I presumed I was a little hopeless—a former field hockey player in a decade when they eliminated air balls now attempting to swing a long stick to put a ball in the air instead of send it rolling along the ground.

Golf LessonMaggie Downie2017-12-29T20:39:59-05:00

Michael Phelps is Cupping. Should You?

Perhaps less nice to look at than Michael Phelps, but a textbook from 1692 showing cupping.

The world is atwitter with Michael Phelps’ 22-gold medals and the black and blue circles all over his body. While seeing these spots all over Olympic swimmers makes it seem like a new fad, it’s certainly not new. Ancient Egyptians appear to have practiced cupping. It’s been recorded in Chinese practice since around 281 A.D. In George Orwell’s 1929 essay, How the Poor Die, he described seeing the cupping technique used on a patient, but he thought it was strange, something from old medical textbooks that was only done on horses. If cupping becomes a standard practice, we can probably thank Michael Phelps’ trainers. It’s never had so much media attention.So Michael Phelps is cupping, but should you?

There are two types of cupping, dry and wet. Wet cupping involves mild suction, using heat inside a small jar-like object placed on the skin to draw up the skin followed by small cuts to let blood drain. I would NEVER do wet cupping. […]

Michael Phelps is Cupping. Should You?Maggie Downie2018-01-13T16:03:01-05:00

Pilates: Beginner vs. Intermediate

Maggie doing Spread Eagle on the Cadillac with Fuzzy Straps…Intermediate

Most of Personal Euphoria’s group classes are mixed level, but a couple of our towns offer intermediate classes. People regularly ask me what the differences between beginner and intermediate classes are. So here are some basic guidelines I like to follow:

Pilates Basic Principles

You know and are familiar with all the basic principles. It doesn’t mean you absolutely have to have perfected each principle, but you know it when you hear it and while you may require a reminder, you can make the adjustment needed if cued to. The general basic principles are: breathing, imprint vs. neutral, shoulder stability, neck placement during exercises, and knitting the ribs. Again, this doesn’t mean that you never need to be reminded to relax your shoulders, but when you hear that reminder you are able to. It doesn’t mean that you never feel an exercise in your neck, but when you do, you have ways to move your body to release that tension or you know to lower the head.

Control Imprint vs Neutral

This is […]

Pilates: Beginner vs. IntermediateMaggie Downie2018-02-14T15:28:07-05:00

A Lump Behind Knee

What’s that lump behind my knee? If you’ve ever felt a lump where that soft tissue at the back of your knee normally is, chances are you have a popliteal cyst (aka baker’s cyst). You probably want to talk to your doctor in case it is something else and also about the best way to treat it (drainage, physical therapy, or wait and hope it goes away on its own which can happen).

Some people will experience pain, others don’t. Range of motion can also be limited. Either way it is usually caused by fluid bulging out behind the knee and is associated with arthritis. According to the American Journal of Sports Medicine baker’s cysts are highly linked to meniscus tears—full tears or partial. Something is going wrong in the knee which then produces too much fluid. I’d recommend you should be doing some physical therapy because something is causing the baker’s cyst, pain or no pain.

I was hoping there was an interesting factoid about how prevalent baker’s cyst are among bakers. Maybe because they are on their feet all day in warm kitchens so their bodies produce more fluid, but it’s simply named after Dr. William Baker who first described […]

A Lump Behind KneeMaggie Downie2018-01-13T16:04:14-05:00

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